Locals Discuss Barcelona’s Growth from a 90’s Ghetto Into the World’s Best Skateboarding City | The rise, fall, + maturation of skate paradise
Still to this day if you ask someone what the best all-round street skateboarding city in the world is they will probably say Barcelona. Sure maybe China has more spots, but Barcy has it all. The culture, the weather, MACBA, and much more.
Barcelona has had its ups and downs since 1992, when the Olympics elevated the MACBA area out of the ‘ghetto.’ It got blown out once America overdosed on it. And then it evened out and everything seems right in the world. Red Bull infiltrated the local skate scene to get the full story in the video, ‘Greetings From Barcelona.’ Check it.
Sample:
Anyone who can Ollie on flat could tell you that Barcelona has the highest concentration of paradise skate spots anywhere in the world.
But it wasn’t always this way. Most skaters of a certain age will tell you that prior to 1992, the city and in particular the Raval district in which the centrepiece MACBA museum lies, could charitably described as ‘vibrant’, which is a byword for sketchy as all hell.
Then the Olympics came to town in 1992 and those in charge used the spectacle to kickstart a civic regeneration project that transformed Barcelona into one of the world’s most architecturally fascinating cities.
That, in turn, started a skateboarding revolution. As FTC skateshop owner Julio Arnau points out in our Greetings from Barcelona video above, the city quickly became a bohemian draw for skaters, in what many consider to be the city’s golden period of skateboarding creativity and exploration.
A lot of cities that undergo such a transformation go on to experience a window of perhaps five years in which they become inexorably hip. After that the combination of affordable living and agreeable lifestyle attracts international youth tribes, and skateboarding in Barcelona early in the new millenium was no different.
The influential American skateboard business soon realised Barcelona offered endless architecture and scope for producing footage without encountering a police presence on every corner and pretty much de-camped there en masse. Before long, the city began to look like a film set for a dozen different skateboard productions at any one time.
Inevitably, this brought every mind-blown devotee toward the city in their wake, keen to emulate their heroes. Then it got too crazy. Too much disrespectful behaviour put skating on the city’s radar and the police became heavy-handed.
Click over to RED BULL for the feature locals video: ‘Greetings From Barcelona’
Follow BOARD RAP on Insta for more updates.
