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oan Clos, professor at the Barcelona Institute for International Studies (IBEI), Jordi Hereu, president of Hispasat, Narcís Serra, president of IBEI, and Xavier Trias have debated the future of Barcelona after the current crisis. During the panel, followed on the event's digital platform by about a thousand people, all of them agreed that it is time to make proposals based on dialogue and understanding that allow progress in the city project.
To this end, one of the major axes, according to the former mayors, is the management of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB). Thus, Xavier Trias emphasized the "useful tool" that the AMB represents, while Jordi Hereu pointed out the need to "present future proposals of metropolitan scope that can attract the interest of Europe". For his part, Joan Clos put forward new proposals such as the unification of all urban police forces of the AMB or the exploration of the entity's fiscal capacity and the possibility of including new geographical areas, creating a region that competes better with other large metropolitan areas.
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In this sense, the relationship with the city of Madrid has been another major topic of debate. While Narcís Serra pointed out that "the lack of neutrality of the central administration" benefits Madrid and harms Barcelona, Clos considered that competitiveness with the Spanish capital functions as "an incentive to improve and generate consensus". Hereu, for his part, advocated generating proposals without waiting to "overcome" political debates, and Trias called the comparison with Madrid an "error" because Barcelona "competes" with other European cities such as Milan, Rome, and Paris.
In any case, the four agreed that, although Barcelona is a successful city "competing with state capitals", this crisis should be an opportunity to respond to the city's challenges. The objective would be to "create a global competence services platform" that promotes the sectors in which the city has the most chances of success. In this process, digitalization can function as a tool to place Barcelona in the international spotlight, "linking the future of the city to new technologies".
In addition, Trias has insisted on the need to generate "economic activity for everyone and do it in a sustainable way" while Serra has pointed out that "the capacity to win in a city lies in its citizens" and that "all solutions need time."
Thus, the former mayors have opted to create initiatives that put Barcelona "on the map" from a sectoral point of view. To do this, it is necessary to create "grand pacts" around some of the basic issues that affect citizens. For this reason, they have urged the city's political parties not to break the grand pacts on housing or mobility, as well as to advance in other projects such as the Mediterranean corridor or the completion of Metro Line 9.