Beaches and the Olympic Port

The harbor basin between the beaches was built in nineteen ninety specifically for the Olympic sailing competitions. The organizers placed the harbor opposite Vila Olímpica: the athletes lived on the shore, took their boats out through the new port, and started in the open sea. So the word “Olympic” here refers to the former function of the piers and breakwaters, not an honorary label.

Seventeen women's crews in the four hundred seventy class took to the water—two-person boats four meters seventy centimeters long. The roles of the Spanish sailors Teresa Zabell and Patricia Guerra were strictly divided. Zabell held the helm and chose the course. Guerra handled the sails and used her weight to keep the boat in the right position.

For Zabell, these Olympics could have been her last chance. Before the Games in Seoul, the coaches did not select her for the national team, and she nearly gave up sailing. Zabell spent a year away from competition, then returned and teamed up with Guerra, who had placed tenth in Seoul. By Barcelona, they had become world and European champions. Gold was expected of them here, in their home harbor.

In the first race, the judges ruled that eight crews had crossed the starting line before the signal. The Spanish sailors were among those disqualified, along with all the teams that would later take the prize places. The system allowed the worst result to be discarded from seven races, so Zabell and Guerra could still recover, but they no longer had room for a second major mistake.

In the following races, they finished second and third, won the fourth race, took fourth place in the fifth, and won again in the sixth. Before the final start, the Spanish sailors moved into the lead. In the seventh race, they finished only seventh, but their accumulated points were enough for gold. A year later, Guerra won silver at the World Championship. Zabell continued competing and, in nineteen ninety-six, won her second Olympic gold with a different partner.

The harbor basin from which their boats set out has survived. Today it holds pleasure craft and sports boats, a municipal sailing center operates there, and the breakwaters still separate the harbor from the open sea.

Somorrostro Beach begins at the western breakwater. Its name refers to a neighborhood that is no longer on the shore. From the late nineteenth century, makeshift homes of fishermen, port workers, and families who had come to Barcelona to earn money stood between factories, the railway, and the sea. They had no running water, electricity, or sewage system.

In June nineteen sixty-six, city officials hastily demolished the last six hundred homes before naval exercises that Francisco Franco was due to attend. About three thousand residents were moved to temporary barracks near the Besòs; some were later resettled in the developing neighborhood of Sant Roc, while others went to La Pau and nearby settlements made up of similar barracks.

Nothing remains of Somorrostro's streets. In twenty eleven, its name was restored to this stretch of beach, and a commemorative plaque was installed between Hospital del Mar and the Olympic Port. Sand, piers, and the waterfront promenade now occupy the shore where three thousand people were still living in nineteen sixty-six.