Chillida hung fifty-four tonnes of concrete over a quarry pool, and said the water made half of it

Barcelona put a park in a quarry, hung a fifty-four-tonne block of concrete over the water in it, and then almost nobody went.

The Parc de la Creueta del Coll is in el Coll, the steepest neighbourhood of the Gràcia district, on the site of the old Coll quarry. Its architects were Josep Martorell and David Mackay.

⚠️ Not “MBM”. The municipal source names Martorell and Mackay and does not name Bohigas. Writing the practice’s initials goes further than the source does, and on this site that is the difference between a fact and a habit.

The sculpture, and the sentence

Suspended over the pool is Elogi de l’aigua — In praise of water — by Eduardo Chillida, made with the engineer José Antonio Fernández Ordóñez, and unveiled on 2 May 1987 by the mayor Pasqual Maragall.

It is concrete with red aggregate and iron shot, and it was cast in situ: the formwork was built on the spot, the concrete poured, and the shell then stripped away. That is why it looks like it grew there.

And the line, which is the reason to make the climb:

I make half the sculpture; the other half is made by the water.

The form hangs above a pool. What you see is the concrete and its reflection, and Chillida’s claim is that neither one is the work on its own.

The day it came off

On 1 May 1998 — eleven years and a day after the unveiling —

it detached from the bars that held it, causing a great fright.

The catalogue’s phrasing, not ours. The bars were replaced with cables, and the piece has hung there since.

A fifty-four-tonne suspended concrete sculpture coming loose over a public swimming area is the sort of thing that would close a park for a decade in most cities. Here it is a line in a heritage record.

The city describes it four different ways

We keep finding this and it keeps being useful, so here is the set.

How many cables. The record’s technical block says the block is supported by steel cables, plural and uncounted. Its signed commentary says it is held by two cables. Elsewhere the city has published four. It is an object you can stand under and count, and the municipality has not.

When it was made. The catalogue’s own heading gives 1987. Its signed commentary, on the same page, calls it a concrete work of 1986. Everybody agrees on the unveiling: 2 May 1987.

Neither is scandalous on its own. Together they are a good demonstration of why this journal quotes sources instead of summarising them: confident municipal statements about one sculpture, on one page, that do not line up.

⚠️ And what we could not source at all: the park’s surface area, the year the park itself opened, and the dimensions of the pool. Not published anywhere we could open. Barcelona has the same gap for the height of Montjuïc.

Two more works, while you are there

Tòtem, by Ellsworth Kelly, 1987. Sol i Lluna, by Montserrat Altet, 1986.

An American minimalist, a Basque sculptor and a Catalan artist, all installed in a disused quarry above Gràcia in the two years around the run-up to the Olympics. That was the period when Barcelona put art in every hole it had, and this park is one of the least-visited results.

Where you actually are

El Coll is the neighbourhood named after the hill, which is named after an eleventh-century Romanesque church dedicated to the Mare de Déu del Coll. The Ajuntament describes it as a hunting ground for feudal lords first and a hiding place for bandits later, thinly populated until — its phrase —

the urban fever of the sixties ended up taking over this very steep territory.

So the sequence here is: a mountain sanctuary at a crossroads, then a quarry, then 1960s speculative housing on a slope, then a park in the hole the quarry left, then a Chillida. It has its own festa major, in the first fortnight of June — or the second fortnight of September, depending which line of the city’s page you read.

How to get there, and whether to bother

It is uphill, and that is the filter. El Coll is above the rest of Gràcia, which is already above the rest of Barcelona. Getting to Gràcia is easy; getting up through it is the part people underestimate.

Combine it with Park Güell, which is on the same flank and a fifteen-minute walk. If you have done the paid monumental zone and want somewhere with no queue and a view, this is it.

Go for the hole, not the art. The quarry face is the reason the park has the shape it does, and it is the same story as the gardens on Montjuïc at the other end of the city: Barcelona ate its hills, and then landscaped what was left.

⚠️ We are not telling you whether the pool is open. Bathing arrangements are seasonal and municipal; the city publishes them.

Where this sits on a walk

The Creueta del Coll is at the top of the Gràcia district, well beyond the old town of Gràcia and outside every visitor itinerary. It belongs with the other four neighbourhoods of the district that nobody reaches.

Our Gràcia walk stays in the old town, where the streets are the point. It runs daily, morning and evening, in a group of no more than ten. We are closed on 25 December and 1 January.