The new Port Olímpic is open to the neighbourhood, the city and the beach, with extensive areas for walking, relaxing and playing sport.
It will be home to over 50 blue-economy businesses closely linked to sailing, innovation and sustainability, creating over 150 jobs.
It will also be a leading centre for sustainable sailing activities that are available to everyone, especially children, through the new Municipal Sailing Centre, which will serve over 15,000 children every year
The Culinary Balcony is a walkway with wonderful views of the Mediterranean, where visitors can enjoy a varied offer of high-quality Barcelona food. Most of the restaurant owners are currently putting the finishing touches to their premises, which will open gradually from the end of August to the end of September
The new Port Olímpic is the result of a transformative project marked by wide-ranging agreements between authorities (the Spanish and Catalan governments and the City Council), public-private collaboration and a record completion time, between April 2020 and August 2024
The new Port Olímpic is now here. From this Sunday, Barcelona residents can now once again enjoy over 20,000 m2 of public space. To celebrate this new era, Port Olímpic held an all-day opening festival, filling the Moll de Mestral quay with music, shows, workshops and children’s games.
One of the cornerstones of the project has been turning Port Olímpic into a place that local residents can enjoy, with new viewpoints, relaxation areas and green areas which, along with the three new entrances, redefine this new Port Olímpic, in the heart of Barcelona’s seashore, as a completely permeable port open to the Olympic Village and the beach.
Today sees the opening of the new entrance that will link the Culinary Balcony and Nova Icària Beach. And for the first time, local residents will also be able to explore the Dic de Recer walkway/viewpoint, which will be completely accessible by the end of August, once the restaurants are open.
The Moll de Mestral quay, which was once full of terraces and nightclubs, is now a large square measuring over 8,000 m2, the equivalent of three Eixample city blocks. It has become a place for high-quality economic activity with blue-economy businesses, while the new garden area and wooden pergola also make it a new Barcelona seashore promenade, as well as a climate shelter. From now on, it will be a vibrant, dynamic place with scheduled activities for city residents.
Today’s festivities are in fact just a taste of the programme Port Olímpic will be offering city residents throughout the year, starting with the first youth and women’s regattas in the America’s Cup and the events that will be taking place as part of the La Mercè festivities. Through these new activities, Port Olímpic aims to become a new neighbourhood and city venue where Barcelona residents can have fun.
Promoting and revitalising the blue economy
The more than 50 blue-economy companies that will set up shop in the port, providing regular employment for over 150 people, are among the keys to turning Port Olímpic into a place for city residents.
Over half of these companies, especially those in the sectors of nautical services and activities, innovation, technology and the circular economy applied to the sea, have already opened or will do so in coming weeks.
Sailing for Barcelona residents
Port Olímpic also seeks to make sport in the Mediterranean Sea accessible to all Barcelona residents by offering nautical activities for the general public. In order to make this possible, the project has been working in numerous areas, such as pricing policies, the use of small, sustainable vessels, an extensive offer of vessels for hire, and especially the comprehensive renovation of the Municipal Sailing Centre, which will be completed in coming weeks, with the aim of expanding the services and activities it offers.
This new era has a clear goal: to continue offering nautical sports to local residents, especially young people, reconnecting Barcelona with the Mediterranean through sport.
In recent years, Port Olímpic has also upgraded its maritime infrastructure. The most relevant example is the Dic de Recer sea wall, reinforced and consolidated in order to protect the Port’s facilities from wave surges caused by storms.
In this new era, Port Olímpic also aims to focus on holding regattas and sea education events, ideally involving members of the nautical community who work in the Port’s facilities.
Furthermore, it aims to be a driving force for innovation and sustainable sailing. That’s why during the summer months, the installation of two ultra-fast charging points for electric vessels will be completed.
The Culinary Balcony: an experience for all your senses
The Culinary Balcony is one of Port Olímpic’s main new features. Here you can enjoy a wide variety of high-quality Barcelona cuisine for all occasions and budgets.
