Jardins de Carme Claramunt Barot

Les Corts is usually the part of Barcelona where people go to buy high-end sneakers at L'Illa Diagonal or worship at the altar of Messi at Camp Nou. It’s a neighborhood of suits, shopping bags, and sterile glass towers. But on the corner of Carrer de Joan Güell and Carrer d'Europa, the concrete gives way to something heavier. The Jardins de Carme Claramunt Barot isn’t just another patch of urban greenery designed to satisfy a city planning quota. It’s a site of memory, a quiet reclamation of a ground that saw some of the darkest days of the 20th century.

This garden sits on the footprint of what was once the Presó de Dones de les Corts—the Les Corts Women's Prison. From 1936 to 1955, this wasn't a place of leisure; it was a warehouse for the 'undesirables' of the Franco regime. The name on the plaque belongs to Carme Claramunt Barot, a woman whose story is a visceral reminder of how petty and cruel history can be. Carme wasn't a high-ranking general or a famous revolutionary. She was a shopkeeper from Badalona, betrayed by a neighbor who wanted her inheritance. On April 18, 1939, at five in the morning, she became the first woman executed by a firing squad at the notorious Camp de la Bota. She was 41 years old. Her last letter to her aunt is a gut-punch of dignity in the face of state-sponsored murder.

When you walk into these gardens today, you’re stepping onto the site of the prison’s former orchard and courtyard. It’s an 'interior d'illa'—one of those classic Barcelona interior block spaces—that has been opened up to the street. It’s peaceful now. You’ll see local grandparents sitting on the benches, kids from the nearby schools chasing each other around, and the occasional office worker eating a sandwich in the shade. But the ghosts are still there. Just a few meters away stands the 'Monument a la Presó de Dones de les Corts,' a collection of six massive stones brought from different parts of Spain, representing the origins of the women who were held here in overcrowded, miserable conditions run by an order of nuns who believed in redemption through suffering.

If you’re hunting for lush, manicured greenery, this might not be the most beautiful spot in the city in the traditional sense. There are no manicured rose bushes or ornate fountains here. It’s a functional, modern urban space. But it’s one of the most important things to do in Les Corts if you actually want to understand the city beneath the tourist lacquer. It’s a place that forces you to acknowledge that the modern, high-octane Barcelona we see today was built over a layer of silence and repression.

The garden was officially inaugurated in March 2023, part of a long-overdue effort to 'feminize' the city’s map and honor the women who were erased from the official narrative for decades. It’s a small victory for memory. If you’re visiting the nearby shopping districts or heading to a match, take twenty minutes. Sit on a bench. Look at the stones. Think about Carme Claramunt and the thousands of others who passed through these vanished walls. It’s not a 'must-see' for the Instagram crowd, but it’s a place that demands respect. It’s a reminder that even in a city as obsessed with the future as Barcelona, the past is never truly buried—it’s just waiting for someone to say its name.