El baluarte de Tallers de Barcelona y el debate técnico sobre la adecuación estratégica urbana en el siglo XVIII

Abstract

The bastion of Tallers, a defensive element integrated in the western part of the Barcelona’s walled perimeter, actually remained far from the various attacks on the city carried out by the French army, the Austracist troops and both the French and Spanish Bourbon allies between 1697 and 1714. However, the bad prior state of the bastion, both in terms of structure and its own strategic characteristics, led after the War of Succession to arrange some urgent actions in order to improve its poliorcetic capacities, not only in relation to the defensive system of Barcelona in its north-west flank facing the outer countryside but to its defensive-offensive issues referred to the urban interior itself. The approach to solve the lack of effectiveness focused on the dichotomy between undertaking a restoration of its pre-existing structure and planning a deeper structural reform to enhance its ambivalent strategic projection. The simultaneity with the works of the new Barcelona Citadel allowed including the action on the bastion of Tallers in a larger enterprise that concerned the totality of the city as a global system for the strategic urban and territorial control.