Barcelona is not an abstract (nor neutral) debate

When we talk about the upcoming municipal elections in Barcelona, it often sounds a lot like a political talk show: faces, acronyms, and pacts. But if we take a step back and listen to those who think deeply about the city, we discover that it's not just about who wins a mayoralty, but about what narrative of the city and the metropolis we want to build for the coming years — and, above all, what role we want Barcelona to play within the country as the capital of Catalonia.

Today's Barcelona is no longer just the city within its administrative borders. It is a living, complex, and interconnected metropolis with municipalities such as L'Hospitalet, Badalona, Cornellà, or Sant Adrià. These squares, neighborhoods, and towns form an ecosystem where millions of people move every day, and efforts to coordinate policies that cross these borders are not an option, they are a necessity. The debate on mobility, housing, infrastructure, or metropolitan technology is not an abstraction: it is what determines whether we can move, live, and work with dignity.

If we look at what Oriol Estela, coordinator of the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan, has repeated in several articles in this same magazine, an efficient metropolis is not just transport and roads, but everything that allows us to maintain a high quality of life: the water we drink, the energy we consume, or the green spaces that cool the city. The management of these essential elements no longer belongs entirely to each city council, but demands a joint vision and planning beyond the Eixample or the Besòs. Talking about infrastructure is talking about what it means to live in a resilient and dignified territory for everyone.

A city that forgets its language or dilutes it by inertia loses more than a symbol: it loses social cohesion and collective meaning

But this metropolitan vision cannot be detached from the identity that gives meaning to Barcelona. If the city wants to maintain its authenticity and its role as the country's capital, it must do soacting as the capital of Catalonia,not only as a global city. This means defending its language, its culture, and its traditions, which are the fabric that has made Barcelona a city with its own personality, admired everywhere but rooted here.

An open and diverse metropolis is not incompatible with a city that loves and protects its identity. In fact, only if Barcelona is clear about who it is—and what it represents—will it be able to project itself strongly to the world. A city that forgets its language or dilutes it by inertia loses more than a symbol: it loses social cohesion and collective meaning. Making Barcelona a modern and inclusive city also means ensuring that Catalan is a language of coexistence and opportunities, that Catalan culture has central spaces, and that traditions are lived naturally, as an expression of a living people and not as residual folklore.

Pau Solanilla reminded us in an article in The New Barcelona Post that we live in an era in which many people—especially young people—distrust institutions and traditional politics. In this context, the city and its social actors have the opportunity to bring politics closer to what really matters: building a Barcelona that combines technological innovation with human well-being and cultural roots; not just sensors and data, but shared quality of life and pride of belonging. This is what he calls a people-centered urban vision: technologies and projects that make living here better, more human, and more authentic.

This approach is especially useful for thinking about debates that everyone hears about, but that are not always discussed enough: dignified housing, social cohesion, environmental sustainability, or truly accessible mobility for the entire metropolis. Technology alone guarantees nothing; it is a tool. What matters is how we use it to make the city human, just, and faithful to its essence as the country's capital.

Elections are not just a matter of parties; they are an opportunity to decide what city and metropolis project we want to activate

We must also remember that Barcelona isa city of interconnected diversitiespeople from different cultures, young people looking for opportunities, families who want to put down roots, workers who come and go every day. What we call a global city. And all of them want real answers to their daily challenges. But in the midst of this diversity, the city needs acommon threadthat cohesifies it, a shared identity that excludes no one, but also does not erase itself. This identity involves language, a way of doing and living that is part of what has made us a Mediterranean capital with its own soul.

For this reason, elections are not just a matter of parties. They are an opportunity to decide what city and metropolitan project we want to activate. It is, in short, about how we want Barcelona—and its entire metropolitan area—to evolve. This choice will determine whether our city is a place worth living in and, above all, a place that (despite the normal changes any global city undergoes) we still feel is ours.