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Sudden, rain-heavy storms -featuring lightning and intense localized downpours- are common in the Mediterranean region during late August and September. They didn't appear this summer, but they have arrived this autumn, bringing a difficult weekend for many Catalan towns -especially those that expanded by burying streams and torrents, building over wetlands, or encroaching on rivers that had been artificially canalized.
Nature is, after all, unpredictable and uncontrollable; water always finds its way back to its natural paths, even if those paths have been altered -with varying degrees of ingenuity- by human hands.
After a night of record-breaking rainfall in the city -particularly in the Sants and Les Corts districts- The Grandma wants to talk about Barcelona and how it grew over dozens of river basins. While these are no longer visible as they once were, local place names remind us that they have always been here and remain so today: Riera Blanca, Riera Escuder, Riera d'Horta, Riera de Vallcarca, Riera de Cassoles, Torrent de l'Olla, Torrent de les Flors...
Barcelona is usually imagined as a Mediterranean city of stone, streets and avenues, lying between the mountains and the sea. Yet beneath this familiar urban landscape lies another Barcelona: a city shaped by water.
The map of its old streams and watercourses reveals a geography that has almost disappeared from sight but has never entirely ceased to exist.
Barcelona grew on a plain enclosed by four great geographical boundaries: the Mediterranean Sea, the Collserola range, the River Llobregat to the southwest and the River Besòs to the northeast. Between those two rivers, however, water followed countless smaller paths.
For centuries, rain falling on Collserola descended towards the sea through a dense network of streams, torrents and seasonal watercourses. Some were relatively important, such as the Riera d'Horta or the Riera Blanca; others were much smaller. Together, they carved shallow depressions into the Barcelona plain and carried sediments from the mountains towards the coast. They also helped create the land on which the city would eventually grow.
Long before Barcelona became an enormous urban landscape, water was one of the reasons why humans settled here. The prehistoric plain contained streams, wetlands and lagoons, while fresh water could be found relatively close to the Mediterranean. Later inhabitants exploited springs, wells and underground water, gradually transforming the natural hydrological system into an increasingly human landscape.
Then the city expanded. Streams were diverted, channelled, covered or incorporated into the urban drainage system. Roads and buildings occupied their former courses. The visible geography of water slowly disappeared beneath another geography made of streets. But it left traces. Some survive in place names. Others can still be recognised in the shape and slope of certain streets. And sometimes, during episodes of exceptionally heavy Mediterranean rain, water seems to remember paths that the modern city has forgotten. That is perhaps what makes maps of Barcelona's ancient streams so fascinating. They show us that the apparently orderly grid of the modern city was superimposed upon a much older landscape.
Before streets, there were streams. Before neighbourhoods, there were valleys, wetlands and torrents. Before the city organised the water, the water had already organised the land.
Barcelona has always lived with a geographical contradiction. It is squeezed between mountain and sea, yet protected and nourished by two rivers. Collserola collects the rain; gravity sends it towards the Mediterranean; and the urban plain lies directly in its path. For centuries, people adapted to that geography. Later, engineering attempted to control it. Yet geography never completely disappears.
The extraordinary rainfall that occasionally falls over Barcelona reminds us that a modern city is not separate from the landscape on which it was built. Asphalt can cover a stream, buildings can hide a valley and sewers can channel the rain underground, but the logic of the terrain remains. Perhaps that is the most beautiful lesson contained in this old hydrological map.
Barcelona is not simply a city between the Llobregat and the Besòs. It is a city born from the sea, the mountains, the rivers -and hundreds of forgotten paths of water running between them. A hidden blue Barcelona still exists beneath our feet.
This hidden geography is particularly meaningful to The Grandma because she lives between two names that preserve the memory of Barcelona's ancient waters: Riera Blanca and Riera Escuder.
But these were not simply two neighbouring streams. They belonged to the same hydrological landscape. The Torrent d'Escuder fed the Riera Blanca, which collected water descending from the slopes of Collserola before continuing across the plain and eventually reaching the Mediterranean west of Montjuïc.
Today, water has been replaced by streets, buildings and an administrative boundary. Riera Blanca (next to the Camp Nou) still separates Barcelona from L'Hospitalet, while Riera Escuder survives in the urban fabric of Sants. Yet the old landscape has not completely disappeared. It remains in street names, irregular plots, unexpected slopes and the shape of the neighbourhood itself.
The streams may have disappeared from sight, but they have survived in the language -and even in the geometry- of the city.
Perhaps Barcelona has not forgotten its water after all.
More information: Meet Barcelona
prenc la brida barroera,
i als torrents i a la ribera
vaig dient: pas al raier!
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