In the end, now we can admit it, we vote an experiment. Those of us who voted for Ada Colau (and I include myself) knew it from the beginning. A woman with a degree in philosophy, exit of the anti-eviction platform, oblivious to politicking, why not? The Barcelona ivory tower, the ‘divine’ Barcelona, the Olympic and commercial and convergent Barcelona and PSC needed a change of scenery, something new, try. Why not try? house prices, gentrification, the floods of tourists spilling from cruise ships and the Ramblas as a long vomitory demanded a novel response; and the pragmatic Barcelona electorate gave it. Ada Colau has been mayor twice.
Her project: a less polluted city, more breathable, more walkable, and a homelier, more livable, more affordable city. Am I lying if I say that it was the two veins of the electoral mine? They were, at least, the two reasons why I voted for her. Her credentials as a floor activist and her principles as an urban garden woman twice justified my dropping the ballot at the ballot box. Therefore, I contributed to turning Barcelona into a laboratory. And now we have in hand the results of our experiment.
And I can’t vote for her again.
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Leaving criminality aside, the Colau experiment has shown that the left’s proposal for the large cities of Spain is An utopia and also a contradiction in terms: what is green and walkable makes it more expensive and gentrifies. This should be the teaching, at least, if we were in a democracy with the healthy intention of learning, that is, with an intention other than winning for the sake of winning and being right. Consell de Cent street, pedestrianized, strewn with ‘superilles’, has doubled the prices of its flats. Despite the attempt, no one puts a stop to the tourists. The neighbors leave. You remove cars, put trees, make a stretch beautiful and what do you have? Another mile of luxury.
Barcelona in these eight years vehemently expel more residents to the periphery. Looking for a rental house is torture, impossible, and all the attempts by the council to put a stop to the irascible growth of prices have gone to waste: even more in the areas that endured more municipal intervention. In the greenest So the Colau experiment already has a balance: a cuter, more luxurious, more expensive, more unequal city. We then have to learn, and we have to choose. Will others take note of the failure of this experiment? They better do it.