Barcelona is like the phoenix, it decays and rises in cycles that mark its evolution. Throughout my life I have been able to observe two booms and two falls. The gray post-war city gave birth to the rebirth of the 1960s and 1970s, when it became the economic engine of Spain and the cultural hub of the Ibero-American world. It declined later with the oil crises and in the mid-eighties, Félix de Azúa published an iconic article comparing its deterioration with the sinking of the Titanic. Shortly after, the Olympic nomination was an energy boost.
In the nineties I had the opportunity to travel around the United States and see the magnetism that our city aroused; a wave that made it a desired destination for tourists and investors, in a world eager to tear down walls and cross borders.
But once again a fierce crisis confronted us with our own ghosts. The social upheaval projected in the 15-M of 2011 led to the president of the Generalitat having to access a Parliament surrounded by protesters who inveighed against him by helicopter. The reaction was to take refuge in the available utopia of the independence movement, which, far from the promised Ithaca, has led us on an introspective journey to nowhere, while the city government fell into the hands of a group of activists with no management experience.
I trusted at some point that, as had happened with other municipal lefts, the day-to-day needs would lead our mayoress to understand that truly progressive politics is built leaving aside apriorities and betting on good administration and reforms step by step. passed. But it has not been that way. She and her team continue to be installed in dogmatic gestures and chaotic management.
Our city is torn between continuing mired in the deep hangover of 15-M and the process or recovering the illusion. Despite everything, we Barcelonans see how the economic and cultural drives continue to beat and thousands of entrepreneurs, artists and digital nomads of all kinds are attracted by an open, tolerant and friendly environment. But that does nothing but show the need for a leadership that approaches problems with criteria and decision, allowing the latent dynamism to flow and articulating the multiple private initiatives around a collective project.
I do not believe that we should look for the new impetus in Barcelona in a single unifying project such as the Olympics or the exhibitions of 1888 or 1929. It is enough to take advantage of the opportunities that present themselves and have as a horizon a model of a city in which knowledge and knowledge flourish. the innovation. A greener and more sustainable city, with affordable housing for young people (objectives that we all share), can be achieved with incentive policies and weaving complicity with private initiative, but it will prove elusive if the effort to achieve it with impositions and prohibitions.
We are facing decisive municipal elections. It is essential that we go to the polls, since the result may depend on very few votes and, in the absence of an alternative coalition that gathers an absolute majority, the electoral regulations establish that the candidate with the most votes is elected mayor. Let’s each make our calculations thinking about the best for the city. And let’s not despise something so often reviled as the useful vote. If we want to bring about the change that Barcelona needs, let’s vote for a candidate who has a chance of being mayor.