Plànol parcel•lari, 1929. Servei del Plànol de la Ciutat. Ajuntament de Barcelona
Elaborat per Mercè Tatjer a partir de: Pons i Freixa, Francisco; Martino, José María. «Los Aduares de Barcelona, estudio de su constitución, extensión y características», ponència de 1922
SHANTYOPOLIS
Growth of shantyism and incapacity to curb it
Dictatorship of Primo de Rivera, 2nd Spanish Republic and Spanish Civil War
The City Council’s position was characterised by its incapacity to solve the
shantyism phenomenon or to achieve results on this issue. In 1923, in the
weekly publication Justícia Social, Emili Mira coined the term barracòpolis
(shantyopolis):
“Toilets and even water itself are all but unknown in Shantyopolis. Many people
suffering from illnesses live together with the other members of their families,
often sharing the same mattress. Places insufficient for a single person sometimes
shelter seven, eight or even a dozen people. The people here are dressed in rags
and often go nearly naked. Their faces are pale and emaciated”.
Within the frame of the second Cheap Houses Act (1921) the City Council created
the Municipal Institution of Housing of Barcelona, which commissioned the
firm Fomento de la Vivienda Popular S.A. to build four groups of cheap houses
intended to reaccommodate part of the shanty-dwellers from the grounds of the
Universal Exhibition of 1929. The measures proposed during the Republic, such
as the Bloc House, the sanitation of the Old Town and of the shantytowns, and the
municipalisation of urban property in 1937, hardly even came into effect owing to
the outbreak of the Civil War
