For the next of our ebookers ‘My Barcelona‘ series on street art and graffiti in Barcelona and following on from our ‘Top street artists to see in Barcelona‘ post we focus this time on the eastern suburb of Poblenou. In the main a residential area, this is a commuter area for people heading into the city. It’s also an industrial suburb which at one point would have been thriving with activity.
Now a lot of the old factories have closed and in parts of the district the shells of these old buildings can still be seen with many clearly waiting for re-development. Although they do hark back to a different age in Barcelona’s history, there is a very colonial feel to some of these grand old buildings.
In terms of street art and graffiti, Poblenou is a popular spot on account of its propensity of legal walls. The city of Barcelona has a fairly no nonsense approach to urban art and when it finds something in a non-designated area it is soon removed. As such artists need to paint in the spots where they know their art is welcomed.
The area is fairly large though and walking between all the different spots can be a bit of a trek unless you designate the best part of a day or hire a bike. So this post is intended to make all that wandering a bit easier by focusing on some of the best spots which happen to be centred around the street known as ‘Carrer de la Selva de Mar’.
Street art and graffiti areas of Poblenou
Carrer de la Selva de Mar and Rambla de Guipuscoa
First up is this beauty from Jorge Rodriquez Gerada on side of the Biblioteca Sant Marti de Provencals. It’s just on the junction at the northern tip of carrer de la selva de Mar with the main route of Ramba de Guipuscoa. There’s not much else in this area but it has the benefits of being right at the very beginning of the road we need to head down.
Carrer de la Selva de Mar and Carrer del Peru
Further down the road and crossing the ‘Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes’ is a legal painting area on the corner of carrer de la Selva de Mar and Carrer del Peru. Here the art changes all the time and the quality is high, a magnet for visiting artists.
Indeed whilst there we met up with a number of artists who were painting sections of the walls. All had moved to the area recently, attracted by the city’s creative art scene and of course found themselves drawn to this part of town and here they are alongside their work in the pictures below.
La Escocesa
A little further down on the junction between Carrer de la Selva de Mar and Carrer de Pere IV we enter another arty area and the architecture changes to something altogether more colonial looking. La Escocesa is a short walk towards the direction of the city on Carrer de Pere IV and is a self managed artist space with little artworks dotted around the place. Head up the street for a few hundred metres and you can enter the scrubland left following the long ago demolition of one of the many factory buildings that would be been housed on the site. There you can see more art along the sides of some of the derelict walls.
Carrer de la Selva de Mar and Carre de Cristobal de Moura
Further down still in an area of scrubland bound to the north and east by the roads of Selva de Mar and Cristobal de Moura another couple of walls stand as the only reminder of the factory that would have stood here. Those walls are filled with mural and graffiti and certainly when I visited was the site of some really great pieces of work.
Carrer de Venecuela and Carrer l’Agricultura
Wander now a bit further to the east along the Carrer do Venecuela until you reach the junction with Carrer l’Argricultura and here is a another whole series of legal walls. They encircle a whole block of walled off scrubland which presumably is another former industrial building, demolished with the space reclaimed to the wild. The walls surround the area and take in sections of the Carrer de Christobal de Moura and Carrer de Josep Pla.
Carrer d’Espronceda
Over to the other side now and towards the city. From the previous location you would need to head back towards the Carrer de la Selva de Mar. A few blocks away to the north end of the Parc del Centre de Poblenou is the Carrer d’Espronceda. Another area with plenty of street art which covers the walls of the street and which also leads into a courtyard which also has plenty of art to be seen. At the time of visiting an impressive roman column by Escif was the centrepiece but there is plenty of other works to see.
The street art and graffiti of Poblenou in Barcelona was visited on 23 May 2017. The ‘My Barcelona‘ series is part of a number of posts in conjunction with ebookers with whom we visited the city over the period of 21-25 May 2017.
For more posts in this series check out:
‘Top street artists you should know about in Barcelona‘,
Barcelona the creative city with a graffiti soul and a street art heart,
Hi Stuart
Looks like you’ve had a great time and thanks for the useful hints about walls in Poblenou… a couple there I’ve not seen before. Could I just point out that the huge colourful wall is not just by El Xupet Negre – it’s a collab with Chanoir (really pleased to see it’s still there).
All the best, Paul
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Thanks Paul much appreciated have updated the post 🙂