El Cabanyal of Valencia: shantytowns, modernism and speculation
‘In the background, the buildings of the Grao, the big houses where the warehouses are, the consignees, the shipping agents, the people of money, the aristocracy of the port, were, like a long line of roofs, the view encountered (…) a prolonged mass of buildings of a thousand colors, which decreased as the port receded. At the beginning, they were multi-storey estates with slender turrets, and at the opposite end, bordering the fertile plain, white huts with thatched roofs twisted by the gales’.
The Valencian Blasco Ibáñez left this description of the Cabanyal of 1895 in his novel Flor de mayo. A place, officially called El Cabanyal-Canyamelar, which has gone through many phases. Thus, the Cabanyal has been a neighborhood of shanties and a fishing enclave. It has also been a recreation area for the bourgeoisie and a focus of real estate speculation. Until today, where The Guardian included it in 2020 among the 10 coolest neighborhoods in Europe.
Before being called Cabanyal, this Valencian neighborhood adjacent to Malvarrosa was an independent municipality of Valencia. Its name at that time was Poble Nou de la Mar. Built in the first half of the 19th century, with its own town hall, it was made up of three areas: Canyamelar, Cabanyal and Cap de França. The Cabanyal has always been, since before it took the name of Poble Nou de la Mar, a fishermen’s neighborhood. The written references to the enclave that follow one after the other as early as the 18th century tell us, according to the article Cabanyal, ever closer. From the place to the space as merchandise, of its inhabitants: ‘farmers and, for the most part, fishermen dedicated to the fishing of the bòu’.
The suburb, which had been forming on the outskirts of the now Grao neighborhood, was formed around long, straight streets that ran from north to south parallel to the sea. Hundreds of precarious houses, built with whitewashed facades and thatched roofs, were arranged in endless avenues that give the Cabanyal an urban fabric of great originality even today.
According to the aforementioned document, ‘the 19th century was characterized by the constant growth and increase of its population, which resulted in a peculiar urban layout’. But the neighborhood also had an uninvited architect: fire. The fires of 1796 and 1797, as well as that of 1875, transformed the morphology of the town. Thus, many barracks had to be replaced by small houses, more solid constructions. Finally, the construction of new shantytownws was banned in order to minimize the damage caused by possible fires.
On the other hand, in the middle of the 19th century, more and more middle class people acquired a second home in the Cabanyal. Wealthy families came to this neighborhood to spend their summers and their arrival brought with it a new architectural style for the area: modernism.
Between the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, an artistic movement arrived in Catalonia that was of great importance, especially in Barcelona: modernism. This aesthetic current broke with the dominant styles of the time and had great autochthonous authors (it almost goes without mentioning the name of Gaudí). In Valencia there were also great modern artists, such as Vicente Ferrer or Demetrio Ribes, whose most important work was the Estación del Norte. On the other hand, according to the Cabanyal portes obertes page, organized by a group of artists, ‘in the Poblados Marítimos a popular type of architecture is developed’, of special importance in the Cabanyal.
Modernist building in Cabanyal. | Shutterstock
The neighborhood’s families, at first only the wealthiest and later also the more modest families, were adapting this architectural style to their homes.’This contributes to give unique characteristics to each of the houses, even within the homogeneity of the style. That is to say, each one is marked by the personal tastes of its owner’, they point out from Cabanyal portes obertes.
Thus, ‘the covering of the facades with monochromatic tiles or decorated with motifs of different stylistic origins represents a curious and original readaptation of modernist taste in the area of the more modest classes, who found in the ceramic tile the ideal material for their expression’. All these characteristics of the Valencian neighborhood, which can still be seen today in its streets, led to its cataloguing in 1993 as an Asset of Cultural Interest.
Detail of a modernist façade in El Cabanyal. | Shutterstock
At the end of the twentieth century took place in the Cabanyal one of the events that have most marked this neighborhood and whose echoes still resound loudly. Having lost its autonomy since the end of the 19th century, this neighborhood became the target of the so-called Special Plan for Protection and Interior Reform. This project aimed to extend Avenida Blasco Ibáñez to link the beach with the center of Valencia, which in turn implied the demolition of almost 1,600 houses (some of them protected) and the division of the neighborhood in two. Many neighbors were up in arms and the news spread throughout Spain.
The legal battle dragged on and the plan faced, in addition to the neighbors, the protection of the buildings. Finally, it lost its battle with the courts. But, although the project was not carried out, the confrontations and political wheeling and dealing brought about a decline of the neighborhood, especially in the area known as zone zero, the center of the speculative and real estate interests of the controversy. Today, little by little, the neighborhood is being rehabilitated. ‘The changes are so rapid that from one month to the next the urban landscape has been modified’, points out the Valencian Cristina Monzón in this article.
Houses in Valencia’s Cabanyal. | Shutterstock
All in all, the neighborhood was back in the spotlight in 2020, when, as noted at the outset, The Guardian listed it as one of the coolest neighborhoods in Europe. It’s possible that on a first or quick visit to Valencia, El Cabanyal might be overlooked. It is the kind of tourism that remains in the background and yet it is pleasant to discover. In addition to the historical and tourist interest of its streets and facades, El Cabanyal has its own beach, popularly known by the locals as Las Arenas. The wide gastronomic offer of its bars and restaurants is also one of the main attractions of the area.
And of course, one cannot forget its cultural offer. In the Ice Factory, locals and visitors can find a different activity every day: music, workshops, literature, cinema, plastic arts… The Teatre El Musical is also of great importance for the culture of the neighborhood. The artistic offer is closed by El Cabanyal Intim festival, in which every year there are plays, dances or cabaret shows that take place inside the houses or in unique spaces of the neighborhood.
All these peculiarities make El Cabanyal an attractive enclave both to visit and to live. Because if there is one thing its residents still boast about, it is that even in the 21st century the area keeps having its fishing character and its neighborhood personality.
