Barcelona Metropolis

The possible arrival of the Hermitage Museum to the port of Barcelona is met with scepticism and discord in the Barceloneta neighbourhood. While some believe it will mark an opportunity to transform the economy, others fear it is a trick that will exacerbate the overtourism of an already crowded neighbourhood. The project has undergone modifications since the initial agreements in 2012, but the underlying issue remains. Beyond the endless promises of wealth and employment, what impact will it bear on the neighbourhood and on the city?

When the promenade Passeig de Joan de Borbó breaks to the right, the Barceloneta neighbourhood splits in two. The two swimming clubs (Atlètic Barceloneta and Natació Barcelona) occupy the central stretch of a strip of land along which the Sant Sebastià beach extends westward and a languishing Passeig de Joan de Borbó boulevard extends to the east. At the end of this artificial urban peninsula is a roundabout; beyond lies the gigantic Desigual warehouse; next to it is the sail-like structure of the W hotel; and in the background, as the city’s final frontier from the sea, the huge esplanade (called Plaça de la Rosa dels Vents) where the Hermitage Museum branch is to be built.

After six years of the project to-ing and fro-ing, in April 2018, the Barcelona City Council Plenary Meeting finally approved the reform of the Nova Bocana area in Port Vell. In this document the central space of the inlet was redesignated for cultural use, thus allowing Barcelona Port Authority (APB), in possession of the deed to the land, to open the call for proposals. More than a year later, in June 2019, the BOE [Spanish Official State Gazette] published the application for the awarding of the plot corresponding to the central building of the inlet’s approved renovation plan (1a/31.3.b) to the company Museo Hermitage Barcelona, SL. Its CEO, Ujo Pallarés, is the only visible face of the project after the death, in March 2018, of the other promoter, in charge of the museum proposal, Jorge Wagensberg, a prestigious figure who designed and directed Barcelona’s CosmoCaixa museum.

In late June the project currently on the table was made public, designed by the architect Toyo Ito, winner of the 2013 Pritzker Architecture Prize, and builder of the Hospitalet Fair building. A much more elaborate project than the version presented earlier in 2016, with wavy, very marine-like forms. During the presentation, the developers focused on underlining the importance of Ito’s central building, affirming that it would become a city icon. In addition, they stressed that the museum would have its own collection, that it would be endowed with works purchased, donated or conceived within the very spaces of artistic creation contemplated by the project. In an interview granted to the newspaper La Razón in 2018, the developer Ujo Pallarés claimed that the benefits for the neighbourhood would be enormous. He denied that the Hermitage sought a high-profile audience and assured that the museum would be open to the neighbourhood: “We are the best neighbours they could have.”

The city hall agreed that the decision hinges on the departments of Ecology and Urban Planning, Culture, and Economy and Budgeting. And it will be taken following the appraisal of four reports that have already been commissioned: one on mobility, to be carried out by Ole Thorson; another on the urban planning impact, to be executed by the architect Maria Rubert de Ventós; a third on economic viability, to be prepared by the economist Xavier Cubeles, and, finally, a fourth report on cultural value to be compiled by Josep Ramoneda.

The investment required to bring the Hermitage Museum to Barcelona would be private. Eighty per cent of the shares of the concessionary company, Museo Hermitage Barcelona, SL, are controlled by the Swiss-Luxembourgish investment fund Varia Europe. The remaining 20% belongs to Cultural Development Barcelona, owned by Ujo Pallarés, who signed the 50-year agreement with the Russian museum in 2012.

The members of the Plataforma per un Port Ciutadà fear that the museum will ultimately need some level of public investment to guarantee its viability. “Museums do not survive alone”, Daniel Pardo explains. “Unless they are like the Barça one. And as has occurred with other branches of the Hermitage Museum around the world, there are only two ways: secure public funding or close down.” Municipal sources warn that the project presented must be accompanied by a rigorous feasibility study. The City Council is not willing to eventually rescue a failed initiative, as has happened elsewhere in Europe.

According to the project details published last June, 16,493 square metres are to be built, of which 3,782 metres (less than 23%) would be designated exhibition space. The remaining space would be assigned to offices, a cloakroom, multipurpose rooms, an auditorium, three coffee shops, an art library, a VIP room and two terraces; as well as, needless to say, a museum gift shop. The developers are confident that thanks to these services and the cost of admission, which Ujo Pallarés said in February 2018 will be “less expensive than that of the most expensive museum in Barcelona”, the Hermitage will be viable.

Following its communication with the city hall, the Plataforma per un Port Ciutadà has confirmed that municipal political groups are divided between those who see the Hermitage as an opportunity to transform the type of tourism in the neighbourhood and those who consider that the Barceloneta cannot fit anything else, that it is time to cut back. They explain that, in a meeting in early October with the Councillor for the Ciutat Vella district, Jordi Rabassa, assured them that “a priori, the Hermitage Museum project in Barceloneta is not suitable for the neighbourhood or for the district”. However, the platform does not keep in touch with the developers.

Residents’ associations agree that no administration has really invested in preventing tourist monoculture in the neighbourhood, but they differ in the proposed solutions to tackle the problem of touristification. Pardo claims that the solution involves curbing tourism: “If we are not inclined to reduce the number of flights and cruise ships packed with tourists arriving in Barcelona, despite how many weather-related emergencies we declare, it will not help”, he asserts. Martínez is in favour of “transforming” the tourism model: he explains that the neighbourhood unremittingly opens restaurant businesses whose licences are gradually extended until they become nightclubs, exacerbating overtourism and attracting a type of tourism associated with drunkenness and partying. Against this backdrop, Martínez is clear: “Faced with the risk of the emergence of other types of proposals more focused on leisure and entertainment for tourists in a space owned by the independent port, we opt for the museum. After all, you can’t set up a nightclub in a museum”. Hermitage and/or barbarism, that seems to be the dilemma.