The always interesting urban exploration crew at Trackrunners have assembled all of their various trips down beneath the streets of Barcelona into one long super-post, an epic catalog of all things lost and subterranean in that Spanish coastal city.
The details are many, and they are awesome—from the long-exposure laser-like lights of passing trains to a whole generation's worth of old advertisements plastered as posters to the grimy walls.
Ruined stations named after kings and architects vie for space with urban legends of subway cars full of money sliding from bank vault to bank vault in the darkness. Stalactites drip polluted rainwater on the floor creating weird new technocolor mineralogies spreading out like rings on the pavement.
The whole thing is worth a look—click through to see more (much more!). Read about the "guy who used to live there [who] has been organizing and classifying his treasures for years," who apparently (a myth?) would cook and eat rats before dying of the flu and becoming consumed himself by feral wildlife. Take a look at the unused private station built specifically for a local shopping mall. Step into the many other shuttered and dust-filled dreams all too briefly seen shining with trespassers' flashlights below the streets.
And the post ends with its own unsolved mystery. "I can sleep better at night," the author, identifying himself as Charles Bronson, writes, "after being there for myself and realizing that no more metro derps are left behind. Well, there is still something to check, but not really fitting for this post. It remains an empty space which was earmarked for a new station in 2006. It was never even started and so is another story which will be held for another time, on another adventure." [Trackrunners]
All photos courtesy Trackrunners and used with permission.