“We must fight for the city of Barcelona to regain the strength it had”, the Junts per Catalunya candidate, Xavier Trias, claimed this Friday in the municipal elections on May 28, which he is running with the Trias brand for Barcelona. In his opinion, the current municipal government, made up of the commons of Ada Colau and the socialists of Jaume Collboni, does not fight for the competitiveness of the city, does not claim the necessary investments before the central government and is committed to degrowth, as he has indicated in an act on their economic proposals.

“The investments we need are not made and both Mr. Collboni and the mayor don’t see them raising their voices,” lamented Trias, alluding to the fact that their parties are the ones that support the central government coalition. The former mayor has pointed out that the first time he ran for municipal elections to lead the Catalan capital, in 2003, it had been said that La Sagrera station would be ready in 2008 and that Sants would have been finished before that. “Now they tell us that in 2028 the one in La Sagrera and the one in Sants is still not there. Delaying these investments makes us lose competitiveness. Competitiveness is time,” he complained.

“If a city loses 8 or 10 years, it loses competitiveness because the others do grow. We have to reverse this situation, we will change this situation. That is why it is very important that there be a change in the city”, the post-convergent candidate concluded.

For his part, the former Minister of Business and Knowledge Ramon Tremosa, who is on the Trias list, stressed that Barcelona “cannot compete without the infrastructure of a normal country”. “We are talking about infrastructure deficits that everyone recognizes in Catalonia, business groups, employers’ associations, unions, professional associations, political parties…”, stated the leader of JxCat. “We miss the demands from the Barcelona mayor’s office, clear demands and demands on the Government of Madrid for the infrastructure deficits”, continued the also deputy of the Parliament, who stressed that the AP-7 is experiencing a situation of “growing collapse” , affecting traffic throughout the metropolitan area of ​​the Catalan capital. “Colau and Collboni do not say anything,” he insisted.

At the event, which took place in the Poblenou district, the group also called for a different management model for El Prat airport and for the expansion to be decided from Catalonia and not from the Aena offices. Tremosa has reproached the central Executive for rescuing the “unknown” airline Plus Ultra in the midst of a pandemic and for not helping the flight connecting Barcelona with California, with Silicon Valley, the “technological capital of the world”, remain operational after it Norwegian would have asked for help to maintain its base of operations. “They liquidate a flight to California and the Barcelona City Council does not say anything”, stressed the ex-minister, who also regretted that there are no direct flights between Barcelona and Tokyo and has linked the capacity of El Prat airport to better salaries and greater productivity in the city.

Tremosa has accused the socialist government of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero of flooding the Barcelona airport with low cost flights that were previously in Reus and Girona in the first decade of the 2000s, in collusion with the tripartites of the Generalitat, and has asserted that it Spain’s centralized airport management model, in which the State owns 51% of Aena, is a rarity in the world. According to the former minister, who has also been a member of the European Parliament, in most countries local administrations, regional governments as well as chambers of commerce play an important role in the management of this type of infrastructure. He has also pointed out that cross-subsidies between ports and airports in surplus with others in the State that have a deficit is contrary to European free trade regulations.

“The first thing we have to consider is how the El Prat airport and the Catalan airport system should work, and that should not be decided by the president of Aena [Maurici Lucena], it is a basic approach of non-dependence,” Trias remarked. about.

On the other hand, the former minister for Business and Knowledge has also revealed that the blue line of the Catalan capital’s metro, the L5 (400,000), has more passengers than Rodalies (350,000) and Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (320,000). so he has asked for investments so that there is a greater frequency of metros.

The ex-minister of Acció Exterior i Govern Obert, Victòria Alsina, who is ranked number four in the Trias for Barcelona candidacy, also took the floor at the meeting. The leader of Junts has accused the central government of not making it easier for European funds to reach Catalonia and she has opted to “promote the knowledge economy, linked to innovation and digitization”. “We don’t want to be a low cost city,” she exclaimed.

For this, it has prescribed recruitment and retention of talent as well as the recruitment of “foreign investment aligned with the priorities of the city.”

Joan Rodríguez, number eight on the list, has affirmed that the municipal government “has opted for degrowth and propaganda”, and has assured that the “only guarantee that there will be rigor instead of degrowth and the will to do things well facts instead of propaganda is Trias per Barcelona”