La transformación de la ciudad de Barcelona gracias a las aportaciones de los mecenas del momento: la sociedad burguesa, un estamento con conciencia de cambio que quiere dar una identidad a la ciudad y proyectarla a nivel europeo, a imagen y semejanza de París. Un momento de metamorfosis urbanística, arquitectónica y artística que impulsará un proceso irreversible de metropolización, compartido con otras muchas ciudades europeas.

The four decades between the two Universal Exhibitions of 1888 and 1929 were formative in the creation of modern Barcelona. Architecture and art blossomed in the work of Antoni Gaudi and many others. At the same time, social unrest tore the city apart. Topics such as art nouveau and anarchism have attracted the attention of numerous historians. Yet the crucial role of science, technology and medicine in the cultural makeup of the city has been largely ignored. The ten articles of this book recover the richness and complexity of the scientific culture of end of the century Barcelona. The authors explore a broad range of topics: zoological gardens, natural history museums, amusement parks, new medical specialities, the scientific practices of anarchists and spiritists, the medical geography of the urban underworld, early mass media, domestic electricity and astronomical observatories. They pay attention to the agenda of the bourgeois elites but also to hitherto neglected actors: users of electric technologies and radio amateurs, patients in clinics and dispensaries, collectors and visitors of museums, working class audiences of public talks and female mediums. Science, technology and medicine served to exert social control but also to voice social critique. Barcelona: An urban history of science and modernity (1888-1929) shows that the city around 1900 was both a creator and facilitator of knowledge but also a space substantially transformed by the appropriation of this knowledge by its unruly citizens.

This book investigates urban conflict, popular protest and social control in Barcelona during the period 1898-1937. Focusing upon the sources of anarchist power in the city and the role of the organised anarchist movement during the Second Republic the volume concludes with an analysis of the decline of the power of the anarchist movement during the civil war in its identification of the local conditions that made Barcelona into the capital of European anarchism.

This unique book, written by local experts in the city, deals with the transformation of Barcelona during the last twenty years. Barcelona has been held up as a model of urban planning and economic regeneration amongst built environment professionals. The redesign of square parks and streets throughout the city in the 1980s first attracted attention and praise and then the 1992 Olympics hosted in the city raised international awareness. The city received many awards and accolades including a Gold Medal from the RIBA. The selection of writings is well illustrated throughout with maps, drawings and photographs and will be of interest to architects, planners and urban designers as well as those interested in the social and economic impacts of regeneration.