Graphic design · Cartography · 2020–2026
Estat de
les obres
State of the works
Six years of drawing Barcelona’s metro: a copy of the official map, a status map for Line 9 that a newspaper picked up, proposals nobody asked for, and a network for 2040.
Every map on this page is rebuilt from its own data and meant to be handled: scrub through the editions, straighten the city, throw the switches.
Used by the Diari de Barcelona in 2024. Not affiliated with TMB, FGC or the Generalitat.
- Maps A redrawn network map, eight status maps and a 2040–2050 poster.
- Systems Three angles, one stroke, one gap: the rules a metro map runs on.
- Data Every percentage and promised date on Line 9, kept since 2022.
- Proposals Small changes to the network, and a train back to Caldes.
- Ideas What six years of drawing one system taught me about design.
Sense servei Out of service
Caldes de MontbuiSense servei
No service · Sin servicio
Caldes de Montbui has been waiting for a train since 1939.
It had one once. El Calderí ran about fifteen kilometres down to Mollet, on and off, from 1880 until January 1939, and never came back.
I grew up in a flat on the old station grounds. Barcelona was where I could be myself, and there was no train to get there.
So at 19 I started drawing its metro. I liked the system as much as the way out, and I haven’t stopped.
- 1880El Calderí opens
- 1932Service stops: lorries carry the granite now, and Sagalés runs buses to Barcelona
- 1937Back, for the war
- 1939The last train
- 1959Sagalés takes over the company holding the railway’s rights; the station grounds become a bus park
- 1960The tracks come up
- 1980The station building is knocked down, still structurally sound
- 1981Parc de l’Estació opens, after the town campaigned for it
Parc de l’Estació
Under construction or planned · Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors
El metro obre a les 05:00.
En servei In service
First, I copied.
Before I had opinions about the network, I wanted its handwriting. I redrew the official map until mine and theirs were hard to tell apart, down to the legend panel and the footer in three languages.
Lines run horizontal, vertical or at 45°, and every turn is 45° or 90°. A tick points at its station’s name, a ring is an interchange, a capsule means a walk down a corridor. Twelve colours, and not one more.
It’s the least original work on this page. Everything else stands on it.
No és a escala Not to scale
Then I learned to lie properly.
Underground, Barcelona is a mess. Lines bend around old foundations, dive under each other, run a kilometre without a stop and then cram three stations into the centre.
A good metro map throws away almost everything true about the city (distance, direction, the curve of the coast). It keeps the one thing you need on a platform with a train coming: what connects to what.
On this map, a kilometre of L7 looks 1.0× as long as a kilometre of L9 Sud.
The map leaves out most of the city. That’s the job.
En construcció Under construction
Then I started keeping score.
Work on Line 9 started in September 2003, in Badalona. It was meant to be finished in 2007. When it’s done it’ll be the longest underground metro line in Europe, and it has been under construction for 23 of my 25 years.
It’s also personal. When I went to college, Line 9 from La Sagrera to Campus Nord was my route. Finished, it would have saved me hours every week.
The official map only shows what’s open. I wanted to see the gap: every station’s civil works, every percentage, every promised date. So I started a second map, and I’ve redrawn it by hand eight times since.
In April 2023 the official progress reports stopped, and for the next year the figures only came out through formal information requests. The map kept going. In March 2024, writing about how little was being published, the Diari de Barcelona used my December 2023 edition to show where the works stood.
Estat de les obres de les línies 9 i 10 del metro de Barcelona
edició 1, sense data
Al mapa
- Estacions del viaducte: 100% 98%, 2021Viaduct stations: 100% 98%, 2021
- El tram Collblanc–Zona Universitària utilitza 1 dels dos nivells del túnel per a l’extracció de terra de la tuneladoraThe Collblanc–Zona Universitària section lends one of its two tunnel levels to the boring machine, to take the earth out
Eight editions of the same tunnel. Drag the train.
- Campus Nord 2028 23%0%
- Manuel Girona 2028 No iniciada
- Prat de la Riba n/d 23%0%
- Sarrià 2026 14%
- La Bonanova 2026 23%0%
- El Putxet 2028 14%0%
- Lesseps 2025 92%0%
- Parc Güell n/d No iniciada
- Sanllehy 2026 42%0%
- Guinardó/Hospital de Sant Pau 2025 95%0%
- Pl. Maragall 2026 97%0%
- La Sagrera 2025 100%100%
- Sagrera | TAV 2025 100%100%
I si…? What if?
