Over the past 20-30 years, a quiet revolution has been brewing in La Bordeta – a small but significant neighbourhood adjacent to Sants and Plaça Espanya in Barcelona and bridging them to the municipality of L’Hospitalet. The Sants neighbourhood has been long known for its role in social and cultural movements, and in the face of climate change and economic crises, the area is now emerging as a testing ground for transformative urban sustainability, community governance, and energy transition.
Figure 01: Abandoned textile factory and industrial complex of Can Battló along with some upgraded and renovated sections and parks.
(All Photos: Omer Juma)
Can Batlló: From Decaying Private Industrial Site to Community Renaissance
After being privately owned and left in disrepair for several decades, this old textile factory site in the La Bordeta neighbourhood witnessed a massive transformation. Long before the municipal urban planning frameworks reshaped the site, the community around this area reclaimed the space to host community initiatives and events and signalled to the municipality to pay attention. The neighbourhood’s grassroots engagement and passion for community empowerment forced the conservative-led city council at the time to turn the land into a private space. What makes Can Battló unique is that, even though publicly owned, it is governed by the community itself – an experimental form of urban commons rarely seen in Barcelona. On this site visit led by Gaia D’Elia and Jole Lutzu from Batec, we explored Can Battló and Bloc4BCN and learned about two cooperatives: La Borda, a housing cooperative, and Batec, an energy cooperative with one of its solar panel installations in La Borda.
Figure 02: (Left) A basketball court and outdoor gym in an enclosed space within a reclaimed warehouse. (Right) A shaded playground for children with accessible entrances, adequate seating, and a sense of safety.
Figure 03: Bloc4BCN facilities in the Can Battló area where Batec and other cooperatives are housed.
La Borda: A Sustainable and Resilient Housing Cooperative
Figure 04: (Left) The start of the tour by Batec in front of the La Borda building. (Right) The tour continues towards Bloc4BCN.
On the periphery of Can Battló stands a beautiful architectural feature, La Borda, built to have the lowest environmental impact during the construction and throughout its lifespan. This is Barcelona’s first housing cooperative built entirely through the Lacol architectural cooperative – whose members also live in the building they designed. This housing cooperative was born out of a response to Barcelona’s housing crisis, to ensure long-term housing security – a key element of community resilience that we learnt about in our courses.
Similar to other cooperatives, no one here owns their flat. Instead, they are part of the housing cooperative and when a project or apartment is available, they deposit a capital investment which is considerably lower than the market rates. When someone moves out, they are refunded the amount they invested. The unit doesn’t go on the market, it goes to the next person on the waitlist that meets the criteria. Rents stay well below market rates. There is no speculation, no Airbnb, just shared governance and community care.
They invest in the construction together, run the building together, develop the selection criteria for future tenants in the building, and manage community activities and future upgrades. One of them is the renewable energy installation on La Borda’s rooftop, where Batec comes in.
Batec: What is an Energy Community?
Figure 05: (Left) The tour by Batec explaining how different cooperatives in the neighbourhood work together. (Right) Sustainable Urban Drainage Systems in the newly developed parks in the Can Battló area.
La Borda is also the founding member of Batec, the energy community for the La Bordeta neighbourhood. An energy community is a new term, but the concept is catching on. Essentially, it is a local, community-led initiative that generates, consumes, and manages renewable energy collectively.
Batec aims to move the neighbourhood away from fossil fuels, promote non-renewable energy generation and smart energy consumption, fight energy poverty through community resilience mechanisms, democratize energy decisions through the cooperative model, and empower residents through training and workshops.
How It Works: Energy for the People, by the People
Gaia and Jole from Batec acknowledge that there are many misconceptions around energy communities, along with convoluted regulations, which make it difficult for people to know about or join such cooperatives. Through campaigns, local community engagement, and leveraging their existing network of cooperatives, they hope to impart the following knowledge to residents of the Barcelona Metropolitan Region and beyond.
Figure 06: (Left) Solar panels on the rooftop of the La Diversa building, part of the Batec energy community. (Right) During a site visit by Sostra Civic, the solar panels on the rooftop of La Balma, built by La Lacol, the same architects as La Borda.
As of February 2025, Batec has 51 members, including private individuals/families and 12 social cooperatives. They have four solar panel installations, which generate a total of 48 kW of power. One of these is installed at La Borda. All installations are connected to the national grid, energy isn’t physically sent to your home – it’s virtually calculated. They are not trying to produce energy for cheap but to turn the communities into energy producers and sharers, which gives them more autonomy and certainty when regulations or geopolitical circumstances change and make energy expensive. Here’s how:
- Batec manages the administrative and strategic elements
- Secure external grants, such as EU funds, national and municipal subsidies.
- Identify suppliers for solar panels and maintenance teams
- Create documents to support the change of contracts for members
- Manage outreach to potential members and collaborate with other cooperatives
- Everyone pays a modest fee
- €100 to join the cooperative
- €200 as a capital investment for the installation project and to access 0.5kW of energy (returnable when they leave the cooperative). This is enough to cover basic family consumption. Contributing to the collective investment is much less than €2000 if you decide to go solo.
- €120 per year to maintain and cover the costs of the cooperative, this is approximately half the savings per year from self-consuming and not paying the retailers the market rate
- Members don’t have to change their retailers, they sign a collective agreement developed by Batec, which is shared with the retailers and the individual contracts are updated to label them as producers.
- Solar panels are installed on rooftops, the usage is tracked virtually, no need for wires running from the rooftop to the home.
- If you consume more than you produce, you pay the difference at the market rate.
- If you consume less than you generate, the remaining energy is contributed to the national grid, and you are compensated by retailers as they buy at a lower rate.
The Spanish regulation allows members to participate and benefit from these cooperatives if you live within a 2km radius of the installations – critical for renters and those who can’t install solar panels individually. Batec is working with other cooperatives to develop tools to conduct vulnerability analysis and energy poverty analysis to identify where to have the next installation for equitable support to different communities and neighbourhoods. For now there is no battery storage as this depends on the external funding requirements, but in the future, this can help solve the issue about balancing consumption and production. Still, the payoff is clear – Batec forecasts that members are saving between 30-50% on their energy bills, and the interest in joining the cooperative is growing drastically.
Figure 07: (Left) A closeup of the La Borda building by La Lacol architecture cooperative. (Right) A scene from the La Bordeta neighbourhood.
The Bigger Picture
La Borda and Batec aren’t isolated projects—they’re nodes in a web of mutual aid and cooperative solidarity. From food co-ops to childcare exchanges, they collaborate with other initiatives across La Bordeta and Barcelona’s thriving cooperative economy. They are challenging the top-down planning that has long dominated the urban landscape and are building a sustainable and resilient urban ecosystem from the bottom up.
It may not be perfect – questions around diversity, accessibility, and scalability remain – but they are being asked and answered by the communities themselves. They proactively identify areas of improvement and reach out to find solutions. Such initiatives serve as a compelling blueprint for what a sustainable, cooperative, and community-led city might look like, even in a global city such as Barcelona.
Omer Juma
Student at UIC Barcelona
Urban Resilience for Sustainability Transitions Master’s Programme (2024-2025)
