Jardins de les Tres Xemeneis

It's one of the most successful parks in the city—probably because they never let one of those overpriced knucklehead designers get hold of it. The 'Park of the Three Smokestacks', in fact, seems at first glance the polar opposite of everything that is modern, yuppified Barcelona.

Once this was the site of an electric power plant, and they've kept the smokestacks and some giant, inscrutable chunks of machinery as post-industrial decoration.

This is a park for the neighbourhood kids, with spaces for rollerbladers, skateboarders, basketball and ping pong, and the kids have been allowed to paint many of the murals on the surrounding walls under the city's artistic supervision.

The site holds a lot of historical memories. The power plant was the home of La Canadença, a Canadian-Belgian firm that also ran the city's streetcar lines. An epic strike here in 1919 was one of the landmarks of the Catalan trade union movement.