Ernest Maragall (Barcelona, 1943) talks with EL PERIÓDICO in the Sant Martí district, at 22@, halfway between the Vila Olímpica and the Zona Fòrum, two milestones in the construction of the city that we know today that were conceived when his brother Pasqual took the helm and he the engine room of the town hall. He now chooses to revalidate the triumph, yes, pyrrhic, of 2019, hoping that, this time, he will open the doors of the Barcelona mayor’s office.
You have gone, in four years, from suffering, as you said, ‘a pact of shame between Ada Colau and Manuel Valls’, to supporting the budgets of the current municipal government throughout the term. Is it difficult for you to convey that you are also part of the opposition to Colau?
We are the alternative to Colau. And what we have done with the budgets has been to improve them, a lot. ERC is synonymous with a new era for the city, but looking forward, not back to the last eight or 12 years of municipal management.
Why in Barcelona has it cost so much for the administrations to bet on rental housing, something that has been the norm in Europe for decades?
In this country, all public housing policy was abandoned and everything was entrusted to the free market. There is a percentage of protected and affordable housing below 2% and with a market aggravated by the specific policies made by the city council that have helped to paralyze investment and have failed to meet the growth commitments of protected and affordable housing. The Generalitat should also have intervened years ago. And now it is doing it, with ERC in the Conselleria de Territori. We are now in a position to add resources from the two administrations. That is why we are talking about the 20,000 homes in the mandate, 8,000 at an affordable price. It is not an auction, like the ones carried out by Jaume Collboni.Wouldn’t it be more practical to think that the solution must be metropolitan?
The metropolitan solution is essential. Also. But we cannot settle the problem by transferring it to the metropolitan area. Barcelona must exercise its responsibility in this area. Where it makes sense to grow, where areas of new centrality can be foreseen. But first you have to do your homework as a municipality.
What do you think of the metropolitan articulation that Colau…?
Is there such a joint? Colau has resigned from the metropolitan area. He attends the plenary sessions, presides over them, gives the floor. But he never takes it. He does not intervene, he does not lead. He has accommodated himself to the socialist majority of the big metropolitan cities. They rule and let them do it. She makes some particular war, but without putting the big issues on the table. That is why there is no housing or mobility policy. That is why we have no influence on the Rodalies issue.
“Colau has resigned from the metropolitan area. He has accommodated the socialist majority. They rule”
Beyond finishing off the connection between Verdaguer and Macià, is the tram model through the center of Barcelona still valid?
The remaining section must be finished, it makes all the institutional and economic sense. So far the social utility has been shown to be quite efficient and hardly questionable. It remains to be seen how this surface infrastructure can not only not penalize, but also benefit the public space it crosses. And we will ensure that in the section between Verdaguer and Francesc Macià it is so. If we started the debate now, we might reach different conclusions. But we are where we are.
Municipal news orbited a year ago around safety and cleanliness. Now, they have all but disappeared as a topic of daily discussion. Do you draw any conclusion?
The two issues should be part of the normality of the city. A decent level of security and a high level of quality in the maintenance of public space and cleanliness. And since we didn’t have it a year ago (and it’s still not at the right level), it’s normal for it to occupy that central space. In the case of cleaning, it is about governing and managing the relationship with contractors well. Security is something more structural, because there is consolidated and organized crime in the city. And that requires justice, coordination of police forces, changing issues such as the immigration law that facilitate this type of crime and calls for policies of social transformation. Training, occupation and housing, that is the best formula against insecurity. The rest is emergency care.
“Trias has not understood what climate change is, nor sustainable mobility”
Xavier Trias reappears in the municipal arena, eight years after losing against Colau. What changes do you see in the city model that he now proposes, after these years of reflection?
It seems as if he had spent eight years away from Barcelona and it is difficult for him to appreciate the profound changes that have taken place. And he is still installed in the same tics and dogmas and economic strategies. Trias would be a setback. He has not understood what climate change is and neither what is sustainable mobility, nor sustainable housing policies, such as rehabilitation and energy transition. He is reproducing the same criteria for which we are now paying the consequences, because they are the ones he applied in his mandate, between 2011 and 2015. A vision of an open bar with tourist apartments and tourist massification. Subsequent governments have not been able to overcome that Trias model.
ERC introduced the concept of ‘superilla’, in Gràcia, in 2010. You now opt for a general regulation to widen the sidewalks throughout the city.
We start from a global vision of the city and the definition of criteria that the public understands and assumes as to how we are to achieve global pacification and a gradual reduction in traffic, in step with the implementation of new public transport commitments. Everything to achieve that 60% of public space must be for pedestrians. And this is more ambitious than acting in 21 streets that also have counterproductive effects. From here on, ‘superilles’, yes, when they play. As was done in the Portal del Àngel decades ago or in Gràcia.
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Of the 2,000 proposals that make up your electoral program, which of them do you think drinks more from the way of thinking and doing of your brother Pasqual?
The extension of the Diagonal towards the Llobregat gives an idea of urban ambition, in the dimension that we all remember from Pasqual’s stage. But we must put this project at the same level as everything that will have to be done to ‘recover the north’, that is, to ‘build the city’ along the Besòs, from the sea to Montcada. The Diagonal operation makes sense as soon as we can convert this new space into an urban and green one that links with the green of Collserola.