Passeig De Gracia Station

The long cavern, crowded with every possible form of average citizen, is buzzing with the excitement of wind and waiting passengers as metro cars speed through. You gaze up at the clock, trying to convince yourself of the accuracy of the predicted time between arrivals displayed above, and soon are lost in a dizzying calculation, distracted long enough to miss your train. Passeig de Gràcia is both one of the major avenues in Barcelona, Spain, and also one of its most important shopping and business areas, containing several of the city's most celebrated pieces of architecture. In terms of the cost of renting or buying property anywhere in this avenue, Passeig de Gràcia is nowadays regarded as the most expensive street in Barcelona and also in Spain, ahead even of Calle Serrano in Madrid. Formerly known as Camí de Jesús ("Jesus Road"), it used to be little more than a quasi-rural lane surrounded by gardens joining Barcelona and Gràcia, until the first urbanisation project in 1821 devised by the liberal city council, and led by Ramon Plana, who had to suddenly cancel his work due to the epidemics that were raging in Barcelona at the time. After the demise of the liberal government with the return of Absolutism in 1824, the project was taken up again by general José Bernaldo de Quirós, marquis of Campo Sagrado. The new avenue was 42 metres wide in 1827 and became a favourite place for aristocrats to display their horse riding skills and expensive horse-drawn carriages all through the 19th century.