On the golf course of Can Sant Joan, with land in Rubí and Sant Cugat del Vallés, no one practices the elitist sport anymore. It was one of the few public golf courses in Catalonia. It closed its doors in 2018 and has since been abandoned and run down. Before the pandemic, many neighbors, especially Rubí, broke the old fences of the facility to walk, run or picnic among the old holes. After the declaration of the state of alarm and the need to find green spaces, the neighbors have literally taken over the old field owned by the Catalan Soil Institute (Incasol). The platform We Reconvert the Rubí-Sant Cugat Golf Course has been insisting for years that the area should be transformed into a large public park.
The history of the golf course begins in 1991, at the height of the figure of the golfer Severiano Ballesteros. The Generalitat allocated a part of the land dedicated to a polygon of economic activities to build an 80-hectare golf course within Rubí and Sant Cugat. In 1994 the land became the Can Sant Joan golf course, the first public golf course in Catalonia that the Generalitat gave for its exploitation to the Catalan golf federation for 3,750,000 pesetas (22,538 euros) and an annual fee of 50,000 (300 euros). In 2013 the management carried millions in debts and the federation decided to rent the concession to the Metropolitan Golf Barcelona company which, in turn, two years later rented it to Puro Campo SL. In 2018 the debts of the new company were such that the Catalan golf federation terminated the contract, by judicial means, to Puro Campo SL The golf course was abandoned and closed.
At first the Incasol It was looking for an investor to maintain the facility but both municipalities approved motions to convert the field into an interurban park. Mireia Gascon, a member of the We reconvert the Rubí-Sant Cugat Golf Course platform, assures that Rubí has 23.47 hectares within the golf area classified as free space while Sant Cugat del Vallés has 51 classified as industrial and equipment land where there are from a cemetery, offices, hotels … The platform has presented to both councils a proposal to convert the area of Can Sant Joan and Torrents de los Alous into a large park. “It is a natural ecological corridor towards Collserola and the most logical thing is that both city councils defend before the Incasol that it should be a green zone”, Gascon warns. For the activist, the existence of a public golf course does not make any sense: “The square meters that a single golfer occupies is not equivalent to any other sporting activity. It is outrageous to invest public money in something like that ”. The activist justifies the entrance of neighbors, crossing the fences: “It is a graphic demonstration of the need to use the old golf course space.”
The mayoress of Rubí, Ana María Martínez (PSC), defends that the area be transformed into a park. “Most of the space is in the part of Sant Cugat but it is true that it is located closer to the urban area of Rubí and would give continuity to our natural park. In fact, this is shown by the fact that citizens themselves enter the old golf course, understanding that it is, that, a continuity ”, he emphasizes. The dialogues between the two municipalities with the Incasol have already begun and Martínez considers that it is up to the public body to make a move. The mayor of Sant Cugat, Mireia Ingla (ERC), assures that her government team has said more than a year ago that the golf course should become a park. “Now we depend on the agreement we reach with Incasol. Our intention is to go together with the Rubí City Council and for that area to be at the disposal of the neighbors once and for all ”, maintains Ingla.
The director of Incasol, Albert Civit, says that recovering the facility was complicated by the debts that it dragged. “Incasol is an autonomous organization with a commercial nature and by itself it cannot give up the space for free because it also depends on a balance of results,” he justifies. After the neighborhood demands, they studied the natural value of the space. “A part does have them as a natural corridor. Now we will deliver the reports to the municipalities for them to analyze ”, explains Civit, and calculates that“ more than 50% will be used for common use ”. “We will have to find the mechanisms with the municipalities to see how we can assign those spaces,” he adds. Every day dozens of people access the site of the old golf course. “We have tried to close it because Incasol is responsible for what happens inside but it is difficult, they always open points to gain access,” confesses Civit.
