It's called Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles Urban Park and, when it is ready, it will be about six hectares. It will be located in the renovated Praça de Espanha, the largest project of Fernando Medina's current term in office, which was scheduled for completion by the end of 2020. Despite the delay in the construction, justified by the pandemic and with the collapse in September of last yearHowever, its fruits are beginning to be visible. After the completion of the road and cycling network last summerPart of the new garden is now open to the public.
Still with construction on site, plants yet to be planted and a stream yet to appearit is already possible to start enjoying a slice of the Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles Urban Park. The inauguration took place this Sunday, June 13, Saint Anthony's Day, also Lisbon's day.
The idea of the municipality is to open the new Urban Park as the different parts are ready. For now, it is already possible to pass under the iconic São Bento Arch - structure that in the middle of the 20th century moved from São Bento Street to there, being part of the landscape of Praça de Espanha since 1998 -, enjoy a wide grassed area and several pedestrian paths, play in the new playground or jump over where, in the future, if all goes well, the Rego CreekThis is a water line that, with the construction of the traffic circle decades ago, now runs under dirt and asphalt.
The project for the new Urban Park - now named after Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles, the architect who designed much of the green structure and who left us in 2020 - was designed by the NPK studio. The work, budgeted at 16 million euros (which includes the cost of the road network and the garden), is not expected to be fully completed until October, around the time of the local elections. Also under construction are a cafeteria, kiosks, the new subway entrance and a retention basin for draining large amounts of water, destined for the Alcântara WWTP, according to Público newspaper.
As for Pedestrian bridge that will connect to Gulbenkian will only exist later - it will be a separate contract, with the public tender already finished and signed contract. This equipment will be important to connect the two green spaces, the Gulbenkian (whose extension finally went into construction) and the one in Praça de Espanha - which, in turn, is also close to the Green Corridor of Monsanto, which passes right next door in Campolide.
For the Lisbon City Hall, the new Gonçalo Ribeiro Telles Urban Park was a conquest to the tar. "We have to start taking space from the tarmac, and people want that. They want shade, they want benches to sit on, they want to watch the kids run around freely."commented José Sá Fernandes, councilman in charge of the green structure, to the Lisbon newspaper Mensagem. Sá Fernandes says it's this way "the future of cities" and that, although the automobile continues to dominate the surroundings, the Plaza de España is now also "a place for people". The elevation of the garden near its outer limits seeks to create an acoustic and also visual barrier to hide the trafficThis strategy has already been used in other spaces, such as the Campo Grande garden or, in a different way, Campo das Cebolas.
The future of the Praça de Espanha will only be complete with the developments that are planned for the area: the Portuguese Institute of Oncology will be enlarged, the new headquarters of the Jerónimo Martins group will be here, as well as the new headquarters of the Montepio bank; and already on Avenida dos Combatentes, a new set of 280 houses will be built. Planned for the area, there are also three GIRA shared bike stations, following the cycling intersection that was born there and points to different parts of the city: Benfica, Sete Rios, Avenidas Novas, Campolide or Cidade Universitária.
