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Barcelona will add 75 new shaded spaces against the heat
Barcelona wants summer not to drive residents away from its squares, parks and school playgrounds. The city will add 75 new shaded spaces in different neighbourhoods, an intervention intended to make playing, waiting, walking or resting outdoors more bearable during heatwaves.
The work will reach 38 children’s play areas, 21 urban spaces and 16 school playgrounds. Overall, the City Council aims to expand a network that must exceed 200 sun-protected points before May 2027, making shade a permanent part of urban design.
The planned spaces include heavily used places such as Plaça Joanic in Gràcia; Lesseps in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi; Les Rieres park in Horta-Guinardó; and the skate park in Plaça de la Marina in Sants-Montjuïc. This latest package will bring shade both to thoroughfares and to spaces where children and young people spend more time.
Les Rieres park will have one of the largest installations, with around 600 square metres of shade. These sites were not chosen by chance: many are places where planting trees does not solve the problem in the short term, or where paving and a lack of protection turn heat into a real barrier to using public space.
The plan also includes three singular projects that have already been awarded. On the Passeig Marítim, opposite Bogatell beach, a structure of columns and white fabric inspired by dunes will be installed, providing 1,600 square metres of shade. It is expected to be ready in June 2027.
Plaça Comercial, beside the former Born market, will have a 1,400-square-metre intervention based on geometric motifs linked to the market itself. In this case, the installation is expected to be finished in May 2028. On Avinguda del Portal de l’Àngel, the project envisages hexagonal modules inspired by Antoni Gaudí’s paving tile, with around 2,000 square metres of coverage, although there is still no fixed timetable because of the complexity of the protected setting.
The City Council frames these measures within its climate-adaptation strategy. The idea is for shade to cease being a secondary element and to be considered basic infrastructure, especially in dense neighbourhoods, sun-exposed playgrounds and children’s areas where heat limits everyday use.
The change may seem small, but it affects very concrete actions: taking a child to the park, crossing a square at midday, waiting for someone in the street or using a school playground in summer. In a Barcelona increasingly exposed to extreme temperatures, gaining shade is no longer merely an aesthetic improvement; it is a way of keeping the city liveable when the sun beats down.