The mayoress of Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Núria Parlon, will add her fourth term as head of the City Council with the third absolute majority. His leadership will allow laying the foundations for a great future for Baix Besòs.
Four terms, three with an absolute majority. Has there been a limit?
We always set limits, but I work as I go. The time will come when you have to close a stage, but in this case, after the pandemic we thought we had to re-introduce ourselves. With the day to day of municipal management, there is little time left to think about future scenarios.
What surprised you most about the electoral result, that Vox and PP entered the City Hall or that the Comuns disappeared?
That the PP would enter was very predictable, they had always had representation. Regarding the irruption of Vox, all the polls indicated that they would enter. It is a vote of malcontents who have positioned themselves on the extreme right. It is a Spanish nationalist vote angry about basic ideological issues.
In the investiture speech he extended his hand to the opposition. Do you trust Rufian to roll up his sleeves for Santa Coloma?
We have a very large majority. We want to have a cordial relationship with the opposition and listen to their proposals. It is necessary to reach an agreement on major city issues. Great consensus always leads to more successful policies. As an experience we have the pact for social and economic reconstruction as a result of Covid. An instrument that was born from the will to reach consensus and, if we did it once, we can repeat it.
But the great consensuses in politics are not always accessible
Consensus is reciprocal, we can reach out, but if the opponent sees you as the enemy to beat, there is nothing to do. You have to have a reciprocal attitude of empathy on both sides. Sometimes having such a large majority also causes the opposition to have a much more belligerent position.
It is difficult to oppose a large majority.
Majorities are solvent if they allow a government program to be carried out and at this point the opposition must know how to take advantage of its opportunity to be decisive in large agreements. You will find us open to listening to your ideas and proposals as long as they are executable, we can reach great agreements, beyond the entrenched positions that were seen in the investiture speeches.
Will you ask the government ministers who landed during the campaign to support ERC and who promised investments to carry them out?
There are campaign strategies that later pay dearly. They are not disguised. But once the campaign is over, the needs of citizens and educational centers persist. It cannot be that a minister says that he authorizes us to put air conditioners in schools, this is not becoming co-responsible but rather abandoning his powers. Education is the responsibility of the Generalitat and the municipalities, in any case, we accompany.
Precisely education is another of his priorities.
The metropolitan cities have a serious problem with the teaching stage from 0 to 3 years. The Generalitat has historically disengaged. It is a decisive stage for child development and it cannot be that the responsibility for this educational stage is transferred to the municipalities. We have to reserve land, build nurseries, etc. It is necessary to look for co-responsibilities beyond the campaign headlines. We have put on the table of the Ministry of Education an agreement to face the works of the Escola Millet and we are still waiting to sign the agreement.
Do you think the Generalitat is not complying with the municipalities?
They have come to fail their part until they have to go to court, which has forced them to pay what they owed us. They owed 2.3 million to the city of Santa Coloma. And obviously, they have made the I2 free but only paying for the place, not the services and associated costs. They have also caused waiting lists to increase. The Generalitat must assume this educational stage and not burden the municipalities with the waiting list. In Santa Coloma we will build three new nurseries, but the waiting lists will remain.
Care for the elderly is another of their claims.
Once the campaign is over, we are waiting for a meeting with Minister Campuzano to address the need for a second public residence and guarantee care for acute dependency, now without the spireal heating of the elections. It is necessary to address the care model for the elderly in Catalonia, not everyone should go to a residence.
In Santa Coloma they have already applied these intermediate solutions.
Indeed. The supervised apartments of Miguel Hernández or the transformation of commercial premises into affordable housing are an example. Through a good home care service, service can also be provided to the elderly who can continue living at home. There are multiple formulas that must be addressed from institutional loyalty.
What are you asking of the Catalan government?
In this new municipal stage and relationship with the Government of the Generalitat, I would like to meet people who work for a global model of attention to the different needs of the population, educational, care for dependency and even in the transformation of the territory.
Another priority, Security, seems that the indices favor them. What is your secret?
We do not stop descending in the statistics of criminal acts. We have recognized the authority of the police force and provided the necessary human and technical means. We make police coordination with Mossos, National Police and Civil Guard an asset. A key aspect is the prevention and specialization of the police force, the USIR works very well in the public space, with occupations. We have a model against criminal occupations that is working perfectly.
Will you continue with the transformation of the neighborhoods?
We will activate a new neighborhood law that will improve the entire part of the Center, but will also affect the neighborhoods in the southern zone that require special attention, such as Raval, Santa Rosa and Fondo. We will also continue with the Areas of Conservation and Rehabilitation of the neighborhoods.
Will it give new impetus to the promotion of employment?
