The debate day Pro BCN, held last Friday at the Llotja, almost artisanally promoted by Salvador Alemany, makes clear what the scenario of new consensuses in the city is: both the infrastructure sector, as well as commerce, culture, tourism, and the third sector, once again insisted on the benefits of public-private collaboration and the need to reduce the preeminence of dogmatism, if the goal is to find solutions.
Many people attribute the expression "public-private collaboration" to the right, which is precisely not having understood anything, as Fermín Villar recently showed us in an interview when talking about Tot Raval or the Platform of Those Affected by Top Manta: the fact is that there are no more street vendors. That is, that specific form of poverty (and abuse) is no longer there. I would also like to see someone daring to label Enric Canet (speaker for the third sector branch at the event) as a "right-wing" person, based on the speech he gave denouncing the excesses of the rich and the scandal of housing prices. No, it was not a right-wing event held at Foment, but an event of common sense and social sense held in a historic space of the city. To find the "lowest common denominator." And, once found, let them fight as much as they want.
When civil society has to demand or require a minimum, it means that politicians are ignoring that minimum. There was no great pronouncement in favor of any third runway, but rather of finding a consensual and shared solution for the airport (a few years ago, and I say this with longing, the lowest common denominator was to demand the transfer of its management). There was no reference to the forgotten and postponed Winter Olympics, precisely because they generated less consensus than Plensa's latest opera, nor any allusion to Hard Rock or so many ideas that are driven by a very specific sector of the business community: yes, however, there was a demand to finish the Mediterranean Corridor, which is a necessity that speaks for itself. No, it was not an act of the employers' association, but a minimal approximation between various sectors (my contribution focused on the document referring to culture) and an exercise very focused on listening. Unlike other failed initiatives of the past, such as the discreet Barcelona Futur, this initiative did not seek any personal prominence or to impose any ideological side. But rather to listen and make the front-row candidates see that, sometimes, we do talk among ourselves. And that we do things. Apart from them, or despite them.
No, it was not a right-wing act held at Foment, but an act of common sense and social sense held in a historic space of the cityAnother thing is the manic-depressive spiral in which the city has settled, which many point to starting from the pandemic or the current world war, but which we cannot forget is clamorously situated after the years of the "procés". And here I am not doing ideology or dogmatism either: the idea of a referendum created a lot of consensus, also in Barcelona. Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes grudgingly, but the overwhelming majority of Barcelonans believed that a minimum common denominator was at least to be able to vote on the issue in peace and without further fuss. It does not surprise me that a city like Barcelona, vanguard since centuries in so many aspects concerning democracy and human rights, has been stunned and bewildered to see how its citizens, no matter what they thought, were beaten in schools. Or how some leaders are persecuted for thinking how they think, with police and judges acting as an inclement stopper.
I will be told that I am playing politics, but believe me, I am not: I have perfectly situated the beginning of Barcelona's manic-depressive era not with the firefighter idea of the Fòrum, not with the referendum for the tram, not with the arrival of Ada Colau, not with Trias's defeat, not with the nostalgia of '92 nor with the 2008 crisis nor with the loss of the "indispensable" Winter Olympic Games, not even for the refusal to follow Madrid's model (which Ayuso says is that of freedom, but I say is that of Las Vegas): no. It is because of having seen how, in the end, collective growth in terms of civic initiative (what happened that October was a very clear example of public-private collaboration) ends in a concrete wall and in drama. Barcelona's emotional decline begins with the Liceu choir singing Va Pensiero at the doors of the Gran Teatre on the 2nd. And it applies to anyone, no matter what they think. You cannot ask for joy from the citizenry after all this. Neither joy nor confidence in their own possibilities. Barcelona does not like walls to be put up around it.
Now that all this has passed (which does not mean it has been overcome), that there is a platform aimed at seeking current consensuses seems to me the beginning of a necessary reunion. The polarization created (not only in national terms, but also in terms of the left-right axis) can make us forget that daily life exists and that there are many urgencies that demand a collective and shared effort. Being able to be above likes and dislikes seems a principle of civilization, as is, also and by the way, being able to vote on those things on which we may disagree. It is urgent to rediscover a Barcelona model of coexistence and progress, that is its own and autochthonous, free and transgressive when necessary, ordered and measured when it is its turn, but above all that can find its shared characteristic features. On Friday at the Llotja we saw what most resembles the most restless part of Barcelona, and also the one with the most decision-making power. The politician may have the last word, but civil society will have the first. It depends on all of them, on all of us, that the spiral of depression does not become chronic. And, as I said, once this is guaranteed, let everyone fight for the cause they believe in. By voting.