MUHBA - Casa de l'Aigua

The former waterworks complex, the Casa de l'Aigua, is one of the branches of the city's history museum, the Museu d'Història de Barcelona (MUHBA). It consists of two separate buildings that now stand on either side of Avinguda Meridiana near the traffic interchange, the Nus de la Trinitat: one in the neighbourhood of Trinitat Vella and the other in Trinitat Nova. They were both built between 1915 and 1919 for the city's water company, the Compañía de Aguas de Barcelona, to improve the quality of Barcelona's water supply.

The waterworks originally consisted of the pumping station in Trinitat Vella, which was supplied with water from underground wells and the Mina de Montcada. Electric pumps were added at a later date and drew up water through a metal channel in a vast underwater gallery below Avinguda Meridiana and carried it to Trinitat Nova. Once there, it flowed into a 10,000 m³ tank where it was treated and made drinkable and then conveyed to the old town, Ciutat Vella, and the Barceloneta neighbourhood.

The complex was operational until 1989. After years of disuse, the two buildings that are part of the MUHBA – Casa de l'Aigua, have been transformed into an environmental education centre and a venue that holds social events for the community. We recommend you visit and see the two permanent exhibitions about the use of water in Barcelona and its heritage. The Trickle of Water: Continuity and Discontinuity looks at the history of Barcelona's water supply from Roman times until the major industrial expansion of the 19th and 20th centuries, when technological breakthroughs changed the way the city obtained its water. The installation Km O Water / BCN tells us about Barcelona's long-standing use and management of water from the area between Collserola, Montjuïc and the river Besòs, and the way it aided the development of the towns on the outskirts of the city until the industrial era.