Moving MarketPlaces consortium meeting in Barcelona 16-18 September 2021

MMP visiting the underground premises of La Boqueria where the storerooms, recycling system and traders’ parking lots are located

Now that travelling is slowly becoming possible again, our team took the chance to have our second in-person meeting. This time, the hosting institution was Pompeu Fabra University CaSes research group where Professor Marco Madella and postdoctoral researcher Maria Lindmäe received the other seven researchers during our 3-day workshop.

The programme included a visit to La Boqueria market where the manager of the traders’ association Óscar Ubide shared with us his vision of the future of the city’s most emblematic market and took us to its hidden grounds to show how the colourful products arrive at the market.

Time for discussions at Pompeu Fabra University

Before and after the visit to La Boqueria we had several discussions on papers that are currently in the making, including one that tackles the dynamics of inclusion and exclusion among traders through (in)formal micro-regulations at the marketplace. We are also pleased that our co-authored paper “Moving marketplaces: Understanding public space from a relational mobility perspective” is now under revision in Cities and will hopefully be published soon. Our PI Sophie Watson from Open University is also finalizing a fascinating paper where she analyses the politicization of ‘unskilled’ workers in the UK and suggests that it is through specific yet often overlooked skills and knowledge that street traders produce markets as public space.

Vic market on Saturday, 18 September

On Saturday morning we took the train to visit the most important street market of Central Catalonia which takes place on the square of Vic on Tuesdays and Saturdays. To the surprise of those who hadn’t yet visited the historical market square, it was packed with visitors and included a great variety of stalls, including livestock, perfumes and truffles.

As we did in Walthamstow market during our first meeting in January 2020, we also took the time to carry out individual observations in the market of Vic, which we then shared and discussed during lunch. Questions such as segregation at the marketplace and the production of locality through ‘traditional’ products arose, offering very useful insights to the Spanish case study. 

Meeting with Bet Piella, the counsellor of Economy of Vic

The market visit ended with a brief meeting with the Counsellor of Economy of Vic, Bet Piella, who told us about the history and significance of the market for the city. Similarly to some markets in the Netherlands, in Vic too all the traders’ licenses will expire in 2025, which offers the city council a chance to rearrange the stalls, putting some traders’ permanence at the market under threat.

Our meeting ended with farewell drinks next to the Market of El Born –once Barcelona’s wholesale market— and with plenty of hopes and ideas for our next consortium meeting in May 2022 in Switzerland.

Farewell drinks in Barcelona