Each of the 11 restaurants and three eateries making up this new Barcelona food area have a different identity and culinary offer, but together, they form a place where you can enjoy the best cuisine, with marvellous new views over the Mediterranean. Various squares and viewpoints, equipped with steps and lifts, enhance the dialogue between the Port’s interior and the seashore, while also inviting people to go for a stroll.
The Culinary Balcony will be ready at the end of August, with the gradual opening of the nine restaurants and three eateries that make up this first phase of activity. City residents will discover a new food model that embraces quality, diversity and complementary culinary approaches, with the aim of serving a wide-ranging, diverse public. The new restaurants will also emphasise design, with innovative interiors designed to fit in with their surroundings and accentuate the Port’s relationship with the sea.
The following restaurants are part of the Culinary Balcony:
- Sagardi (World cuisine - innovation)
- El Tribut (World cuisine)
- El del Mar - Hermanos Torres (World cuisine)
- El Cangrejo Loco (Blue cuisine)
- Superlocal (Flexitarian cuisine)
- Vraba (Catalan cuisine - fusion)
- Família Nuri (Seafood cuisine)
- Platets (Appetisers)
- Casa Carmen (Cafeteria)
The three eateries completing the Balcony are:
- Faborit (Healthy food)
- Esferic (Ice cream)
- Las Muns (Empanada patties)
Port Olímpic, a leader in sustainability
The sea is one of the most important ecosystems in the fight against climate change and the necessary work to reverse its effects.
As such Barcelona’s Port Olímpic, through its transformation, aims to lead the way in this area, placing sustainability at the centre of all its initiatives, with the aim of creating a cutting-edge venue that not only takes into account the effects of climate change, but has in fact adapted the entire transformation to this reality, from the project’s design and materials to its operations, with a commitment to promoting the generation of green energy, water saving, waste reduction and the renaturalisation of the surrounding seashore.
The sustainable projects carried out include the installation of the Culinary Balcony’s four photovoltaic pergolas, which make up Barcelona’s largest urban photovoltaic system, with a total surface area of 3,560 m2, and which will generate up to 825,000 kWh/any, equivalent to the average consumption of 360 dwellings. This covers Port Olímpic’s self-consumption energy needs as well as supplying other BSM facilities (7 car parks, the Poblenou Cemetery and Zoo de Barcelona). This infrastructure will be at the heart of Barcelona’s first and largest shared, zero-kilometre self-consumption community.
Port Olímpic has also focused on caring for marine ecosystems, with many other projects and initiatives. The most significant is the creation of a bio-regeneration reef that fosters biodiversity on the surrounding seabed and improves water quality. This has been achieved thanks to the partial naturalisation of the 2,000 concrete blocks that protect the Dic de Recer breakwater. These blocks were specially treated so that zooplankton would attach to them, thereby regenerating the seabed. To support this first initiative, 50 underwater biotopes, structures specially designed to attract marine flora and fauna, have also been submerged. The results of these initiatives are already visible, and in coming months cameras will be installed so that people on land can enjoy watching the reefs in real time.
Another measure implemented to make Port Olímpic a leader in green management is the use of seawater to cool the air-conditioning systems of blue-economy establishments on Moll de Mestral quay, thus eliminating the heat-island effect produced by conventional cooling systems, fostering circularity in the consumption of materials and improving insulation in all the new constructions.
And in order to strengthen its commitment to sustainable sailing, Port Olímpic will have two ultra-fast chargers for electric vessels, which will run on energy sourced from the photovoltaic pergolas. With this initiative, Port Olímpic will be the first port facility in Spain with an ultra-fast charging service using green energy produced by and stored at the Port itself.
Wide-ranging agreements and public-private collaboration
The project began in 2020, in the midst of the pandemic, and was scheduled for completion by 2027. However, in 2022 the decision was made to accelerate the process, in light of the city hosting the America’s Cup, and so it has been finished in 4 years.
This would not have been possible without the agreements reached between the three authorities (Ajuntament de Barcelona, the Catalan government and the Spanish government), or without major public-private partnerships, given that the managing company is BSM (owned by Ajuntament de Barcelona) and over 50 companies from the blue-economy and restaurant sectors have decided to join the project.
