Goodbye to the Aquarama of the Barcelona Zoo, the home of the orca 'Ulysses'

The Barcelona Zoo will start demolishing the Aquarama next Tuesday.

The mythical tank where the dolphins and the iconic orca Ulysses did pirouettes will go to the ground.

The director of the zoo, Sito Alarcón, —far from sentimentality— maintains that the construction of the Aquarama was the result of a “pioneer” Barcelona and its destruction responds, once again, to leading a “change of mentality”.

“In the 1960s, the series about the

from the Miami aquarium, sparked interest in this type of installation worldwide,” Alarcón points out.

In 1962 the director of the zoo, Antoni Jonch, sent some workers to the Miami Zoo and they came back with the idea of ​​copying two dolphinariums: one in an open-air tank (Aquarama) and another closed (the dolphinarium).

They began with the construction of the first one, which opened the Mercè in 1968. "The importance given to having a dolphinarium was such that Franco visited the works and there was already a provisional dolphinarium with only one dolphin," recalls Alarcón.

The inauguration of the Aquarama, with Caribbean dolphins, was a success.

"The society of that time asked for the animals to jump through hoops, wet the visitors in the first rows... It was a copy of the American shows", he points out.

In the 1970s, the indoor dolphinarium, where shows were held in winter, came to an end.

In 1983 the orca Ulises arrived at the zoo.

She came from the Rioleón Safari park (Tarragona) where she had been two years after the owners bought her from the person who had captured her in Iceland.

“40 years ago, animals were still fished from the wild to be taken to a zoo.

That society is only a few decades old.

The Aquarama was too small for Ulises and in 1994 he took the animal by plane to Sea World in San Diego.

Ulises' last show was broadcast live on television, Pasqual Maragall was present as mayor saying goodbye to the orca and there were queues to see it”, he remarks.

The orca, with Copito de Nieve, were an emblem not only of the zoo but of Barcelona.

But society changes and in 2005 the World Association of Zoos and Aquariums (WAZA) begins to warn that dolphin shows must end.

In 2011, the Aquarama was no longer open to the public and is only used to rehabilitate seals or sea lions.

In 2015 it ceased to be used.

“In 1968 it was a modern and pioneering aquarium but it was already obsolete.

The best dolphinariums today are 10 times larger.

There was even a question of building a new dolphinarium, but in 2015 a committee of experts decided that there would be no captive cetaceans in Barcelona”, he recalls.

In 2017 Alarcón became the director of the zoo and drew up a plan in which the Barcelona park would only have animals in danger of extinction or extinct in the wild.

This is not the case for dolphins.

In the summer of 2020, all the dolphins from Barcelona were transferred to Greece.

“Spain still has 12 dolphinariums.

In Europe they are closing, it is true that much has been learned about cetaceans thanks to keeping them in captivity but now it makes no sense, ”she says.

A reserve will be built in the Aquarama area.

“We have to do works in other parts of the zoo and that is why we need the reservation.

It will be an area designed and modulated for different types of animals.

With air conditioning, with the ability to make it larger or smaller depending on the species that we place inside while we finish the works,” Alarcón reports.

“Around 30 dolphins have passed through the Aquarama.

With the demolition, the old model of the Barcelona Zoo has definitely fallen”, he maintains.

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