(pàgines 225-246)

, 2016 , 225-246 , 1695-9752

The urban renewal of El Raval in Barcelona, a neighbourhood previously known as the5th District and associated to the mystified squalor and sordidness of the Barrio Chino  (one of the most notorious vice districts in Europe), is actually in its last phase, one thatbegan in 1988 closely following the election of Barcelona as the seat of the 1992 Olympicgames. Having got off the ground in the new millennium, a new urban intervention wasimplemented, in particular on the area under study, known as the Illa Robador
(block ofhousing of Robador). Until very recently, the street of Robador has been — and probablystill is — the new epicentre and perhaps the last bastion of the Barrio Chino.
Myth and urban renewal come together in the ethnography I here present. I have wanted to take minutesof the encounters and collisions among “old-time residents” who have survived all types ofmystifications and stigmatisations and the “new residents” attracted by the possibility ofliving in a central place, in the new cultural district of Barcelona. I interpret these conflictsin the light of what some authors refer to as a new urban colonialism.