Barcelona is a city that constantly questions itself, as demonstrated by the number of think tanks, civil society institutions, research groups, essayists, and even novelists and filmmakers who dedicate reports, documentaries, books, or events to pondering the "Barcelona model." I am fortunate to direct one of these entities since 2016 and to enjoy a window through which to periodically comment on the subject in this and other media, and even so, I find it almost impossible to keep up with everything that is generated around this issue. Perhaps this fixation comes from a long way back, but surely the "92 syndrome" we have experienced since the momentum of the Olympic Games began to wane has a lot to do with it.
With the Spanish capital, I have the feeling that it is different. In all these years dedicated to urban issues, I find it hard to recall any book or document about Madrid's future plans as a city. Even Madrid's presence "explaining itself" at major urban events or its participation in international city networks has always seemed to me rather anecdotal. It may be a personal perception, and I encourage anyone who reads me to contradict me and suggest materials on the subject, but I would say that the contrast with Barcelona's permanent exercise of rethinking itself and its omnipresence in the global urban imaginary, at least since the Olympic Games, is significant.
Thus, there are not many clues as to what Madrid has proposed as a city between Tierno Galván's "He who is not high, get high and be alert" during the years of the Movida and Ana Botella's "Relaxing cup of café con leche" defending the 2020 Olympic bid. These are two expressions, certainly, of a city more accustomed to selling a lifestyle than an urban model. It was, possibly, Manuela Carmena's unexpected mandate as mayor that was the period in which this debate about the city model was most entered into, as part of the amendments to the system that the movement that brought her to the mayoralty defended. Here, Ada Colau's eight years multiplied the production of thought, opinion, and debate (quite heated at many moments) about the city.
It is not that interesting things have not been done in Madrid during all this time. We can cite Madrid Río as an urban transformation that recovers green space for citizens or Matadero as a project that combines the creation of a new centrality, heritage recovery, and a cultural and social innovation project, with Medialab Prado, today Medialab Matadero, as its standard-bearer, at least until the arrival of the current municipal government.
In reality, however, there are two facts that I believe have influenced this low profile of Madrid. The first is that the PP has won all mayoralties since 1991, except for the aforementioned 2015-2019 interlude. A more than probable consequence of being relegated by the socialist state government to the third step of the podium of the great events of 1992, and in Spain grievances are not easily forgotten. In any case, for our purposes, conservative governments have never been very prone to planning and, therefore, the city has evolved more at the whim of private initiative (with Florentino Pérez and company at the helm) than public anticipation.
The second is that at some point in this journey the municipality of Madrid seems to erase itself from the map as an urban reality to sell its soul to the State, logically during the PP's stays in La Moncloa. But also in the Community, dominated here by the PP without interruptions since 1995, to spur opposition to socialist central governments. Aznar's yearning to connect Madrid by AVE with all provincial capitals or the prominence in selling the post-covid Madrid lifestyle, that of "freedom," by the current president of the Community, respectively, would be two clear examples of this.
Well, it had to be a Catalan publishing house, Arpa, that published a book that has recently activated the debate on the urban model of the Villa y Corte. It is Madrid DF, by the architect and urban planner Fernando Caballero who, logically expressing personal points of view, seems to have largely seduced the Madrid establishment. And it must be noted that it has evidently interested, while also discomforting (an aspect always to be valued when done intelligently, as is the case) ours.
For those of us passionate about the subject, the book has so many aspects to comment on that it would take a whole other book to do so. Therefore, in the remainder of the article, I would like to focus on the first of the three parts into which the volume is divided (Madrid and the world) to try to draw reflections that can be useful for the case of Barcelona.
A good part of the book's central argument, which unfolds fundamentally in this first part, consists of claiming for Madrid the place it believes it deserves among the so-called global cities. And, to do so, the author relies on two premises: that only by being a global city is prosperity guaranteed, and that only very large cities, with sufficient critical mass, can be global cities. From this, the question could arise as to whether or not there would be space for two global cities on the peninsular board.
