The new City Council opted for a style of urban planning adapted to people, enabling the right to the city to be reclaimed. The County Plan of 1976, based on the politics of the previous, Francoist mayor, José María de Porcioles, contained a series of very aggressive urban planning measures for Gràcia that were hotly contested during the transition years.

After the 1979 municipal elections, some of the residents’ demands were taken up by the new council, in particular the need to scrap the County Plan and draw up a Special Plan for Gràcia.

On the instructions of the municipal government, a technical team submitted a study of the situation in Gràcia in 1981, which stressed that any urban plan should respect the strong cohesion in the neighbourhood on an architectural, urbanistic and historical level. It raised the need to put a stop to the predatory activity of the property sector and opt for renovation. This was the basis for a Special Gràcia Plan, which respected the neighbourhood’s integrity and discarded the grandiose Via 0 project envisaged in the County Plan, which would have meant carving open the neighbourhood with an expressway.