Then I started arguing with it.
Once you can draw a network, you start seeing its seams: the branch that went the wrong way, the transfer that’s really a walk down a corridor. These are proposals nobody asked me for.
Each one is a single change. Throw the switch and see what it does to everything else.
Canvia l’agulla Throw the switch
- 1
Sagrada Família
- The problem
- L2 and L5 meet at Sagrada Família. The original plan had L2 going north to Vall d’Hebron and L5 east to Badalona, until a problem with the tunnel’s depth during construction changed it.
- The move
- Give each line back the branch it was planned with: L5 carries on east to Badalona, L2 turns north to Vall d’Hebron.
- Estat
- proposta. Ningú m’ho ha demanat. (Proposal. Nobody asked me.)
- 2
The middle of Line 9
- The problem
- Both ends of L9 and L10 already meet L5, at Collblanc and at La Sagrera. Lots of people ride L5’s central section for the trips they’d make on L9 once its middle is finished.
- The move
- Join L9 and L10 up through L5’s stations (Collblanc, Sants, Hospital Clínic, Diagonal, Verdaguer, Sagrada Família, La Sagrera) instead of the route along the top of the city.
- Estat
- proposta. Ningú m’ho ha demanat. (Proposal. Nobody asked me.)
- 3
L4 and L11
- The problem
- L11 is five stations long, from Trinitat Nova to Can Cuiàs. L4 ends in a branch up to Trinitat Nova.
- The move
- Close L4 into a circle that links the whole north of the city, and turn L11 into a real line: from Ciutat Meridiana all the way to the Vila Olímpica.
- Estat
- proposta. Ningú m’ho ha demanat. (Proposal. Nobody asked me.)
- 4
L13
- The problem
- L3 and L4 come within a kilometre of each other at Drassanes and Barceloneta, on the same stretch of waterfront. Going from the west of the city to the sea or Poblenou today means changing in the centre.
- The move
- One tunnel under Passeig de Colom, from Drassanes to Barceloneta. L13 runs alongside L3 from Sant Feliu, through the tunnel, and alongside L4 all the way to La Sagrera.
- Estat
- proposta. Ningú m’ho ha demanat. (Proposal. Nobody asked me.)
Projectada Planned
Then I drew the one that doesn’t exist yet.
This is Barcelona’s metro as I think it will look around 2040–2050: everything in the official plans, plus a few moves of my own.
It’s also the first map where I stopped imitating anyone. No logos, no borrowed legend. A lowercase title, cream paper, the sea in pale teal, the Llobregat and the Besòs as the edges of the world.
Propera estació Next stop
So I drew Caldes a train.
Metro del Vallès, Zona de la Riera de Caldes. Two new lines: C1 from Sabadell through Castellar and Sentmenat, and C2 down to Mollet, more or less where El Calderí used to run. And the R9, all the way from Plaça de Catalunya.
All three end at l’Estació, outside the window I grew up behind.
It’s the least realistic map on this page. Nobody asked for it. I’d still be first on the platform, and I wouldn’t have far to walk.
Caldes de MontbuiSense servei
ficció
Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors. C1, C2 and the R9 to Caldes are my proposal: C1 and the R9 use the S2 and FGC’s planned extension to Castellar, and C2 relays El Calderí’s old trackbed.
The map as I drew it
- C1Sabadell Plaça Major – Caldes de Montbui
- C2Caldes de Montbui – Mollet Sta. Rosa
- S2Barcelona Pl. Catalunya – Sabadell Parc del Nord
- R9Barcelona Pl. Catalunya – Caldes de Montbui
- R3L’Hospitalet de Llobregat – Puigcerdà, via Vic (Rodalies)
Redrawn from the proposal artwork. Original ↗
Normes d’ús Rules of use
What six years of this taught me
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1. Learn the handwriting first. I copied the official map before I changed a single line. Every project starts the same way for me: finding out how the thing already works, and why.
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2. Leave things out on purpose. A metro map is mostly what’s missing. Most of my design work is deciding what the person in front of it doesn’t need to see yet.
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3. Keep the map true after launch. Eight editions, including a year with the boring machine parked at Mandri. I’m the one still maintaining the thing a year after it ships.
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4. Make public things readable. When the official progress reports on Line 9 stopped, my map kept going, and a newspaper ended up using it. Turning public information into something people can actually check is the work I want to do more of.
Properes sortides Next departures