Viejos problemas y nuevos vecinos. Consecuencias de una gran reforma urbana en el barrio del Raval, Barcelona

The urban renewal of El Raval in Barcelona, a neighbourhood previously known as the 5th District and associated to the mystified squalor and sordidness of the Barrio Chino (one of the most notorious vice districts in Europe), is actually in its last phase, one that began in 1988 closely following the election of Barcelona as the seat of the 1992 Olympic games. Having got off the ground in the new millennium, a new urban intervention was implemented, in particular on the area under study, known as the Illa Robador (block of housing of Robador). Until very recently, the street of Robador has been — and probably still is — the new epicentre and perhaps the last bastion of the Barrio Chino. Myth and urban renewal come together in the ethnography I here present. I have wanted to take minutes of the encounters and collisions among “old-time residents” who have survived all types of mystifications and stigmatisations and the “new residents” attracted by the possibility of living in a central place, in the new cultural district of Barcelona. I interpret these conflicts in the light of what some authors refer to as a new urban colonialism.