Barcelona pedestrian Sundays are a fun new weekend event organised by the Ajuntament de Barcelona (council). Staring at the end of the month, on March the 29th, the event is to run on six consecutive Sundays up until April the 26th; the side lanes on stretches of Diagonal and Passeig de Gràcia will be closed off to traffic and dedicated to pedestrians only. The central lanes on both streets will function normally with traffic, and there will be no changes to public transport routes.
Instead of cars and buses, the streets will be filled with workshops, fun children’s activities, book stands, sporting activities including a space to play futtoc, a brand new sport invented in Barcelona combining table tennis and football! There will be spaces dedicated to circus skills, traditional Catalan giants, volleyball and live music. Last but not, visitors will be offered guided tours of some of the architectural highlights of the area, which is full of art nouveau masterpieces. The latter event is perhaps special of interest to visitors to the city.
The activities are not purely being organised by the Ajuntament for fun. They also are an experiment to, and the gauge how fun and entertainment can fit into the normal life of the city in the absence of traffic, and to see if Barcelona’s residents embrace the idea of traffic calming. If ‘Sundays for Barcelona pedestrians’ is a success then it could become a regular fixture and could and be rolled out to other streets in the city. With it’s wide boulevards and pleasant climate, Barcelona is very well suited to this idea, which has seen success in many other cities globally.
All activities are free and run from 9am-3pm.
