Mercats nou-centistes a Barcelona: una interpretació dels seus orígens i significat cultural

Abstract

Nineteenth century municipal authorities in Barcelona built an extensive network of covered food markets. Unlike most other cities in Europe, however, markets have survived there as viable components of the city's commercial structure despite competition from neighborhood shops and supermarkets. This essay examines not only the economic and political bases for the rationalization of market trade in Barcelona, but the cultural meaning of covered markets as well. As material structures, covered food markets carried a heavy load of meaning to the liberal state. They were understood by national and municipal authorities as physical symbols of the larger effort to rationalize the economy and as instirutions whose rirualization was useful in the legitimization of liberal rule.