Avinguda Diagonal
Grand diagonal boulevard slicing across a rigid nineteenth-century city grid, renamed five times through war, dictatorship and democracy.
Location
About this audio guide
On Avinguda Diagonal in Barcelona, the street sign is barely a name at all, and this guide asks why such a plain word became something regimes kept fighting over. You'll meet the engineer Ildefons Cerdà, who drew a perfect grid and then cut one avenue across it at an angle, and the royal decree of 1859 that let him build it. Aristocrats in carriages and a string of rulers turn up along the way. Best heard standing at a corner where the side streets meet the avenue at sharp angles.
This audio guide was created using AI.
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