ABSTRACT
In the open Spanish economy, with free rein given to market forces, funds flowed from the periphery to a handful of established centres, particularly Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao. During the 1920s and 1930s there had been an imaginative effort to plan the future growth of Barcelona within the context of Catalonia as a whole. The particular problems of Barcelona were recognized, but always with a view to preventing the excessive growth of the city, and in terms of an evolutionary Catalunya Ciutat involving the planning of the region as a single unit. Given the hostile attitude of the Franco government towards the potentially autonomist regions of Spain, to divorce the planning of the Barcelona conurbation from that of Catalonia as a whole was a foreseeable tactic. At the technical level, Spain in general and Barcelona in particular have kept abreast of developments in planning theory.
