Plaça de la Independència — A Modern Square for a New Civic Identity
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Transcript
Plaça de la Independència developed outside the tight medieval core in the nineteenth century, on land associated with the former convent of Sant Agustí. Its regular arcades and open geometry contrast sharply with the irregular lanes across the Onyar.
The name commemorates resistance during the Peninsular War, when Girona endured famous sieges against Napoleonic forces. That memory was later embedded in urban space as modern Spanish and local identities were being negotiated.
The square therefore combines expansion and commemoration. It is not an ancient civic centre but a nineteenth-century attempt to make public space orderly, commercial and politically meaningful.