Withdrawal of land from the ZMT
The Spanish Constitution and the Coastal Law define the entire coastline as state public domain. Therefore, in the regulatory sphere, the limit of the city is not the sea, but the limit of the maritime-terrestrial public domain (DPMT). The DPMT is incompatible with private property and guarantees the public use of the sea, its shore and the rest of this domain. Within the DPMT, the terrestrial part is the so-called maritime-terrestrial zone (ZMT), which is the space between the low tide line and the limit up to which the waves arrive during larger storms.
The first definition of the ZMT for the municipality of Barcelona was approved in 1923. The changes in Barcelona’s coastline over the last century and the need to open up the city to the sea by recovering its coastal façade made it necessary to develop the ZMT in a way that was more coherent with the city’s current model. In 2009, the Spanish government established a new definition for the maritime-terrestrial public domain (ZMT) and declared, by Ministerial Order, that the land comprised between the previous land use zone of 1923 and the new land use zone of 2009 was exempt as a maritime-terrestrial public domain (ZMT).
With the modification of the ZMT, Barcelona City Council has proposed that this land should become mostly public land under municipal jurisdiction. This means more capacity for the city to intervene on the seafront and a new opportunity to rethink some of the key elements of the city’s coastline in terms of maritimity.
