José Luis Oyón

Modernization and urban beautification: The 1888 Barcelona world's fair*

The study of an urban planning event such as the Worlds Fair held in Barcelona in 1888 is a good opportunity to raise some issues of an historical and planning nature. One of them is the Exhibitions impact on the urban structure of Barcelona. The fact that this event coincided with some urban planning changes of relative importance — and with the conversion of Barcelona into a ‘modern’ city — has sometimes been interpreted as proof of this type of events structuring capacity. To understand the nature and the urban dimension of the Exhibition, it is essential to place it within the urban sequence, to avoid showing an overly simplified urban context. Thus, this articles point of departure is a fairly extensive consideration of the historical period and an examination of the changes in the urban spatial structure in order to understand the relationship between the affected sector and the entire city. The Exhibition can be seen as a symptom rather than a cause of the aforementioned transformations. Also a...

Barcelona food retailing and public markets, 1876–1936

This article is a contribution to comparative research between specific urban markets trajectories in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and it aims to juxtapose southern European food market experiences, particularly the Barcelona case, with west European ones. Like other big cities in southern and central Europe, Barcelona consolidated a sturdy polycentric system of district markets between 1876 and 1936, just when such markets were beginning to decline in ‘first comers’ cities of Britain and France. In the inter-war period, the market halls of southern European cities played a prominent role in the everyday food trade and as functional and socializing centres in neighbourhoods. They were poles of dense residential and kinship relations for stall vendors, especially women vendors, and foci of a large part of the food retailing business in many neighbourhoods. Barcelonas particular historical circumstances made the public covered market system a fundamental element of neighbourhood commerce and a long-term urban asset.

Meat consumption and nutrition transition in Barcelona, 1709–1935

Meat consumption increase since the nineteenth century is a good indicator of the key stage of the so-called nutrition transition. This article is based on primary sources, predominantly municipal slaughterhouse bookkeeping data, and examines the changing patterns of supply, distribution and consumption of different types of meat, in order to avoid the risk of an over-simplified historical view. Long-term analysis shows that between 1740 and 1840, a period of economic and demographic growth, meat consumption levels dropped dramatically. After that time, the liberalization of agriculture and the new rail network boosted the supply of meat. Other sources and spatial analysis help us examine the ways that the city was supplied with meat, the meat retail distribution within it and the changing diet of the different urban social strata.