ABSTRACT
Barcelona is not a state capital and at times finds itself faced with a shortage of public investment. The organization of important international events has historically played an important role in the transformation of its urban fabric. In 2004, the city put itself forward to host another great event, continuing a century-long tradition of intense urban-wide planned transformations related to international events, such as the International Exhibitions of 1888 and 1929, the Eucharistic Congress of 1952 and the Olympics in 1992. Since the end of the 1970s, Barcelona has made a great effort to renew its obsolete functional spaces and transform degraded areas that were the legacy of a long dictatorship and the effects of the adjustment to the post-Fordist modes of production.
