28/05/2026
Until 1992, Barcelona had almost no beach. That sounds impossible for a city on the Mediterranean, but it's true.
For most of the 20th century, the Barceloneta waterfront was a working industrial zone: factories, warehouses, cargo docks, and a railway line that physically separated the city from the sea. Ordinary residents had no access to the water. There was simply nowhere to go.
When Barcelona won the right to host the 1992 Summer Olympics, the city used the opportunity to tear all of it down. The most striking result was the creation of roughly two miles of new beachfront, using sand imported from Egypt. The Passeig Marítim promenade was built from scratch. The Olympic Port opened. And Barceloneta, a neighborhood of fishermen that had existed since the 18th century, was reconnected to the sea for the first time in living memory.
The sail-shaped building you see today is the W Hotel, known locally as Hotel Vela. Designed by architect Ricardo Bofill, it stands on 7 hectares of land reclaimed from the sea during the construction of the new harbor entrance, and opened in 2009. Residents of Barceloneta protested that its height "stole the horizon" from the neighborhood.
In 1973, none of this existed. The beach, the promenade, the hotel. All of it was built in a single generation.
