IT IS mid-March in Barcelona and warmth has infused the air of a
near-forgotten boulevard far from the tourist trail in Poble Nou, elevating
the ambience to one of somnolent ease. Artists amble in from the nearby
studios and settle down for a long lunch under the shade of the chinaberry
trees.
Unmistakably, this is the Mediterranean-style living that millions of Northern
Europeans dream of and come to grasp only fleetingly on weekend trips or
summer holidays abroad. Nor has such a lifestyle been lost on the locals.
“You don’t deserve to live in Catalonia” is the admonishment to every
naughty child.
Perhaps only the very deserving, or perhaps plain lucky, are able to call
sunny, cultured Catalonia home. Some had to make their own luck, such as the
Liverpool-born graphic designer and illustrator Patrick Thomas. He shares a
sprawling studio with Angela Broggi – a fellow interior designer with whom
he forms the award-winning La Vista Design partnership (lavistadesign.com) –
in Poble Nou, Barcelona’s equivalent of Hoxton and similarly stuffed with
old factories and labourers’ homes. “It was once known as the Manchester of
Catalonia and has a lot of very cool industrial architecture . . . what’s
left of it,” he says.
When Thomas bought the property seven years ago it was one of the affordable
options in Barcelona. Refurbished factories still make a good bet, but
Spaniards are slowly beginning to see the attraction of such conversions and
the prices are rising. British visitors have always been impressed by the
desirability of Thomas’s studio and home, a former ceramics factory in a
once solid working-class area. It is a district that now shares the same
bohemian aspirations as East London’s Shoreditch but which so far lacks the
grime, damp or cold.
“It’s obviously a great place to live,” says Thomas, enjoying a prelunch
pastis on his verdant studio terrace. “The only real downside are the wages.
It’s not so bad when you live here, as everything’s cheaper than the UK; the
real problem is when you leave Spain for a visit.” Thomas bought his 2,690
sq ft (250 sq m) loft before “prices went crazy”.
Still, the incentives of a sun-blessed cultural scene, good food and stunning
architecture are a strong lure for any professional or investors hoping to
make a killing later, and/or rent out homes in trendy Barcelona. And while
factory conversions might be old hat to the Brits, for the Spanish this is a
new and promising trend. Where we northerners see character, the Spaniards
generally see irredeemably defunct. So until now the inspirational, upwardly
mobile Catalonians overlooked the potential of its industrial buildings as
homes. But with Spain running out of places in which to build, especially in
Barcelona, even the despised factories are being explored as sites for
possible development.
“Renovation work,” points out Edouard Fernández, director-general of the
property developer Hines Spain, “starts making sense when land prices are
high and are a significant part of cost, which they are now.” The price of
land now accounts for 60-70 per cent of total cost in Spain’s cities, while
built-up land in Spain has increased by 25 per cent in a decade, and covers
a third of the Mediterranean coast.
The country’s construction industry is now erecting as many new properties as
France, Germany and the UK combined. Not surprisingly, developers, and
cities such as Barcelona, are now turning to unused buildings from the
industrial past to convert into homes and offices.
Barcelona plans to add 5 to 7 per cent more homes to the city by rezoning once
industrial lands such a Poble Nou. However, according to the property
consultant Mark Stucklin, the pace of change in Poble Nou has been slow and
prices, as elsewhere in Barcelona, remain high.
For a more affordable slice of industrial-chic modernista Catalonia, property
shoppers are better advised to look to the countryside. A fistful of other
ambitious factory conversions are now under way outside the city,
particularly along the Llobregat River, now a lovely wooded valley, in some
parts stretching west into central Catalonia, that once resonated with the
clatter of textile mills. Art Deco gems in their own right – some of them
GaudÍ-inspired – the developers are now reclaiming them before nature
ingests their fading glory entirely.
Hines is now busy rekindling the splendour of the purpose-built Colonial Vidal
redevelopment in Puig Reig, an industrial fiefdom complete with a textile
factory that is just an hour from Barcelona and the Costa Brava and 30
minutes from Catalonia’s ski slopes. The developer is gambling €120 million
(£82,250,000) to turn the tattered cottages and red-brick shells into
apartments for the postindustrial generation. Renovations will be complete
by 2011, when loft homes will replace spinning jennies and the sandstone
workers’ terraces will be reappointed as pieds-à-terre. Prices will average
€3,750 a square metre, so a 100 sq m apartment should cost €375,000. This
compares well with the Barcelona average of €4,603 a square metre, but is a
great deal more than the Catalan average of €2,317.
Redevelopment projects such as Vidal would have seemed insane in Spain until
recently.
“There just wasn’t any demand,” says Sonia Solo, a spokeswoman for Hines. “If
you told anyone 20 years ago that a disused factory and abandoned villages
could become hot property, they would have thought you quite mad.”
This was exactly the same pronouncement made on Catalonia’s first
trail-blazing factory developer and architect, Ricardo Bofill. Back as far
as the 1970s Bofill was way ahead of the field when he built a home and
studios out of possibly the most unpromising subject in the history of
conversions – a disused cement factory.
In 1973 Bofill found the abandoned site, an industrial complex from the turn
of the century that consisted of more than 30 silos, subterranean galleries
and huge machine rooms, and transformed it into his stunning headquarters –
the Taller de Arquitectura.
Now the complex stands in the middle of gardens with eucalyptus, palms, olive
trees and cypresses – an icon of rebirth and testament to what imaginative
architects can do. Even the once begrudging Catalonians are now taking note.
Interested parties should stake their claim to Catalonia’s industrial gems
before they get snapped up by shrewd foreigners, as Barcelona itself was,
and the canny Catalonians ratchet up the prices for their overseas friends
as well as the suddenly interested Spanish. www.hines.com
For more facts, figures and information on the Spanish property market, go to
timesonline.co.uk/spanishproperty
FACTFILE
House prices in Barcelona increased over the ten years to 2005 by almost 215
per cent, according to government figures. The market is now slowing: the
increase in the first quarter of 2007 was 0.5 per cent, the lowest for a
decade, according to idealista.com.
Barcelona has 2½ miles of beaches and easy access to the Costa Brava and the
Costa Dorada.
