The programme will feature walks, talks and workshops to rethink how we inhabit the physical and digital city, as part of the 2026 Barcelona Architecture Capital.
Every day we walk along streets connected by more than 7,000 kilometres of fibre-optic cable running across Catalonia. We look at our phones without thinking about the antennas that make 97% territorial connectivity possible. We live in a city where 99% of the population has access to high-capacity networks, yet we rarely stop to ask who decides how these infrastructures are built. What happens beneath the paving stones we walk on every day?
These are some of the questions raised by “RRReparem el futur”, a series of conversations, walks and workshops that explores the connections between the city’s physical and digital infrastructures. The initiative is part of the programme of Barcelona 2026, World Capital of Architecture, an event featuring more than 1,500 activities spread over 10 months and across the city’s 10 districts.
From the climate crisis to digital commons
The series starts from an apparently simple yet powerful idea: what if, instead of always building more, we stopped to repair what we already have? What would a city look like if it cared for and maintained itself, rather than expanding without limits? What if digital space were also a common good that needs to be preserved?
Cables underground, antennas on rooftops, servers in industrial estates, algorithms that decide what appears on our phones. All these networks shape how we move, how we communicate and how we inhabit the city, and Barcelona is at a key moment to rethink these infrastructures.
Five sessions to discover the city in a different way
The series invites us to look at the city with new eyes. It will begin on 19 February at 6.30 pm with a conversation about what lies beneath our feet: the fossil footprint buried underground, how to inhabit public space in the midst of the climate crisis, and which infrastructures shape the city we live in.
On 21 March at 11 am, the Internet Tour by artist Mario Santamaria and Col·lectiu Punt 6 will make the invisible visible: a feminist urban walk to discover the city’s infrastructures. Because yes, Barcelona has cables, antennas, connection boxes and an entire framework that sustains the digital world and that we rarely see.
In May, it will be time for hands-on practice: a digital and urban experimentation workshop in public space combining programming, collective creation, DIY construction and experimentation to reimagine how we want to inhabit our streets and squares.
In October, a talk on digital landscapes will explore bold proposals for collectively building the digital futures we want. And in November, a collective mapping workshop will make visible everything that usually goes unnoticed: antennas, cables, 5G technology, technical failures… everything that shapes our access to the digital world.
Free software and homemade prototypes
The initiative does not stop at theory. It is grounded in practice, through walks, conversations, homemade prototypes and free software. The goal is to discover what lies beneath the paving stones of our city and beyond the screens, and to collectively rethink how we can turn physical and digital space into a common good.
In a context in which Barcelona becomes World Capital of Architecture, this series proposes going beyond buildings and also thinking about the invisible networks that structure the city of the 21st century. Registration for the first sessions is now open.
