The surprising thing about this city is its ability to always be able to do more, to always get ahead in some way, despite the lack of ideas (or the bombardment of wrong ideas) exhibited by politics. It is not something new, it has happened throughout history, but Barcelona always draws strength from some indeterminate place, overcomes all stress tests (even the most violent ones) and always comes out ahead. Two things happen, however. The first, that very few Barcelonans find out about the best things that happen in Barcelona (this newspaper precisely wants to fill this gap). And second, that these initiatives appear too dispersed, too atomized and divided and, without a clear common thread, end up forming a disordered and dangerously indigestible "chup chup".This is what having an idea consists of: it's not about putting out fires or pulling rabbits out of a hat (now a third lane, now a Hermitage, now a Superilla) but about setting a clear and identifiable course.Without that, not only does politics become tiring, but citizens and projects can also end up getting tired. This danger, now, exists more than ever but it is not new: Barcelona always suffers because it wants to grow. When they allowed it to tear down the walls, it did not expand in any way, but rather put Cerdà to rationalize and the modernists to imagine, and thus placed itself at the forefront of all its competitors.He did the same in '92, the second great urban and modernizing leap of the city, and now, because it has been too long since it wondered how to jump the next wall, brief and dwarf mirages appear offering Olympic candies. But it is impossible to jump a new wall if the city does not know what it is. If it does not know in which direction it jumps, it will simply change partners like apubilla tastaolletesuntil one day it's their turn to dance with the broom. It can be said that cities are already like that, that not all of them have a great strategy, but rather they just get by and that this disorder is precisely what's charming. In part it's true, yes, but it's only true until you notice that you're getting too tired and you don't know why. Recently I was eating with some German businessmen who, far from focusing on explaining their projects and businesses and administrative problems they could complain about, spent almost all the time talking to me about October 2017. I believe that this, when we are already in 2022, means something. I believe that a good part of this has to do, apart from the trauma experienced and followed internationally, with the invisible walls I mentioned:when you can no longer compete with urban projects, neither based on big events, nor with patches like the Diagonal tram or the Glòries tunnel, perhaps what happens is that now growth has more to do with power. The new wall of Barcelona has to do with bringing the center of power closer to the citizenry. In fact, globalization, far from discouraging it, pushes us towards it. But how is it done?
Perhaps what is happening is that now Barcelona's growth has more to do with power
The environmentalism of the green or blue economy is only one type of environmentalism: the phobia against cars may be poorly resolved, which it is, but it does not deviate too much from the idea I want to express. The sustainability of trees is a universal and very old value, but Barcelona must champion the sustainability of human communities. To demonstrate that power can be understood in another way, more respectful of local singularities. This is not done with a checkbook or artificial projects, butputting technology and progress (economic and knowledge) within reach of the entire population.We see it graphically in 22@: it is a success to have dedicated an entire neighborhood to technology and knowledge, but that will be useless if residents cannot live normally (that is, with services, but also with the appearance of a neighborhood) and especially if this technology and knowledge are not accessible to everyone. Avoid the existing divorce between San Francisco and Silicon Valley, in short, and transform it into an alliance.The wall we must overcome is the democratization of knowledge and creativity, which means that the population must experience empowerment and that Barcelona must experience its second Modernism. It already does. I said it at the beginning:the city does not stop, but that is precisely why politics does not catch up with it.And it gets tired. Instead of compensating for it with big new events or with vague calls to bebusiness friendly, the only thing politics should do is help this new Modernism (technological, creative, innovative) penetrate all layers of the population and turn it into the new city brand. The motto is to be the capital of knowledge, but not for four experts, but for everyone.
The only thing politics should do is help this new Modernism (technological, creative, innovative) penetrate all layers of the population
While other political walls are not resolved (the one the Germans mentioned to me, still uneasy), the way to respond to the lack of political power is to put, within everyone's reach, the tools to reach maximum individual power.For this, it is not necessary to be the capital of a state, at least for now.It can even be said that it will rather be the other way around, apart from the fact that administrative structures, even the most powerful and sovereign ones, normally hinder everything excessively. When Modernism and the Eixample highlighted Barcelona's uniqueness worldwide, there was nothing to stop the city (and the country). When you make the right bets and hit the mark, everything else ends up falling like ripe fruit. There wasn't a single scared German businessman when we arrived at the cafes.
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