The first premise, then, is that acquiring the status of a global city is a requirement for the prosperity of the people who live in it and even of the country as a whole. In this sense, the global city model that Caballero defends is the one that neoliberalism has been shaping since the 80s of the last century, which is based on the ability to attract global flows of people, investments, or visitors. A model that contrasts a supposed dwindling power of states on the international playing field with a growing prominence of cities. A model that proclaims competition between cities and alliance with large corporations as a motor of progress.
It should be said, as I already explained in a previous article, that the global city model is changing and aspects such as the trade war, immigration restrictions, or the deployment of the Belt and Road initiative by China, can turn the geopolitical and global economic landscape upside down and, with it, the role that cities play. But in any case, the classic reference of London or Tokyo as global cities remains in the imagination and seems to be the clear aspiration of the capital of Spain.
In this context, Caballero refers to Madrid as a city without any remarkable attractiveness in terms of image, but that this precisely makes it an ideal "multi-purpose platform" for the globalized economy, to the point that it is prepared to host everything that other cities do not want or cannot host. It is, to a certain extent, a celebration of Madrid as a non-place, capable, as the author says, of playing a "joker card" when others take too long to decide how to play their hand. The model is, therefore, the absence of its own model. Nothing to object to, because this is the logical result, and apparently not only acceptable but desired by Madrid, of becoming a global city following the canon to the extreme.
But attracting a lot, and even less so depending on what, is no guarantee of achieving an improvement in the living conditions of the bulk of the population, as evidenced by inequality indicators in all major cities around the world. Because if there are actors that have surpassed states in power, these are the large corporations, with tech companies at the forefront. And it remains to be seen how far a city, however global it may be, can resist the designs of these companies, which no longer need cities as allies, but rather engulf them. London, New York, and Tokyo themselves try to impose more or less demanding obstacles on the activity of companies like Uber or Airbnb, not without great resistance and pressure.
Acquiring the status of a global city is a requirement for the prosperity of the people who live in it and even of the country as a wholeIn reality, for this reason, cities should rather collaborate with each other (and with states) to curb the excesses of these corporations. A common practice in Barcelona, but equally vital for the others. The current panorama calls more for cooperation than for competition in a race that only leads, as has already been shown, to the extraction of wealth from cities towards an increasingly distant cloud, already on its way to Mars.Madrid, on the other hand, lets itself go and, for that reason, undoubtedly gains a short-term advantage over the rest when it comes to being attractive to global capital flows, without stopping to think much about what the economic and social consequences of doing so may be in the medium and long term.
The second premise within Caballero's approach is that to be a global city with all the trimmings, a minimum critical mass in terms of population is needed, which in Madrid's case he places at reaching 10 million inhabitants.
Barcelona has great potential in its urban structure, and we would need to finish defining a good governance systemIt seems logical to think, following the laws of gravity, that if it's about attracting, mass matters.And if we observe the cities considered global, it is clear that they are fundamentally cities with large volumes of population. Now, the evidence also tells us that it is not a necessary, much less sufficient, condition to be part of the club. If that were the case, the main global city of the 21st century should be the former Nigerian capital, Lagos, which is expected to exceed 80 million inhabitants by 2100. This seems unlikely. Nor would it explain why Boston or Sydney, with metropolitan areas of around five million inhabitants, are very solidly part of the list.
More than population volume, what is truly important is the strength of the urban structure and the good functioning of the governance of agglomerations that can easily reach dimensions equivalent to those of some states. In the case of Barcelona, for example, we have great potential in the urban structure and we would need to finish defining a good governance system if we consider the scope of the real city and other particularities, such as the fit of a metropolitan region of five million inhabitants in a country of eight million.
