Ernest Maragall: "Tactical urban planning has damaged Barcelona's image"

BarcelonaThe municipal group of ERC in Barcelona ends the year having agreed with the government of Colau both the budgets for 2021 and the star project in terms of mobility: the tramway.

The other day, Colau assumed the ERC-JxCat Government agreement had ended, and presented Barcelona as an example of a left-wing pact. Is a new tripartite possible?

It is a speculative theory and has no basis in any decision taken or in any in-depth relationship. It has no other element than pure speculation or someone's personal or political desire. But nothing more. JxCat and we are natural partners for a big part, and in many objectives we have to learn to work better together, evidently. It is the pending subject of the independence movement and we have to pass it.

Will the understanding in Barcelona have no influence on what happens in Catalonia?

We voted for Barcelona in the plenary session on the budget. There is no prior calculation, rather we have worked for a complex, far-reaching decision, which is the city. I believe that we have little respect for ourselves when we accept to be subjected to a question of relative calculation. Is the city of Barcelona so worthless that it does not admit decisions on its own? Does anything we decide have to do with what has been decided in Madrid or with what will be decided in the Parc de la Ciutadella? What we have done is to decide on Barcelona - and this has no influence on other institutions.

If you had known that Manuel Valls would end up joining the pact, would you have done so anyway?

I am not unmoved by this question. It is a rather desperate attempt not to be left out of the game, simply.

However, the PSC, when the agreement between the municipal government and ERC was made public, insisted on keeping the door open to other forces. Was the image of the tripartite to be broken?

It would have been logical for Junts per Catalunya to join, as it did last year. I find it hard to understand that this year, when there are many more reasons to join, they will not do so.

And why haven't they joined?

There is an obvious political decision that has nothing to do with Barcelona but with the electoral chronology. Perhaps it is legitimate and understandable. It seems to me that it is a mistake, but it's OK. We will continue to meet on a day-to-day basis, I am sure we will come to an agreement.

What would be different about the budgets if ERC governed the city?

We would have taken the concept of local government reform much more seriously. We would have already considered the revision of the Barcelona Charter and taken a legislative initiative for the modification of the local finance law, and we would have begun conversations with the Generalitat to review what is meant by consortiums and what is meant by shared responsibility. We would have already established a complicity with the private sectors of this city that are eager to work and produce, and that cannot generate wealth. This would be underway and reflected in the budget. As a city council we have to provide services in an efficient, solvent manner, and be a direct economic driver.

Doesn't the government of Colau do this?

It does it badly, without taking advantage of the capacities of the economic and institutional potential that it has as a central public administration. The key word is complicity, and here, instead, clientelism dominates. If we look at the last 20 years, with socialist and Convergència governments, we have gone first through growth at any price, then through a "long live the market" also at any price, and finally through an anti-market ideology that has ended up falling into more explicit clientelism. Now they are giving up on what is good about the market. Forty years ago, Barcelona was emancipated from Franco's greyness, now it has to emancipate itself from low-rent tacticism. We have to start looking far ahead.

Does this mean that the municipal government has disconnected itself from the Barcelona society?

It has not known how to establish relations, the bonds of active cooperation, of respect and, therefore, it has not exercised responsibility. This need to show off tactical urban planning... What is tactical is town planning, what is tactical is economic strategy, housing policy, security policy. This ends up permeating the whole institution and the government. Now it is clear that there are contradictions and that Mr Collboni is once again defending the "jobs, jobs, jobs" ideology. Is Barcelona's response to grow at any price, as we did during the years of maximising tourism, which has generated a dependency from which we must now free ourselves? It's a question of intelligent, productive, transformative investment. Barcelona has to get back on the hook.

Is Barcelona a sad city?

People know that we are not what we could be. There is an awareness of distance. There was a time when Vargas Llosa and García Márquez lived here. We have to recreate this climate, but for that, innovation, for science, scientists and companies have to come. Investment has to come and we have to generate it. We have also let the other characteristic of the city be those of inequality and precariousness, and this is unacceptable.

Have policies such as tactical urban planning helped to improve the city's image?

No, on the contrary, they have harmed it, because behind the great words and great objectives of pacifying the city, of taming mobility, a need for effective or efficacious results in the short term has ended up being imposed. There is an exhibition of lines, colours, spaces, but is anyone capable of explaining what is behind it as a vision of the city? Does the Eixample have to be touched so much? The Eixample is not being respected.

Would ERC reverse the measures of tactical urbanism?

As they are now, surely yes, but it is not so much a question of always doing and undoing, but of replacing improvisation and tacticism with a certain capacity to formulate strategy and put it into practice. Was it the time, in the midst of the pandemic, taking advantage of the decrease in mobility, to filter these measures?

Would an urban toll be better?

It is not a question of contrasting it with this, it is a question of evaluating it in itself. Surely it makes sense. It makes sense to conceptualize and dimension and monitor what is meant by congestion and pollution. Now: from structural measures like the rondas thirty years ago to the exact opposite extreme, it seems to me that there are many possibilities that have not been explored. When we say toll, we also have to think in metropolitan terms and we also have to think in alternative terms. Tolling alone without a sufficient public transport network is very difficult, and now it is complicated because public transport is under suspicion due to the pandemic.

So, is it time to do nothing?

I do not think it is right that the emergency situation has been used to implement measures which, even if you call them tactics, are of a profound and not very measured nature.

Is the solution the tramway?

No, the tram is just another tool. Any big decision, and more so if it involves a public investment like the one implied by this tram, calls for a cost-benefit study. We must ensure that the result is consistent and positive in terms of the public transport network. We will have to know what effect it has on Barcelona's Metropolitan Transport. The debate deserves to be held and we have put some elements in black on white, such as the concession, the cost-benefit of the investment and the guarantee of the general interest. These three issues need to be clarified. Let us do so, but let us do it properly.

Has Colau been forgiven the original sin of accepting Valls' votes for mayor?

Our sin is not to have won by more. What ERC is doing is loving Barcelona. Is this producing good results for the city? I sincerely believe so, I think the budget is a good result. It is not optimal, it is not perfect, but it is good for the city and that is why we are here.

The last barometer placed you as the most valued leader and ERC was the second closest force to the comuns

This endorses ERC's task during this year and a half of mandate and reinforces us as an alternative. Our commitment to improving the city and correcting the errors, limits and contradictions of the Colau-Collboni government is valued by citizens. All that remains now is for us to take the definitive leap to be the central and majority force that Barcelona demands.