THE STREET OF SOULS. A MYSTERY IN SANTS, BARCELONA

Souls Street in Sants, Barcelona

The Grandma is in Sants, a suburb of Barcelona. She's visiting a special street with an incredible story that wants to share with you: Souls Street.

The Romans founded the Colony Iulia Augusta Faventia Barcino between 15 and 13 BC and planned all the city inside and outside. They wanted to know which lands they were going to control and keep but to do it they needed a large net of roads to allow them the total control of the city. They profited some roads which were Iberian probably. 

One of this roads connected the little colony with the Via Augusta. In the western part, crossing the Raval in Avinguda Mistral direction, this road arrived to Hostafrancs and Sants and was named Camí Ral during the Middle Age.

During 1344, a big cross was built in this road and some years later, the cross was covered naming the real suburb Creu Coberta. The road continued crossing a place named the Inforcats a name with a Latin origin, inforcatos, that means crossroads, and obviously, this name demonstrates the different directions that you could take: Martorell, Sant Boi and Llobregat Delta.

More information: Historia de Barcelona

If you continued across Creu Coberta and passed near the current church of Santa Maria de Sants, the road arrived to one of the most mysterious streets nowadays in Barcelona: el Carreró de les ànimes (the street of souls).

The Grandma in Souls Street

This street took this name because there was a little cemetery of animals in the past. It seems that appeared soft lights that floated on the air. This is a real phenomenon with some scientific theories but there's still a little controversy. Some theories say that these fires appear thanks to the rot of the organic materies that produces the oxidation of the phosphine and the methane gas, other say that the real cause of those lights is a phenomenon caused by the natural phosphorescence of the calcium salts of the bones.

The popular voices created the legend of these fires saying that they were the souls of the deads that appear to the mortals.

Some years later, in the 20th century, on the wall of a private house in 260, Sants Street, there was a tile that announced the presence of these souls from the purgatory which were consumed by the seven capital vices.

Nowadays, the street of the souls keeps its magical structure and it's one of the most lovely and appreciate places for the neighbours who live sadly how the new constructions are changing the suburb and how the City Hall is not interested in the idea of keeping and promoting the history of the suburb, a history that is an homage to the past generations and a great proud for the neighbourhood.

SEPTEMBER 25, 1962: THE BIG TRAGEDY UNDER THE MUD

It was a normal day until the sky became dark and a terrible storm changed our lives forever. We mustn't forget that. - Joseph de Ca'th Lon.
 

Terrassa - September, 26th 1962

September, 25 1962

I was a child. We were visiting my grandparents in Terrassa. 

I remember Terrassa like an industrial city plenty of chimneys and factories. The sky was always grey; the workers wore grey clothes; the buildings were grey; life was grey in an important city that was living under a military dictatorship. 

It wasn't easy to visit my family but thanks to our Swiss nationality, nobody could forbid us to do it. My grandparents lived in the centre of the city, near the City Hall Square. Terrassa was one of the most important industrial cities of the state and lots of people lived in the city, the most part of them near the streams in poor huts made of wood and mud.

The previous day, we had visited Barcelona, the capital. Barcelona celebrated its big party and my grandparents thought that it could be interesting for me to enjoy it. Barcelona was a big city, bigger than Terrassa, the biggest city but the feeling was the same: grey people living grey lives and suffering an endless dictatorship.

I didn't understand why my grandparents didn't want to live with us in Geneva where life was plenty of colours and freedom but they had their lives in this city.

It was a typical day of autumn and we went to sleep after having dinner. Suddenly, a light across the window was the first signal. It started to rain. At the beginning, it seemed a normal storm but it wasn't. Hundreds of litres falling over the city and the disasters were tremendous.

More than one thousand people died because of the overflowing. The most important river in the area the Besòs and lots of streams overflowed.

Terrassa, Sabadell, Rubí, Sant Quirze del Vallès, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Ripollet, Mollet del Vallès, Castellar del Vallès, Montcada... 

Terrassa - September, 26th 1962

These cities were desolated by the force of the flood; thousands of people died and thousands and thousands of people lost their homes.

Pablo Picasso, Joan Miró, Salvador Dalí, Antoni Tàpies, Georges Braque, Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger, Antoni Clavé, Modest Cuixart, Antoni Cumella and Joan-Josep Tharrats donated their works to an auction. They offered 204 works.

The political situation in 1962 and a nonexistent urban planning were the responsible of that disaster. Nobody paid enough attention about this catastrophe in the high spheres because nine years later, in September 20, 1971, it happened the same, this time with the Llobregat river and with the population of El Baix Llobregat, especially in the cities of Martorell, Sant Boi and Cornellà de Llobregat.

Almost a thousand people died, in a tragedy that someone could have avoided. Nobody did nothing and the tragedy repeated again.

In memoriam.

More information: Flood in the Vallès, 1962

History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. 

Karl Marx