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Esplugues will host a UB faculty for 3,000 students in 2032
The University of Barcelona will move its Faculty of Pharmacy and Food Sciences from Pedralbes to Esplugues de Llobregat. The new site will be built on Sant Mateu Street, have capacity for around 3,000 students and is expected to begin operating during the 2032–2033 academic year.
The announcement was confirmed this 2 September during the meeting of the Consorcio Porta Diagonal-Campus Clínic, which also approved progress on the urban development plan that will transform 69.5 hectares between Barcelona, L'Hospitalet and Esplugues. The faculty will be one of the first major university components of the future healthcare and science hub.
The reserved site covers around 12,000 square metres at numbers 2–6 and 8 on Carrer Sant Mateu. That figure refers to the plot, not the size of the building: the future university complex will have around 35,000 square metres of built floor space. It will be designed according to sustainability and digitalisation criteria and will apply the One Health approach, which connects human, animal and environmental health.
The project will involve an estimated investment of 152 million euros. The Generalitat will finance it through the agreement reached with the UB to acquire the current university sports grounds on the Diagonal for 135.25 million, and will also provide a direct grant of up to 17.5 million. Esplugues must transfer the plot to the university free of charge during the first quarter of 2027.
If the timetable holds, construction work on the faculty will begin at the end of 2029. The move will allow current capacity to increase by 30% to 3,000 students. The UB also highlights that the centre generates around 20% of its patent applications and ranks 27th in the world in the Shanghai ranking for its subject.
The new premises will be very close to Hospital Sant Joan de Déu and will form part of the area around the future Campus de Salut Clínic-UB, which will also bring together healthcare, teaching and research. The Clínic, however, is following a different timetable: the large hospital campus is aiming to begin operating in 2035, several years after the planned opening of Pharmacy.
Mobility will be one of the challenges arising from that difference in timetables. The Generalitat is working to extend the L3 from Zona Universitària to Esplugues with two new stations, one beside Campus Clínic and Sant Joan de Déu and another in Esplugues Centre. Works are expected to begin from 2028, but the known plans link the extension's entry into service to the future hospital campus, planned for 2035. There is therefore no guarantee that the metro will arrive at the same time as the first Pharmacy students in 2032.
The change will close a chapter spanning more than seven decades in Pedralbes. The current Pharmacy premises opened in the 1957–1958 academic year and were one of the first buildings in the Zona Universitaria on the Diagonal. The future move will give Esplugues a major UB university centre for the first time and add thousands of daily journeys to an area that will also change over the next decade with the new healthcare campus, the metro extension and the redevelopment of the junction between the Diagonal and the Ronda de Dalt.