The park begins with a building meant for control

Start with the structure that makes the whole park harder to romanticise. The Palau del Parlament was originally the arsenal of the Ciutadella, the fortress Philip V ordered after the defeat of Barcelona in 1714. Parliament's own history is unusually direct: the stronghold was built to secure control over the city and became a site of political repression, not simply an urban defence system. The arsenal survived the later demolition of most of the fortress and accumulated new uses before becoming the seat of the Catalan parliament. Look at its solid symmetry and ask what changed more radically: the architecture, or the institution occupying it?