Archivo Municipal

351. Today I had the pleasure of visiting the municipal archive of Barcelona, the Contemporary one though! The archives are divided upon the time frames. The one I visited has archives back from 1836. 
The reason why I had to visit the archive is because we have a client who is looking to invest in a building in Las Ramblas of Barcelona. The building has currently an office use and this client wants to turn this space into residential units.  In order to do this we need to ensure that the properties will comply with the Cédula de Habitabilidad document this document is issued by the Generalitat and it gives the ability of using a space for a residential purpose, confirming it complies with healthy and safety, and has sufficient space and sanitary conditions for a specific amount of people to live there. 
In order to convert an office space into a residential area in Barcelona one must look at the usage back when the building was initially constructed. in this case according to the catastro it was build in 1965. so we had the check the floor plans from back then and unfortunately the verdict was that it was an office space, therefore we will not be able to obtain the Cédula de habitabilidad document needed to convert this space into a residential one. If however, the original floor plan demonstrated it was residential we could have converted the space back to its original usage with no problem. 
Hope this helped! more info check the link below:

​http://ajuntament.barcelona.cat/arxiumunicipal/ca