EL PERIÓDICO launched an initiative a few days ago, Barcelona among allin which he calls on readers to contribute, with the imminent horizon of the municipal elections of May 28, his proposals on five challenges (urban mobility, economy/tourism, access to housing, cleanliness and security). Those who, as has been made clear in the successive municipal barometers, focus the interest and concerns of the people of Barcelona. One more proof of the opportunity to open the debate to all voices, to make it permeate the political discussion beyond the usual partisan trenches and to focus on the substance is the launch of other platforms that try to reflect citizen concerns and transfer them to the political groups of the city.
This Friday it was the turn of a hundred civic, social and economic entities, who have grouped their proposals and demands in the document ‘Pro BCN 2023. Present i futur de Barcelona’. These include entities with very different profiles, from the Barcelona tourism consortium, the hotel or restaurant associations, the Barcelona Oberta association or the Casal d’Infants del Raval. All these agents, and those who choose other forms of participation or protest, represent different sectors, interests, concerns and legitimate ideologies of civil society in the broadest senseand there is no better time than this for them to concur and publicly expose their reasons.
Now is the time to debate priorities and for the different options that compete in the elections to formulate their specific proposals for management and future projects.
The representativeness and social support of one of the visions of the city will be elucidated next May, at the polls. And they should be followed by the creation of broader and more transversal majorities, both with the formation of formulas that allow effective and stable management work and with the definition of a lowest common denominator city that political majorities should make possible both from within and from outside the municipal government.
The platform presented this Friday proposes a series of proposals that are characterized by their inclusive character and the will to reach that consensus. How to facilitate the airport be able to feed the dynamism of the city as an international ‘hub’, but open to dialogue so that it is possible in a sustainable way. The promoters also aspire to an objective as ambitious as 20% of the park of households of the city has a social management protected from the tensions of the free market, at the same time that the positive value of the tourism, it is requested not to impose unnecessary obstacles to economic activity and initiatives such as the opening of shops on holidays or hotel activity in public spaces are supported. These entities also make a call to reach a consensus between the maintenance of the mobility of the private vehicle and the necessary restrictions on combustion vehicles and the promotion of electric and collective transport. In this sense, the programmatic platform proposed by this sum of entities already represents a first step in the formation of that desirable consensus, as broad as possible, on how to face the future of the city.