Torre de Sant Sebastià: The Cable Car over the Harbour
Why is it significant?
Tip your head back. Above you, a tall steel tower holds up a pair of cables that run out over the water, sagging slightly, towards a second tower in the middle of the port and then on to the green hill of Montjuïc.
Key Facts
| Place | Torre de Sant Sebastià: The Cable Car over the Harbour |
|---|---|
| Address | Passeig de Joan de Borbó 88, 08039 Barcelona, Spain |
| Geo Coordinates | 41.37310, 2.18790 |
| Part of Walk | Barceloneta and the Sea: Barcelona's Fishermen, Bombas and Beaches |
| Generated | Generated |
Tip your head back. Above you, a tall steel tower holds up a pair of cables that run out over the water, sagging slightly, towards a second tower in the middle of the port and then on to the green hill of Montjuïc. If you are lucky, a little red cabin is creeping along them right now, swaying in the wind.
This is the Torre de Sant Sebastià, the seaward end of the Transbordador Aeri del Port, the Port Cable Car. It was conceived for the great International Exhibition of 1929 on Montjuïc, a way to carry visitors from the sea to the hill through the air, but the engineering took longer than the exhibition, and the line only opened in 1931. The middle tower, the Torre de Jaume I, stands on a pier in the harbour and is more than a hundred metres tall.
Its story was soon interrupted. During the Civil War the towers were damaged, and for years afterwards the cable car stood still, a skeleton over the harbour. It carried passengers again only in the 1960s, and it has been rebuilt and modernised since, but the idea is still the one of 1929: a slow, swinging ride between two worlds.
And what a ride. From the cabin the whole of Barceloneta appears as what it really is: a triangle of narrow, parallel streets wedged between the harbour and the beach, with the old city behind, the cathedral towers, and the Sagrada Família in the distance. At the top of this tower there is also a restaurant, so you can eat your seafood rice seventy-odd metres above the sand.
Cable cars and fishermen, side by side: that is Barceloneta, never quite deciding whether it is a working port village or a viewpoint for the world. Now carry on to the very end of the promenade, where the land runs out at the mouth of the port. You cannot miss what is waiting there: a huge glass sail.