We are about to start work on the future State-owned Public Library in Barcelona. The Ministry of Culture and Sport has announced that within the next few days demolition work will begin on the existing building, located next to the Estació de França railway station –Barcelona City Council ceded the site in 2004–, and the actual construction work will begin in 2023, in accordance with the schedule agreed by the Monitoring Committee, formed by the Ministry, the City Council and the Government of Catalonia.

In accordance with Catalonia’s library system, (Act 4/1993, of 18 March), the library will operate as the city’s central urban library, as well as having a metropolitan dimension, in as much as it will be central to the Province of Barcelona. The building will have a total useful floor area of 16,000 square metres and the capacity to house 600,000 volumes. According to the Ministry, this state-owned library will be allocated the largest budget of all those built to date, with an investment of €1.4 million. In the press conference, Miquel Iceta, the Minister for Culture and Sport, showcased the city’s future cultural facility: “We will provide Barcelona’s residents with a library designed and equipped for the 21st century”, he affirmed. The project presentation also featured Natàlia Garriga, the Government of Catalonia’s Minister for Culture; Jordi Martí, Barcelona City Council’s Deputy Mayor for Culture, Education, Science and Community and Josep Maria Miró i Gellida, the project’s architect.

The future library will be state owned and managed by the Government of Catalonia. Its spaces will be designed under the criteria of accessibility, adaptability, comfort, sustainability and energy efficiency. The part open to the public will have reading rooms, information rooms, a room providing access to the general and specialised collection, a collection for children and young adults, a daily newspaper room, a conference hall, multi-use rooms, points for internet access, self-service loan machines, an area for relaxation, exhibitions, a cafeteria-bookshop, an auditorium and a parking area. In restricted-access areas, there will be work spaces and specialised depositories for the conservation of works received by legal deposit, corresponding to the works published in the Province of Barcelona.

The work is scheduled for completion in 2027.