Primavera R 2026: Barcelona’s Open House for Urban Resilience

Urban resilience and climate action have taken the world by storm, and with good reason. Global warming is approaching the point of no return, and environmental disasters are becoming more frequent. People everywhere are suffering the consequences of decades of environmental recklessness: severe floods, heatwaves, and other catastrophes that are no longer distant warnings but present realities. While continuing to work on reducing greenhouse gas emissions remains essential, it is equally important to prepare for the worst and adapt our living environments to make them safer.

But what does that adaptation actually look like on the ground? On 15–16 May 2026, Barcelona offered one opportunity to answer that question with Primavera R: a two-day open-house festival celebrating the people, places, and practices shaping the city’s approach to climate adaptation and urban resilience.

A Festival to Make the Urban Resilience Ecosystem Visible

Barcelona is widely regarded as a pioneer in urban resilience, and it has a remarkably dense ecosystem of actors working on climate action and urban transformation, ranging from local government agencies and research groups to neighbourhood associations, cooperatives, and grassroots organizations. Often, these groups operate separately from each other, even when they are working towards similar goals. One of Primavera R’s missions is to contribute to changing that. Building on the Resilience Brunches series and last year’s inaugural edition, the festival created a space to bridge practice, research, and governance, with a focus on lived experience. Through the networking event and the site visits, Primavera R sought to make the whole ecosystem visible to itself and to others.

An invitation to discover what resilience looks like

Friday kicked off with city-wide site visits, a series of open houses where local initiatives across Barcelona opened their doors to visitors who could explore projects spanning hydraulic infrastructure, textile cooperatives, nature-based solutions, and community food growing. Each site visit was unique and showed a different angle on what resilience actually looks like on the ground. Saturday 16 May continued the site visits, allowing those who were busy at work on Friday to also be able to discover some of the resilience initiatives in Barcelona. Site visits included:

• Torre Baró led by Natural Base Solutions: Gabino Carballo guided a visit through Torre Baró, Ciutat Meridiana and their immediate surroundings. The group was able to read the territory from the relationship between mountain and city, between centrality and periphery, and from the constant tension between institutional intervention and neighbourhood capacity for response. Through the itinerary, attempts, successes and failures in the construction of an urban landscape conditioned by topography, the social context and inequality in access to services was addressed, paying attention both to the SUDS solutions implemented and to more informal and community forms of resilience. The visit showed how, in this urban edge, nature, water, the memory of the place and collective action help to understand in what way nature can protect nature itself, and how resilience is also built from below, when public policies have not always known how to respond sufficiently or appropriately.
• UPC x Flumen Hydraulic Laboratories, an Academic Research Institute affiliated with the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) and the International Centre for Numerical Methods in Engineering. Created by the Government of Catalunya, it leads research, consulting, and technology transfer in hydraulic engineering. The group visited Flumen’s two main research laboratories dedicated to urban hydrology and river dynamics:
  • Fluid Mechanics Laboratory (Building D1): This 800m2 space features installations such as a variable slope channel, pressure piping panel, spillways, and real-scale platforms for studying sewer inlets and urban object stability during floods.
  • Hydraulic Reduced Models Laboratory (Building B0): A 1200m2 open space where real-scale and reduced hydraulic models are built, including a metro stair model for flood evacuation studies, a labyrinth channel for irrigation control calibration, and a physical model analyzing flood intrusion in buildings.
• Cooperativa La Fàbric@ a cooperative that accompanies community projects in the neighborhoods of Barcelona and Catalonia, with the objective of promoting social development and promoting social transformation. During the visit, participants were able to connect with the project related to the transportation of the neighbors of the Cases Barates, as well as the first installation of the Bon Pastor Energy Community, developed jointly with the neighborhood association.
• Cooperativa La Chalmeta, a cooperative housing project in La Marina del Prat Vermell that explores how architecture can strengthen community, sustainability, and shared urban life. Developed through a public initiative by the Barcelona City Council and collectively shaped by 32 resident members, the project combines affordable cooperative housing with shared spaces including coworking areas, communal kitchens, gardens, laundry facilities, and food distribution spaces. Designed around transitions between the public, collective, and domestic spheres, the building prioritises social interaction, flexibility, healthy design, cross ventilation, and energy efficiency. A strong example of how housing can be approached not only as private space, but as shared urban infrastructure.
• MOMU – Espai Tèxtil, a creative space dedicated to textiles with a social vocation and a very close relationship with the Poble-sec neighborhood. The activity focuses on the creation and production from the profit of fish, the customization and the transformation of fish. Momu has a workshop school offering a space fully equipped for training, conceived as a career option and the development of people’s creative abilities.
• Cooperativa Rocaguinarda, a cooperative that invited to discover community practices in the Guinardó neighborhood, including the cultural and consumer cooperative, Rocaguinarda. The visit began at the Cooperatiu Space, a key milestone for the neighborhood’s social and solidarity economy initiatives. Then, it continued at the Casal de Joves, where the community photovoltaic plant was presented, a practical example of collective energy transition. There, participants saw a presentation about SOM Mobilitat, a shared electric vehicle cooperative, which offers a sustainable and cooperative mobility alternative.
• Hort de la Font Trobada, a self-managed community garden in Poble-Sec, started by a group of local residents and registered as a non-profit organization since 2015. It was created with the aim of reclaiming a large vacant lot used for decades as a landfill and restoring Montjuïc mountain’s agricultural identity, while promoting community values within the neighborhood. The garden is located on a historically agricultural site linked to the old Hortes de Sant Bertran and the historic Font Trobada spring, a source documented for over a century. This history makes the garden one of the few original agricultural spaces that have survived in Poble-Sec without being urbanized.

These spaces invited the public to see, learn, and ask questions about real, ongoing projects. The site visit to the Joan Miro water deposits was unfortunately cancelled due to weather conditions.

From Site Visits to Collective Imagination

Saturday 16 May continued the site visits:

• Cooperativa La Chalmeta
• Cooperativa Rocaguinarda
• Hort de la Font Trobada

After the site visits, the festival gathered at Nau Bostik for an afternoon and evening programme. First, the Urban Climate Change Research Network (UCCRN) hosted a LEGO workshop: a hands-on session using bricks and 3D models to design and assess climate-resilient neighbourhoods. It allowed attendees to use play and creativity to understand resilient design practices and propose solutions, in a session that made complex urban planning ideas accessible to everyone.

Later, the festival gradually shifted into a networking event that combined a semi-structured poster session where neighbourhood groups, cooperatives, research teams, and emerging projects presented their work, with an informal evening of live music, food, drink, and conversation. In the meantime, groups of attendees were guided through the corridors of the Nau Bostik to discover Horstik, a wonderful rooftop garden right above the venue. The closing of the event was done by the masterful guitarist dondejack, a local musician with a genuine interest in environmental sustainability. 

Why does this matter?

Cities around the world are grappling with how to move from climate commitments to climate action, and how to do it in a way that’s equitable, grounded, and durable. Primavera R is a small but concrete example of what that looks like: not a top-down summit, but a horizontal gathering that takes seriously the knowledge held in cooperatives, public labs, and community spaces just as much as in institutions.

Barcelona has been quietly building one of Europe’s most interesting urban resilience ecosystems. Primavera R is a moment when many of the initiatives that make up this ecosystem are able to see each other and become visible to everyone. We hope that this visibility allows the different actors to develop partnerships, synergize and work together towards a more resilient, sustainable and well-informed future.

Take a look at the posters that were presented