What is sense of place? This should be the starting point of the discussion. Sense of place is a
subjective feeling evoked by a place for people who reside or visit the place. It can be a way
of seeing and framing the world according to what and who is said to belong where. The term
is used in daily conversation which highlights the social and cultural significance
(Creswell,2004). The space of Carrer de Joaquin Costa is an exquisite street which other
neighbourhoods in Barcelona does not have, whose existence dates to the year 1819. It’s forces
of dynamism can be felt when one enters the street from Ronda de Sant Antonio with different
faces passing by the avenue and shops such as Paseo a la India run by an Indian.
The entry of the street welcomes with the Teatre Goya where the flags of European Union,
Catalunya & Spain are hanged out and to the left from a distance, you can see the mosque. This
tells us that space and place itself is not concrete rather varied across Barcelona. As history
tells us that the street is in El Raval, a neighbourhood in Barcelona – we refer to it as a poor
and criminal activity place where distinctive mixture of race, gender, class, culture factors have
rooted in the space and acquire certain fixity which can be seen in the organization of the space
(Smith). Such as people tend to make locational and ethnical choices based on it for recruiting
on the suitability of the business and kinds of task. This explanation of place is visible at Carrer
de Joaquin Costa in the following section of the article.
We often see that people are grouped in one place which have been influenced on the material
basis such as income factor, social markers. Although these spatial arrangements reflect social
division should not be taken for granted because characters of social differences vary across
physical places and the residential context matters for the construction of social life. It can also
influence the social processes & integration of the people living in the place.
The street slices through different layers of identities and societies which has led to the
reconstruction of El Raval. Such as the Ashiq Mobil located on every side of the street which
are run by Pakistani – Kashmiri brothers. Naishek and Raja Nazim. Naishek arrived four years
ago, who feels very comfortable, confident living in Barcelona and there has been no problem
in the process of paperwork. Like majority of the Pakistani men working in Barcelona, he left
his family in the village to earn a better income in Spain and send money to home.
When we refer to shops, the term Paki or Xinos are used to define that work practises are
organized around race and class division. The spatial construction of race is formed by material
basis leading to residential segregation where there is over-representation in the inner areas of
the city. This can be called as “Power geometry” which is concerned about the power relation
to the flows and movement – different social groups have distinct relationships to mobility
where some people are more in charge of it than others; some initiate flows and movement,
others don’t; some are more on the receiving-end of it than others; some are effectively
imprisoned (Massey ,1994). There are group who does a lot of physical moving to grab a
chance of better life at the other end of the world which can be seen in the alleys of El Raval.
The realization of the street’s bucket of identity comes upon when entering Nou Bazar shop
which is run by Bangladeshis. It came as a surprise because Pakistani and Chinese stand out
the most amongst the immigrants, but we often mistake them for another nationality due to
their appearances which happens the same with me – people associated me as Chinese or other
East Asian nationality when I’m an Indian.
Rishabh, a 25-year-old Bangladeshi arrived 6 months ago to work with his relatives who have
been living in Spain for the past 20 years. When asked upon his social interaction with the
people, he says that the only time he interacts with people who are not from his community are
the customers. He doesn’t feel the need to socialise with the locals because the Bangladeshi
community is quite huge where he feels like home.
There has been a hype about Carrer de Joaquin Costa as the trendiest bar street in town with
different sorts of shops and people, sometimes it’s been considered as the fashionable street in
Raval and crowds from various corner of the world passing by. According to Rishabh, despite
the street being weight by huge presence of different nationalities, he doesn’t feel international
because he knows that everyday he will be going to the place i.e. Nou Bazar where he works
and stays in the same circle of people as if it was Bangladesh and not any other foreign country.
Thus, the greater the degree of difference between the spatial distribution of groups within an
urban area, the greater their social distance from each other (Peach,1926).
The reconstruction of Raval in terms of urban planning and cultural development, the concept
of space has become highly complicated and densely varied, with a sense of dislocation, for
the locals, facilitated by succession of cultural imports lined up and the time-space compression
where movement and communication across space, to the geographical stretching out of social
relations, and to our experience of all this (Massey,1994). Space and place are not just
containers in which people's social lives develop rather where people are places has a direct
bearing on those lives (Smith). We have been taught to expect that the image of the inner city
accompanied by immigrants. This should be challenged and unpack the taken for granted
assumptions - what has duped us - into thinking it is somehow 'normal' for the immigrants to
be always located in Raval.
“La Cobra”, a bar run by a Chilean man named Ricardo thinks that Carrer de Joaquin Costa
has converted to a bar street. He lived in the neighbourhood for 4 years and was aware that the
location of the street was a good choice for the bar business due to the proximity of grocery
shops and points of attraction. The term “Ravalajent” which means “Raval State of Mind” in
Catalan, shows that the street in corporate with the neighbourhood makes it alive. He says that
one needs to live there to get the feeling and meaning of the street.
“Fantastik”, a shop where goods from all over the world are sold in the street of Joaquin Costa,
would get anyone’s attention which was opened in 2005. According to Joan, the owner of
Fantastik, the street is a complicated area with a strong character where all the people are
immigrants, it doesn’t matter if you are Spanish or Pakistani or Filipino or Columbian. The
area has been gone under huge change and is still under constant transformation. Although
there have been challenges such as drug trafficking, shoplifting and the current housing price
peculations in the locality.
The above two examples of La Cobra and Fantastik shows that there is another way to look at
space asstrategic locations and resources on which new identities, new politics, new economies
perform. In the case of Rishabh and Naishek, space has become a source of community, and a
revised by new practises of identification for others. Carrer de Joaquin Costs highlights
“Hybrid Identities” where the meetings of different identities, each one can never be the same
after the encounter, thereby leaving behind the fixed categories and opening of a cultural
hybridity that entertains difference without an assumed hierarchy (Bhabha,1994).
The above picture state the argument that the time-space compression changes the sense of
place when local communities seem to be increasingly dissecting, when you abroad and find
the same shops, the same music at home and when everyone has a difference experience of this
– how do we think about locality? (Massey, 1994). As I’m from India, to see shops and
restaurants run by Pakistani and Indians, gives me a feeling that I’m at home when the place is
in a foreign country. Hence, the shift in the “sense of place” differ from person to person. It
can produce feeling of insecurity and vulnerability to the one’s who are alien to such cultural
imports. This has resulted to forms of protest in the streets of El Raval for quietness, housing
price, drug trafficking.
There is geographical fragmentation day by day and it is a concept which can address the
contemporary tension between the local and the global directly. The sense of place develops
from every aspect of individuals’ life experience which are infused with meanings and feelings.
Place has been created by people which then results to identity. Geographers suggest that the
meaning of place maybe so strong that it becomes a central part of the identity of the people
experiencing them in a social relation. Human geography is unstable, shifting, uncertain and
contested always (Rose, 1993).
1. Peach,
C. (1975). Urban social segregation.
London: Longman.
3. Creswell,
T. (2004). Place: a short introduction.
Oxford: Blackwell.
4. Massey,
D. (1994). Space, place and gender. Cambridge:
Polity Press.
5. Rose,
G. (1993). Feminism and Geography.
Cambridge: Polity Press.
6. Bhabha,
H. (1994). The Location of Culture.
New York: Routledge.
7. Smith,
S. (). Chapter 2: Society-Space.