Caballero later draws inspiration from the book on the Barcelona case to make his proposal for territorial structure and even governance (taking the Barcelona Metropolitan Area as an example), but also warns that if the articulation of the municipality with the metropolis in the region and beyond, with nearby provincial capitals, fundamentally with a regional train service, is not facilitated, and obstacles are placed in its bid as a global city, Madrid will end up taking its own path, expanding and engulfing everything around it, while becoming a city-state that the rest of Spain will have to trail behind.
In this sense, I pause to note that while in Madrid they are beginning to think about what the structure and governance should be like when they supposedly reach 10 million (horizon 2050), here, where we already have the structure and a shared reality among five million (which will vary very little in the same period, according to population projections), we are so afraid to face the question of how to govern this reality.
The question that arises, as we have already said, is whether, according to these premises, two global cities would fit on the Iberian Peninsula or if, on the contrary, it is advisable to let Madrid exercise leadership, as it is in the best conditions to do so, and even more so with Barcelona knocked out by the consequences of the "procés".
Leaving this last consideration aside, and as previously mentioned, the very notion of a global city as we know it can be questioned, it must be noted that there is also no definitive proof to affirm such incompatibility. It is not in the physical distance, given that, for example, London and Paris, the main European global cities, are at a shorter distance than that between Madrid and Barcelona. Nor in the fact that there can be two global cities in the same country. It is true that where this happens right now are much larger and economically more powerful countries, but that does not invalidate any other possibility.
Be that as it may, it is significant that Madrid's role within globality focuses on its link with Latin America and its constant comparison with Miami. There are reasons for this: Madrid, like the North American city, has become a refuge for many people from Latin American countries in crisis, and notably for high and middle-income strata. Also for low-income people, although reading certain passages of the book it seems that all newcomers enjoy chalets with swimming pools, subsidized schools, and a direct relationship with the elites of their own countries who previously despised them there and not here.
From my point of view, the problem with this positioning, at least as Caballero expresses it, is twofold. First, because it gives off a paternalistic air, similar to Isabel Díaz Ayuso's statements admiring in Peru that there are people plunged into poverty who are nevertheless cheerful, kind, and humble. Well then, here, compared to their country, they are a hundred thousand times better off, so there is no room for complaints. A type of discourse that, in the mouths (and, worse, in the hands, when they are given power) of some, could lead to neocolonial attitudes. To consider that what Latin America should do is copy the Madrid economic, social, and urban model to build a new social contract that will pull the continent out of the quagmire it is in, is a lot to consider.
Madrid lets itself go and, because of this, undoubtedly gains a short-term advantage over the rest when it comes to being attractive to global capital flowsSecond, because the confinement towards Latin America means that at no point in the book is attention directed towards the two realities of globality that are closest to Madrid:the European construction and the Mediterranean region.Perhaps being the Latin connection is a basis for global leadership, but it does not seem that abdicating any responsibility for the risks suffered by the European Union, nor paying more attention to what you have 10,000 km away than to what you have 1,000 km away, especially if in the latter case there is a demographic and climatic bomb in permanent threat of exploding, are the best positions to consolidate it.
The search for one's own place on the global board can never involve neglecting domestic and neighborhood responsibilities. In any case, if we had to play global cities, Madrid's strategy would open the doors for any other city to occupy this Euro-Mediterranean space. If Barcelona succeeds, as it has been trying to do with more or less effort in recent decades, we would already have the equation of the two global cities in the same country resolved.
In short, despite the fact that the book begins by refuting Maragall's Madrid se va and throughout its pages tries to turn it around by arguing the grievances that the state capital has had to endure, it finally ends up justifying that Madrid adopts a position close to the doctrine of the winner takes it all in urban terms. This may lead some to claim that a reference city must be achieved that lives up to what globalization supposedly demands and that this means that Madrid is the only Spanish global city, the largest and the freest, both in its functioning and with respect to its obligations as Spanish and European capital. A legitimate aspiration, but for now very little legitimized, neither by the arguments nor by the way of acting of those who direct the destinies of the breakwater of all Spains.