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, favored by the moderator offices of the ex-minister, ex-president and ex-mayor Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, were exchanged between José Luis Martínez-Almeida, Jaume Collboni and María José Catalá, respective councilors of three capitals who know that they are competitors and they proposed to be allies, the Minister of Industry and Tourism, Jordi Hereu -former mayor of Barcelona-, who was in charge of closing the event, was very pleased. “It’s a privilege to listen to you”, Hereu said with pleasure, and reminded 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 the promotion of that Madrid Olympic candidacy that did not materialize because of little and a poisoned question from Albert of Monaco.
The inauguration of the Sbees headquarters in Madrid, 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 , don’t be suspicious – and the three mayors knew how to read the occasion in these terms. Catalá and Collboni agreed in the way they introduced themselves – “Valencia has returned”, “Barcelona has returned” – as if returning from a bad dream. They talked about the challenges of the three cities in an accomplice key, all three agreed on the support for the major pending infrastructures – the Mediterranean corridor, the expansion of the port of Valencia and the expansion of the Prat airport – and in the serious social cohesion challenges faced by its large cities. “We can’t afford a two-speed Madrid,” said an Almeida suddenly burnished by social democracy. They spoke of common interests in climate change, mobility, public-private collaboration and housing – albeit with different, even opposing recipes – and agreed to demand improvements in funding, competences and fiscal autonomy for local administrations. Presented by the president of Agbar, Ángel Simón Grimaldos, who were preceded in the interventions by the presidents of the employers’ associations, Antonio Garamendi – who left a task to the vice-president Yolanda Díaz not to turn the social dialogue into a “monologue” -, Gerardo Cuerva and Miguel Garrido, the centrality of the role of companies in the great challenges facing the cities and the country was defended, and everything was developed in terms of reciprocal kindnesses and considerations that did not seem feigned.
How little the country that spoke yesterday in the Miraflores palace resembled what you see every day on the televisions that broadcast from the north of the capital. How little they even resembled themselves, when a microphone the color of chains was brought to them in the middle of the morning. And how far back and how distant Galicia was last night.
