Believe it or not, this lively square—now buzzing with people and surrounded by grand buildings—was once just a quiet stretch of land outside the medieval city walls. In the 19th century, Barcelona was growing fast, and the old walls were holding it back. That’s when urban planner Ildefons Cerdà imagined a bold new city layout, known as the Eixample. At the same time, a rival plan by Antoni Rovira i Trias proposed a central square here. Yet for decades, the idea remained on paper. It wasn’t until the 1888 Universal Exposition that the project gained traction, and in the early 1900s, the first clearing and development began.