Previous state

The topography and a railway line constituted an impassable barrier between the neighbourhood of La Farigola and the rest of Cerdanyola del Vallès. Located on a mountain slope, the outlying area of La Farigola is a few metres above the route of the railway line. Lower down, at the level of the municipality, there is a river, the Riu Sec and, to complicate matters even further, between the infrastructure and the water is an area of land used as a rubbish tip by a company called Uralita, - which manufactures fibre cement roofing sheets – before it was known that the asbestos fibres in this material are a serious health hazard.

Once it had been confirmed that the company land was highly contaminated, the Council took action to seal it off. After that, however, its devastated appearance remained unchanged for decades. In 2009, the Council planned a road to run along the bank of Riu Sec, envisaging that educational and sports facilities would be constructed later, thus giving the place a more central role.

Description

The new Riu Sec square has a surface of more than seven thousand square metres. It consists of three gently sloping strips, always at less than 6%, so that the ground gradually rises in in keeping with the gradient of the land. These are paved with large precast concrete slabs and are separated by interstitial mounds of a softer appearance, planted with grass or covered with gravel. This form has provided a thicker layer to act as protection from the contaminated soil and has made it possible to plant big trees without risk of contact with it.

At the upper level is the entrance to a twelve-metre tower. At the top of this there is a platform-cum-lookout opening onto a footbridge paved with wooden boards and suspended from two metal beams of almost eighty metres in length. After crossing the railway lines, the bridge ends smoothly in La Farigola without placing any kind of obstacle in the way of people with reduced mobility.