For those who do not usually live there, it must be explained that Today’s Barcelona is a continuous urban fabric through which citizens move knowing where they are from, but with many difficulties in identifying where they are. The first crown of this plot, between the Llobregat and Besòs rivers and between the sea and the Tibidabo mountain, makes up the current municipal area of Barcelona, completed at the beginning of the 20th century with the absorption of ancient towns. The second crown was formed during the industrialization of the second half of the 20th century, but is still divided into 36 municipalities. Franco’s technocracy created an entity to administer it, the Metropolitan Corporation, but unlike what happened in Madrid, the arrival of democracy did not make it move towards the dissolution of the municipalities as Pasqual Maragall attempted. An unusual alliance between the metropolitan mayors, mostly socialists, and Jordi Pujol aborted the plan. This is how the current Metropolitan Area of Barcelona was born, a mere administrative entity with hardly any political visibility. But the plot has continued to grow, and this week the current mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, advocated thinking about the need to somehow structure the metropolitan region of Barcelona, a territory that extends from Vilanova to Mataró, reaching Sabadell and Terrassa and where 5.5 of the 8 million Catalans live. No matter how many difficulties it may have, we are facing one of those cases in which what is normal on the street must be elevated to the category of normal in institutions, as Adolfo Suárez said at the time.
We publish evidence of this reality, such as the security map in the metropolitan area of Barcelona. In general, crime has been contained despite the proliferation of hoaxes launched from the far right and despite the complexity sometimes ignored by the far left. The current Minister of the Interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, is dedicated to this endeavor, but as the mayor of Cornellà, Antonio Balmón, pointed out last spring, the municipal police forces should reach a higher level of coordination, a metropolitan police force? so as not to have to give up when the offender changes municipality almost without knowing it. In the same way that Madrid is not Spain, no one can pretend that Barcelona is Catalonia. But something must be done.