The celebration of the general elections on July 23 will once again bring to the table, among other priority issues, that of the territorial model in the state. One of the star topics in this regard is the phenomenon of empty Spain, that is, the depopulation and consequent abandonment of an increasingly larger portion of rural territory, which affects entire provinces and has even led to the emergence of a specific political movement with growing influence.
Less attention is usually paid, however, to the other side of the coin: the configuration of urban and suburban agglomerations around the main (and in some cases also secondary) Spanish cities. A metropolitan Spain that, although progressively "filling up", is not exempt from difficulties and challenges, for which there is still no legal framework and adequate tools to face it from this territorial scale.
According to data from UN-Habitat, the United Nations agency for human settlements, only 15% of the 2,000 metropolises that this organization computes in the world have some institution or, at least, a plan that gives a minimum form to the collaboration between the municipalities that compose them.
Currently, there is only one metropolitan administration in operation in Spain: the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB), created by Law 31/2010 of the Parliament of Catalonia. In some other large cities of the state, we find specific agencies to coordinate mobility or waste management policies. But the metropolitan reality is not sufficiently recognized at the state level, compared to what happens in the main countries of the European Union.
The lack of recognition translates into a lack of specific instruments and resources to address urban problems, which today clearly have a metropolitan scope in more than twenty cities in the state, particularly the challenges related to essential aspects such as housing, mobility, or the fight against climate change.
All these issues are addressed in the book Metropolis without government. The Spanish anomaly in Europe, recently published under the editorship of Doctor Mariona Tomàs, professor of Political Science at the Universitat de Barcelona and expert in metropolitan governance and urban policies. A book that, in an academic but quite illustrative key, reviews several failed attempts at metropolitan institutionalization in various Spanish cities and the reasons why, in others, not even an attempt has been made.
The metropolitan reality is not sufficiently recognized at the state level, compared to what happens in the main countries of the European UnionIn the last 15 years, however, yes, there has been an emergence and recognition of metropolitan realities in several European countries, although different models have been followed: from the transformation of provinces into metropolitan areas for the largest Italian cities (14 Città Metropolitane), to the constitution of metropolitan entities with direct election, albeit with limited powers, in the United Kingdom (10 Combined Authorities), passing through Germany (12 metropolitan regions) or Portugal (Lisbon and Porto), without forgetting that even centralist France (with 21 Métropoles) presents greater advances.
None of these processes has been a bed of roses, neither in their constitution nor in their subsequent functioning, as is foreseeable in any attempt to redistribute territorial power and resources. Nor has it been for Barcelona, the only administration comparable to some of the European experiences cited within a Spanish state where, as we said earlier, metropolitan governance is still very timid. And it is here, in Spain, where the capacity for action of local entities, including their competencies and resources, has not only not experienced substantial improvements since the approval in 1985 of the Local Regime Bases Law, but has suffered certain setbacks such as those of the laws that sought to accompany austerity with administrative rationalization at the beginning of the last decade.
In Barcelona, despite being the exception thanks to the AMB (which some Spanish legal texts still call "Association of Municipalities of Barcelona"), it is also of interest that this recognition occurs at the state level, not only to have more instruments available for the development of metropolitan policies, but also so that the recognition extends to the European Union, given that today the AMB cannot compete for funds from numerous European programs aimed at urban environments and can only lobby accompanied by other European metropolises, associated with the European Metropolitan Authorities.
That is why from the Barcelona Metropolitan Strategic Plan (PEMB) we want to place metropolitan issues also in the 2023 general election campaign, in the same way we have done in the past municipal elections. Again, with a global vision, we understand that without an adequate articulation of metropolitan realities, it will be difficult to face the problems of the rest of the territory, since the lack of integrated planning usually leads to an increasingly greater concentration of population, resources, and opportunities in urban areas.
Without an adequate articulation of metropolitan realities, it will be difficult to face the problems of the rest of the territoryIn this sense, some have been identified measures of action that should find a place in the electoral programs of the political parties that are running in the elections, and they should even be present in some of the campaign electoral debates, since these are issues that affect local entities, but which should be worked on and decided at the state level: measures related to metropolitan recognition, territorial cooperation, territorial organization, financing and mobility infrastructures, as well as the development of a Spanish Urban-Metropolitan Agenda:
1) Recognition of the metropolitan fact in the Spanish state.
Adapt basic state legislation to metropolitan urban reality, especially the Law on the Bases of Local Regime and the Law Regulating Local Treasuries. Ensure that the various programs and policies of the General State Administration recognize the existence of metropolises and their institutional cooperation figures and take them into account in normative, programmatic, and financial configurations.
2) Improvement and strengthening of territorial cooperation instruments.
Review the Law Regulating the Bases of Local Regime and Local Treasuries in order to create incentives for intermunicipal cooperation, especially in metropolitan areas, as current figures are insufficient...
3) Adaptation of territorial organization to supramunicipal/metropolitan reality.
Make legislation more flexible to enable the redistribution of powers, functions, and fiscal resources of local administrations (city councils, provincial councils, minor local entities, etc.), so that autonomous communities can adapt their territorial organization to urban realities, both in the case of conurbations, metropolitan areas or similar that are created, and in that of small municipalities.
Likewise, incentivize territorial planning and land management, with the cooperation of autonomous communities, especially those urban continuums that involve more than one community.
4) Expansion of tax financing options.
Adapt the Local Treasuries Law so that it provides for the possibility that supramunicipal local administrations, especially metropolitan areas and similar ones that are created, can have direct participation in State taxes and other own financing funds, depending on their competencies and the services they provide at a supramunicipal level.
5) Special attention to mobility infrastructures.
To be able to fit railway infrastructure into metropolitan mobility systems, make effective the comprehensive transfers of the Renfe commuter systems, substantially improving the integrated planning of the different mobility systems. Improve or make effective the financing already provided by law to metropolitan transport consortia.
6) Promotion of a Spanish Metropolitan Agenda.
Many of the challenges that the Spanish Urban Agenda asks to face require intermunicipal collaboration, especially in the case of metropolitan areas and regions. For Spanish metropolises to have guidelines and incentives for cooperation between municipalities in the application of the urban agenda, the elaboration of a Spanish Metropolitan Agenda, adapted to the themes and challenges that are characteristic of this scale, would be of great utility, so that it establishes a framework for action and guidance for cooperation among its agents. As well as, subsequently, the elaboration of a program that promotes the localization processes of this metropolitan agenda.
Precisely, it has been during the process of elaborating the first urban agendas promoted by the Ministry of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda in more than a hundred cities that the insufficiency of purely local strategies to face climate change or the reduction of inequalities has been confirmed, two of the central axes of these agendas, as are also those of the Metropolitan Commitment 2030, the new strategic plan for the city of 5 million elaborated by the PEMB.
Once again, issues that will not occupy the headlines or the exchange of arguments and proposals during the electoral campaign are those that can have the most impact in the medium and long term not only on a better management of resources and greater effectiveness of policies, but on the quality of life of people. That is why we must once again ask the parties to at some point explain their approaches in this regard. Because... Will Spain continue to be a metropolitan anomaly within Europe for four years?