Notes on urban treatment of Manlleu riverfront in the last half century

Since the 1980s many plans have been passed to restore Spain's urban riverfronts. This policy has focused above all on the planning of large cities standing on rivers (including Sevilla, Valencia and Zaragoza), but it has also had a notable impact, albeit less widely reported, on small and medium-sized towns with large riverfronts or sizeable zones of river-city interaction. In this paper, we analyse such a case of river-city interaction in the town of Manlleu, a settlement of some 20,000 inhabitants located on the middle reaches of the River Ter, in the north of the district of Osona in the province of Barcelona, and with one of the largest riverfronts in the whole basin. Specifically, we seek to analyse the extent to which the urban planning implemented since the 1960s has guided the organisation of the river and urban environments considered as an individual unit. Measures such as the substitution of urban horticultural plots with an ambitious river walkway and a town park are the subject of specific attention. We also examine the town's flood risk management program and the construction of a retaining wall in response to the 1940 autumn flood, and we discuss an urban conflict that has implications for both the river and the town in a highly symbolic part of the town centred on the river meander of La Devesa. In short, we find that, in the case of Manlleu, the increasing environmental awareness shown by the plans analysed has favoured the transformation of the town's riverfront into an element of fundamental importance.