Barcelona: Torre Baró’s Fight for Better Lighting

These elements, which have long since disappeared from most of the Catalan capital, had become a headache for the residents years ago, both due to the constant power cuts and the fact that the poles installed on the sidewalks make it difficult for pedestrians with mobility problems to pass. Now the council has announced an investment of fourteen million euros to begin removing them and burying both the electrical and communication lines.

The first work will begin this January on two of the main arteries of the neighborhood: Avinguda d’Escolapi Càncer and Carrer de Llerona. To this action – which has a budget of four million euros and which should be completed in just over a year – is added the work to advance the drafting of the project to carry out more burials in the neighborhood in the coming years and which has an initial budget of 10 million.

All of this should help to reverse the reality of a neighborhood that every two out of three suffers blackouts in the street lighting and also often inside the houses. Both the precariousness of the facilities – very prone to overloads and, as they are outdoors, suffer much more from inclement weather – and the copper thefts that the neighborhood often suffers are to blame. “We want a more resistant, more robust, more stable and reliable electricity grid, ready for any eventuality,” summarized Collboni.

The mayor has emphasized that this is a complex operation – the topography and the urbanization of the neighborhood make the work difficult – but he has claimed “the very important economic effort” that Barcelona is making to dignify the neighborhood. A measure that, he said, has to do “with the permanent struggle to make the neighborhoods of the city livable for everyone”. “The right to stay in Torre Baró is to have a regular bus, guarantee housing and also that the electricity does not go out,” he explained.

During the event, the president of the Torre Baró neighborhood association, Valeria Ortiz, also spoke, who, despite admitting that it was a “day of celebration”, put the City Council to task. “We want a neighborhood so that people grow up and stay here. That they are not afraid to go out on the street because there is no light or to fall,” he stressed, and demanded that the plans be fulfilled and that the undergrounding of electrical and telecommunications cables reach all the streets.

Collboni asks the electricity companies to get involved

During the event, Collboni also took the opportunity to listen to the electricity companies. He remarked that the City Council is not an electricity operator and that it is not responsible for the infrastructure, but that it is the companies that “maintain, cover and pay for the electricity line”. He regretted that in some areas of the city there is not “the level of investment there should be” on the part of these companies, and explained that the first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, has met with them on this issue.

In this line, the councilor of Nou Barris, Xavier Marcé, has specified that the burial is the work of the City Council, but as the ducts are indeed a matter for the operators “it is not the same to do it with great complicity, as not to do it”. For now, it has been possible to move forward with the project for the first burials in a neighborhood of Torre Baró that, after many years of struggle, is beginning to see the light of day.