Listening to the mayors of Madrid, Barcelona and Valencia yesterday at the Miraflores Palace, the new Madrid headquarters of the Foment del Treball think tank, the refounded Barcelona Society for Economic and Social Studies (SBEES), Spain seemed different. And better. The courtesies that, sponsored by the moderator offices of the former minister, former president and former mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, were exchanged between José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Jaume Collboni and María José Catalá, respective councilors of three capitals that know they are competitors and proposed allies, The Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu –former mayor of Barcelona–, who was in charge of closing the event, really liked them.
“It is a privilege to listen to you,” Hereu said pleased, recalling that “coexistence is a condition for social and economic development.” The reunion between Gallardón and Hereu surely helped the atmosphere. The former mayor of Madrid recalled with special affection and gratitude the complicity of the former Barcelona councilor in promoting that Madrid Olympic candidacy that narrowly failed to materialize due to a poisoned question from Alberto de Monaco.
The inauguration of the Madrid headquarters of the SBEES, under the auspices of the president of Foment, Josep Sánchez Llibre, had the tones, the attendance and almost the solemnity of a reopening of the United States embassy in Moscow – or vice versa, do not be suspicious – and the three mayors knew how to read the occasion in those terms. Català and Collboni agreed in their way of introducing themselves – “València is back”, “Barcelona is back” – as if they were returning from a bad dream.
They spoke about the challenges of the three cities in a complicit key, the three agreed on the support for the large pending infrastructures – Mediterranean corridor, expansion of the port of Valencia and expansion of the Prat airport – and on the serious challenges of social cohesion that their big cities. “We cannot afford a two-speed Madrid,” said an Almeida with a sudden shine of social democracy. They talked about common interests in climate change, mobility, public-private collaboration and housing – although with different, even opposing, recipes – and agreed on demanding improvements in financing, powers and fiscal autonomy for local administrations.
Presented by the president of Agbar, Ángel Simón Grimaldos, who was preceded in the interventions by the presidents of the employers’ associations, Antonio Garamendi – who left a message for the vice president Yolanda Díaz not to turn social dialogue into a “monologue” –, Gerardo Cuervas and Miguel Garrido, the centrality of the role of companies in the great challenges facing cities and the country was defended, and everything was developed in terms of reciprocal kindness and considerations that did not seem feigned.
How little the country that spoke yesterday in the Miraflores palace resembled what is seen every day on the televisions that broadcast from the north of the capital. How little each of them even resembled themselves, when a microphone the color of chains is brought to them in the middle of the morning. And how far behind and how far Galicia was last night.
