Region Barcelona

The first time I walked down La Rambla de Sabadell, I wondered where the sea was. Yes, I was very (and very) young and had barely left the nest, but it seemed inconceivable to me to finish a Rambla without a feast of salt water, a statue of Columbus with lions, a caravel, swallows, and shipyards. My imagination was totally Barcelona-centric, as you can see, and I had no idea what a metropolitan area or region could mean. Now, however, everyone has become regionalist: no one hesitates to say that we must talk about the Metropolitan Area as a whole, that when conceiving the city it is necessary to think about its entire socioeconomic area, that if people who come by car get stuck or people who come by commuter train get even more stuck, and so on. No one knows how to say what the formula is. It has been years since anyone has been able to offer a global project or a coordinated metropolitan-level governance formula. And many of those running in the May elections, and their teams, secretly think that, "after all, people from Sabadell are not going to vote for us."

The problem of speaking of metropolitan areas or regions lies in the limit, both for the imaginary (my sea at the end of La Rambla) and for reality: we call "Disneyland Paris" an amusement park located in Magny-le-Hongre, and the new Salou project is intended to be named "Hard Rock Barcelona", just as the ineffable and "essential" Pyrenees Winter Games were to be named Barcelona. We are all also aware that El Prat Airport is Barcelona Airport (whether it has a dignified name, or the name they have given it now). Many people think that the Tres Xemenies de Endesa (future "Audiovisual Hub") are in Barcelona, ​​or they ignore that the city's port is not exactly in Barcelona, but shares a considerable adjoining land with L'Hospitalet and El Prat. And we often think that Sarrià-Sant Gervasi ends at the Ronda de Dalt, when it ends in Les Planes. I mean that it is not defined where a metropolitan area ends, not even in terms of shared services, just as there must have been a time when the residents of the town of Gràcia or Sarrià had to assume that they were more Barcelona than they would have liked. They resisted, of course: but it no longer mattered what they felt or wanted, because reality (and a certain haste in making decrees, it must be said) had overtaken them.

At the end of the 19th century and with the demolition of the walls, Barcelona's great park became the Ciutadella. Especially as a result of the 1888 Universal Exhibition, which was a true "spiritual expansion" of the City: walls demolished, Cerdà promoting his grid, elimination of the vestiges of the wars of the previous century, opening of Via Laietana (which they now want to close by limiting it to a single lane, and only downhill), aggregation of Gràcia (Sarrià would still take two more decades)… The Eixample was more than a well-thought-out grid, it was a vocation for expansion to become a metropolitan capital (according to the concept of the time) and not a city enclosed in its past. Afterwards, with the 1929 Universal Exhibition, the city's new great park became the already urbanized Montjuïc mountain, although this invaluable space has incomprehensibly continued to turn its back on the city.

Therefore, now that our dimensions are different, it is worth asking if our true parks are Collserola or the Garraf massif or the Marina mountain range. That is, if from Mataró to Gavà and from Martorell to Granollers we form a consolidated unit, a reality to be assumed, an imaginary under construction. Especially now that, driven by rental prices and the excellent social sensitivity of the City Council, many Barcelonians have decided to leave the city. Of course: as long as they can keep the same services very close. We go to the town, but we want to continue being part of the city. In this I agree with Clapés, either one thing or the other.

From a bird's eye view, we are an economic region without a doubt. The question is not this, the question is about the limit: we have been talking about the economic region for a long time, especially referring to the Mediterranean Arch (or "corridor") that goes from Alicante to Genoa. Is this the great economic region that should give meaning to large metropolitan areas confirmed by the nuclei of Barcelona, Valencia, Marseille, Palma, etc.? Or are we talking about an economic region that thinks more towards the interior of the Peninsula than towards the Mediterranean, as proposed by the "cultural capital" of the current government? I believe that the metropolitan area of Barcelona should be configured as one of the four or five large metropolitan areas of a Mediterranean Arch, and not as a second capital of Spain, but it's all a matter of taste. Barcelona as a gateway to southern Europe coordinated with three or four other cities, and not as a branch of a large peninsular megapolis. Everyone is a periphery of something, and Barcelona must choose whose periphery it wants to be. The commitment to feed back the central plateau of the Spanish Las Vegas will never mean a new expansion, but a well-known and secular figure of a sidekick that will take away our direct interlocution with the world. Perhaps it is Madrid that should, in the future and together with other cities, be the periphery of Barcelona. Why not? The future should involve multiple peripheries and economic regions that, helping each other or even competing, do not try to phagocytize each other.

Barcelona as a gateway to southern Europe coordinated with three or four other cities, and not as a branch of a large peninsular megapolis. Everyone is a periphery of something, and Barcelona must choose whose periphery it wants to be

In any case, the debate for Barcelona has never been about its limits, which are non-existent: but about where exactly it wants to stop.