Let’s do a memory exercise: how many times in the last year have you heard Pedro Sánchez, Núñez Feijóo, Pere Aragonès or Isabel DÃaz Ayuso talk about the garbage collection system in their neighborhood, or about the mess of scooters and bicycles in the street , or the frequency of the subway you take every day to go to work? Few? Head? Probably none.
However, for all of us, that the garbage truck takes away the bag, that the subway runs with reasonable cadences or that the water that comes out of the tap tastes like water is more important than the umpteenth uproar over the renewal of the Judiciary.
Without wanting to trivialize the great issues that surround it – scavengers also need justice to work -, what is undoubted is that politics – and as will be seen later, Spanish politics in particular – has never had a special interest in this meticulous part of public management that is the government of cities.
And this despite the fact that 86% of the people who live in Spain live in urban areas, more or less extensive and populated.
In reality, if you think about it, empty Spain is more famous today than overpopulated Spain. It’s a contradiction. But it is so.
Better said. In Spain, it is a tradition for urban power to be a matter of little relevance. A political tradition derived from how our parents and grandparents shared power in the refounding of democracy in 1978 of the last century. On one side, the central government; on the other, the autonomous communities. And below and far away, the municipalities.
We must not forget an important detail of the transition: Tarradellas arrived in Catalonia before they did not let us elect our first democratic mayors. NarcÃs Serra in Barcelona, ​​Tierno Galván in Madrid. And so everyone.
But, over time, it has happened that today cities have become the tractor of countries. Around the world. The future depends on what happens there, how they are organized, how they grow, how they coexist and resolve their enormous contradictions, today more than a few decades ago. You may like it or not, but that’s how it is.
Most European countries noticed this change a long time ago. And they began to think about how their urban agglomerations should be governed. Italy, Germany, France thought about it… each in their own way reformed the political maps. Spain does not.
This is what the book presented in Barcelona on Tuesday afternoon by the political scientist Mariona Tomás – editor of the text in which fifteen other authors participate – and the sociologist Marc MartÃ-Costa is about.
Metrópolis sin gobierno (Tirant, 2023) is a book that is perhaps a little dense, but which goes into everything that has been written above. The invisibility of this meticulous policy that addresses what happens in the corner of the house. And the urgency to organize it better.
Anchored in the boundaries of a national map that no longer exists.
The idea is simple to understand if we attend to our daily lives: how many times during the week have you crossed the boundaries of your district, your municipality, your county to go to work, study, love, shop… ? And if this is so, shouldn’t we govern ourselves in a way that is in accordance with this same logic?
It would not only be better, but even, possibly, fairer. Because transferring this common logic to a shared policy could lead to a more correct redistribution of resources. Cultural, health, residential, environmental resources… Almost everything. This is the necessary recognition of metropolitan realities in Spain that the book addresses.
Postscript: if you have been convinced by the idea, don’t forget that May 28 – municipal elections! – is an auspicious day to take sides for those who best defend this necessary innovation.
