Barceloneta's baths

We are on the beach in San Sebastian, one of the many beaches of the city, crowded by tourists and by the inhabitants of the city. At the end of this beach is the W Hotel, known as the Hotel Vela due to its shape that resembles the sail of a boat. It is a new building built in 2009 and designed by the Spanish architect Ricardo Bofill. In a beginning, it was expected that both the building 170 meters high, however, the project was not approved because this work would change the skyline of the city of Barcelona, ​which is led by the Holy Family. Thus, the final height is 99 meters. This hotel has quickly become an icon of the skyline of Barcelona's coast, giving the image of modern, cosmopolitan and glamorous voluntarily and breaking the antithesis of local guard behind a poor neighborhood loaded history and tradition.

St. Sebastian baths (1928)

Thus, returning to the beach itself, even in the summer becomes full of people who enjoy the sun, sand and salt water. However, in the early twentieth century, in this space we could found called Baths and the Casino in San Sebastian. The first bathhouses are dated from 1840 through the construction of the breakwater that isolates the beach port. Then, gradually they started to build: Oriental baths, The Shipyard and the Barcelona Swimming Club (1907).

During the first decades of the implementation of the liberal state, the Barceloneta become a place for a Catalan middle class which started to develop the practice of sea bathing and frequenting the beach. From this period we have identified about a dozen new bathroom facilities, not only for Barcelona and its surroundings, but also the summer of the first groups in the Maresme region, such as Caldetes.

In Barceloneta, after the disappearence of the bathrooms of the House of Charity because of construction on its solar factory La Maquinista Terrestre i Marítima, in 1856, the baths of the Shipyard were constructed at the end what was the National road (now Paseo Juan de Borbon).

Advertisment (1920)

These first establishments responded to a type of building that later had a long continuity until approximately the early 1920’s. Usually rectangular buildings which, though simple, were neoclassical features. Were usually buildings with a central body that served as the lobby and reception. They had two wings, one for men and one for women, with their suite rooms and often had a portico (stone or wood, depending on the situation) with open sea views. Some might have two floors and a pool, central garden, rest areas, restaurants, and other wardrobe. First built in neoclassical style, but later innovated a neo-Arabic, Moorish and neo-modernist.

Soon they began to incorporate facilities for waves. The demands to open the bathing huts dismantled on the beach of Barceloneta, were becoming more numerous, so the Municipality of 1856 had to regulate the practice but they forced separation of sexes, bathing suit, ensure the safety of swimmers, etc.

In Barcelona they have found a dozen new projects of spas, of which half were actually built. In addition to these permanent establishments they have also found references to requests for mobile stalls that are assembled and disassembled every summer.

Barceloneta's beach nowadays

However, in Barcelona, as in other parts of the Catalan coast, there was a lack of investment to maintain these traditional premises which slowly began to become obsolete and threatened by coastal speculated projects, especially in the era of the '60s boom linked to coastal tourism. 

For this reason, most of these local spas began to close in the late '60s and '70s, and very few survived until the early '80s.

Nowadays it is very different, at the beaches there are no longer places were people can change, so everyone brings theirs swimming suits etc. from home. Also there is no separation between men and women and there are even nudist beaches.