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Barcelona underground: works in Gardunya uncover a forgotten cemetery
Improvement works in Plaça de la Gardunya have uncovered more than soil and paving stones: beneath the Doctor Fleming Gardens, 18th-century graves have emerged, buried evidence of the old Hospital de la Santa Creu cemetery, known as the Corralet.
Eighteen graves have brought to light the remains of twenty-one individuals — including women and children — buried in simple wooden coffins, accompanied by rosaries, medals and silences lasting centuries. Articulated skeletons revealing bodies that were never moved, bodies that tell the story of a densely populated city, struck by epidemics, where life and death shared a courtyard.
A cistern has also appeared, perhaps used for washing clothes, now turned into an improvised ossuary of bones moved during some attempt at funerary reorganisation.
The Corralet stood next to the Aula de Anatomía and the mortuary, a location that leaves no room for doubt: death was part of learning. This discovery not only revives a forgotten part of urban history, but also reminds us that, in Barcelona, even the subsoil holds lessons.