La Ciba, Marie Curie and the expansion of the restoration school are three spaces that will allow competitive training for unemployed people and regulated training for professional integration. There are courses in Torribera, for waiters and cooks, which have a labor integration rate of more than 80%. Now we will make the leap to Vocational Training, including the Vinya de Can Sabater.
Incivility is another problem. Will they put video surveillance cameras?
Yeah. It is provided for in the electoral program and we will install them. We are preparing the appropriate permissions to ensure privacy.
Can Zam. Sports center and swimming pool. And the thermal water?
The thermal issue is complex. We are in the process of analyzing the waters. It is a great city project. Geothermal energy will be more difficult to apply, but the recreational aspect is more likely to be promoted earlier in the new Can Zam sports facility. We belong to the Associació de Viles Termals to promote the project. We are in the process of guaranteeing the quality of the water and the durability of the thermal pool.
They have an agreement with Sareb, which, unlike other municipalities, works.
They gave up a series of flats in which the type of action to be carried out was agreed to make them available for social rent. On the other hand, we also have several housing promotions scheduled within the framework of the AMB strategy. We are talking about 1,400 new homes in the city in different neighborhoods and the recovery of premises that can be converted into homes. Also other promotions for young people, such as Les Oliveres.
How will the conflict end with the Center’s Interior Reform Plan?
It will end in nothing. This complaint has a clearly political function. I am convinced that it will come to nothing. The only objective of the City Council has been that, after 30 years, the center can be dignified and open the promenade. It is a project that has been planned since 1914 and it is not normal for a city to have a center in these conditions. If the reparcelling has to be done again, we will do it. We must dignify the center and have public and private housing. We will also equip the Can Pata estate, which the City Council has acquired, and we will open a park in the Plaza de la Vila.
When I entered the mayor’s office for the first time, Besòs was a degraded space. Now it is a benchmark of high ecological value. What is left to do?
Jordi Pujol, Manuela de Madre and Pascual Maragall started. Now we must continue with the renaturation project that we have started and we already have the resources for a second and third phase. It has become a space for citizen enjoyment. It is a metropolitan eco-classroom, a visual eco-classroom that works with schools but also allows scientific work on biodiversity to be carried out.
The Besòs only lacked the Besart
It is the star project. The culmination of the Culture-Nature project. Besart will be the largest open-air urban art museum in the world. It also has an aspect of cultural revitalization linked to the museum part of the great works, with cultural activities, such as chamber concerts or dance activities.
How do you value the Generalitat joining the Besòs Consortium?
Good. It is perfect that the project of the Three Chimneys be promoted, but this territory has many other needs and we do not want to be recognized as a poverty corridor, but rather as a territory of opportunities, in terms of economics and citizen well-being. The AMB has also joined the Consorci and has promised to complement the strategy of the municipalities in terms of housing and has put on the table a planning for the deployment of public housing. This is what we want, competition in housing is also held by the Generalitat and therefore its intervention in the territory must be much more determined to avoid having first and second-class territories. The mayors of Baix Besòs will find us if they want to promote projects. You must remember that we are three mayors with an absolute majority.
Will they promote the Knowledge Triangle?
The project of the Three Chimneys, like the recovery of the Besòs, have a symbolic dimension to turn the economic and promotional attraction towards this territory. Each municipality has its potential that will act as tractors to multiply the attraction effect. Our bet is gastronomy and everything that has to do with the Food Campus and the School of Restoration, the dual FP, to generate opportunities in this field of Food and Health. Badalona has the biomedical hub and Sant Adrià the Three Chimneys Project and the UPC Campus. It is an area, the triangle of knowledge, a train that cannot escape us.
Will the mayors of Besòs soon start working together?
Yeah. I want to propose to Filo Cañete and Xavier García Albiol, a commission to manage the neighboring neighborhoods because we have to analyze many issues related to security, street markets, police interventions in these neighborhoods, etc. I will propose a quarterly meeting space to order all these issues between Sant Adrià, Badalona and Santa Coloma. We must be more efficient in managing resources.
With a socialist mayor, do you think that Barcelona will have another link with Besòs?
Jaume Collboni has a very incorporated look towards the Besòs. We have talked a lot about this topic. Also with Montcada i Reixac, which has a problem linked to substandard housing. We must provide a solution to this territory that is also completely carved by road infrastructure. We all know what needs to be done, a lot of work has been done on the Besòs Agenda, but now what remains is to lead the big projects but also the daily issues that affect the quality of life of citizens.
Before an electoral movement, his name always sounds for Madrid. If Pedro Sánchez asks you to go to work for the Government, what will he tell you?
The best way to respond to this is what Miquel Iceta says, from whom I have learned a lot: “I will go where the party sends me.” Right now I have just revalidated a large majority, we have an exciting project that I would like to promote. But no one is essential.
