Eva Parerapresident and mayorable de Valents in the Catalan capital (Barcelona pel Canvi when Manuel Valls headed it), he is optimistic and believes that the brand will be represented at the Barcelona City Council on May 28.
Most of the surveys say that you will be left out of the Barcelona City Council
The feelings are positive. Our internal surveys tell us that Valents and the PP can enter. Our brand is less well known, only a year and a half old. I think that only Valents will end up entering Barcelona: neither Ciutadans, nor PP, nor Vox.
In 2019 you were number 4 on the Manuel Valls list. How far is that project, right? And with Valls you don’t talk, he has counted.
Is very far. With Valls we send each other a message from time to time, Merry Christmas, but we don’t talk.
“With Manuel Valls we send each other a message from time to time, Merry Christmas, but we don’t talk”
Would you have liked a constitutionalist coalition in the municipal elections? With Ciutadans, for example?
The great capital of Ciutadans in the territory is today in Valents. We went to Madrid, because citizens and the PP do not decide anything in Catalonia. We offered a coalition and they don’t even want to hear about it. It is a mistake, Valents is above them today: we will present more candidacies on May 28 than PP, Ciutadans and Vox combined. I think we could win in Sitges, be in government in Castelldefels and Barcelona, be decisive in Tarragona.
“I think that Valents could achieve victory in Sitges, be in the government in Castelldefels and Barcelona, be decisive in Tarragona”
If we traveled back in time to 2019, what would you tell Eva Parera that you went with Valls?
I would not tell the Eva Parera of that time not to show up, because that has allowed Valents to be born, which has nothing to do with Barcelona pel Canvi. That decision was the right one.
And if you traveled to Eva Parera who was in Unió Democràtica de Catalunya, what would you say?
I would tell him that he should have left Unió before, without a doubt. And that he should have been more forceful and insist more on defending the break with Convergència. But I had the power that I had in the executive, I was the last to arrive. I would tell him that he should have been more forceful in his message behind the scenes, because behind the scenes it already was. It was a mistake.
“I would say to Eva Parera who was in Unió Democrática that she should have left before the game, without a doubt”
Some of his adversaries often recall his speech in the Senate defending the independence referendum.
No one has to remind me, it is evident that it was I who made that speech. And it is also evident that this was a mistake and that is why Valents was born. One of the reasons is to combat that. And to those who remember it, I would tell them to place themselves in the present and learn from my ability to rectify mistakes.
Barcelona opens to fine for refusing to attend in Catalan. What do you think?
Barcelona is a bilingual city, no matter how much imposition is made from the city council. They launch a plan to impose one language over another with runaway inflation, in a city with an excessive tax burden and when the effects of the covid crisis and the war in Ukraine are still dragging. While the Generalitat imposes Catalan in the classroom, Colau, Collboni and Ernest Maragall want to impose it on the streets and in the city’s businesses. There is no difference between Colau and Collboni and the independentistas.
You affirm that Valents is the only group that really exercises opposition.
The Colau government itself believes it, which only answers to me. He does not reply to others, because the real annoying opposition is us. ERC has not exercised opposition.
“I don’t think Trias will win. Nobody believes it. Colau has chosen him as a direct rival to confront because he believes that he is not the direct rival”
How do you see Together? Lead the polls.
The inmates say otherwise. That Junts grows with Trias but that he is still the fourth force. I don’t think I win. Nobody believes it and the proof is that Colau has chosen him as a direct rival to confront because he believes that he is not the direct rival.
Who is the best placed candidate?
Don’t know. For now Colau holds on, which surprises me. Either she has a hidden vote and the people who will vote for her do not say so, or there are many subsidized people, more than we thought. The perception on the street is that people are asking for a change but Colau holds up in the polls. Perhaps it is because she takes part of the CUP vote. But she holds on. People have to react.
That it is not the mayor who wins seems normal to him.
Completely. In the Generalitat, a party governs that has not won. It is democracy.
Many possible formulas are heard for after May 28. What if Collboni with Trias, what if a tripartite.
Collboni is wrong if he thinks that the Junts councilors will have enough.
And who would be the third leg of a Junts-PSC?
No; who is the third leg of a PSC-Valents?
Let’s go back to the past. Therefore, would you repeat the vote for Colau who, together with Valls and Celestino Corbacho, allowed her to be mayor?
To look the other way was to place Ernest Maragall and ERC at the head of the city council a few months after the sentence of the ‘procés’.
You are critical of the management of the local government. By subject: mobility.
We had a city open to the sea and the Metropolitan Area and Colau is closing it. Let people not enter the city with their vehicle. Let’s complicate his life. And internally, let’s isolate neighborhoods and districts from each other. And all with the insane theory that you will not take the car and that it will disappear. But cars are driven by people and people don’t disappear.
Do you think that the green axes, the reform of Consell de Cent or that of Via Laietana are reversible?
Yes. They are reversible. And you have to remove the bike lanes from the expressways. The expressways have to be again.
Don’t believe in the 30 km/hour limit? Or on the radars in front of the schools?
It is that at 30 km/hour you cannot circulate, you cause accidents. If you are braking so that a radar does not fine you, it is that it does not work. The radars of the schools would be removed and the Urban Guard or civic agents would be put on. Radars do not prevent accidents. The Urban Police, yes.
Access to housing is extremely complicated in Barcelona.
Tell me, I’m looking for a flat.
“I pay 1,700 euros, I live on Calle de Ravella, in Sant Gervasi. I’m looking to buy, because I want to invest to leave assets to my daughter, who will have a very difficult time. I’m having a hard time finding it”
Do you live for rent? How much do you pay?
I pay 1,700 euros, I live on Calle de Ravella, in Sant Gervasi. I am looking to buy, because I want to invest to leave assets to my daughter, who will have a very difficult time. I’m having a hard time finding. I’m not rich, I don’t have money to spare.
What is the solution to the housing problem?
It’s very simple: build, build, build. It is necessary to eliminate the 30% of housing protected by obligation, the right of first refusal and retraction and the limitation of rental prices.
Do we have room to build more?
It is true that the sea and the mountains limit the city, but we have 83 pieces of land to build on, Barcelona can grow in height in many districts and we must reach an agreement with other municipalities in the Metropolitan Area to build.
Safety. How do you see the management of the government in this section?
It hasn’t worked. We have a government that sends the message that it likes incivility. And when you don’t fight incivility, incivility turns into petty theft. Then to a robbery with violence. Then to a doorway in a house. And then to an occupation. And you have the police at the police station so that the crime rates do not rise and they give you an electoral bill.
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Cleaning.
You have to clean. The elections arrive and yes it can be cleaned. The Plaza de Sant Jaume is irrigated today and in three years it had not been irrigated.