"We have to incorporate Montjuïc into Barcelona's collective imagination"

Joan Oliveras i Bagués (Barcelona, 1957) is an entrepreneur, jeweler, designer, patron, and activist. But above all, he is passionate about Barcelona.

He currently presides over the Museu Nacional d'Art de Catalunya (MNAC), but he has also been part of the board of trustees of the Fundació Enciclopèdia Catalana, the Fundació del Museu Picasso, the Fundació de l'Orfeó Català, the Barcelona Shopping Line-Turisme de Barcelona, and Amics de La Rambla, among many other institutions in the country. Oliveras is not just a person with his own ideas: he is a man of action.

--- How do you see Barcelona?

--- Barcelona is not bad, but it is not at its best either. There is a coincidence of several negative factors, and the pandemic situation has cut short many horizons for us. But the city still has very powerful living inertias, which go beyond the horizon of the current moment.

--- But what is happening to Barcelona?

--- There is a very serious contradiction between what the citizen expects and what is proposed by the administration. It is true that this perception would not justify Barcelona having lost all the inertias that had made it a successful city. Now I see a city that is looking for itself and cannot find itself. A city that idealizes the past and is not clear about how to build the future.

--- And is there a remedy for that?

--- We lack shared spaces for reflection where, beyond short-term squabbles, there are consensus proposals to jointly build the future. And this is what has disappeared in recent years. Barcelona is a city that does not look long-term. If we change our perspective, we will begin to understand many things: what are the urban planning policies of the future, what are the economic policies the city needs, how do we face the phenomenon of tourism from a rebalancing perspective, or how do we determine the axes and mobility.

--- Do we look too much at Madrid and too little at the world?

--- The gaze towards Madrid arises because the gaze towards ourselves makes us uncomfortable. And, in the end, Madrid ends up appearing as a city that functions with greater strength than Barcelona. I believe this is a pandemic fiction. That is, I do not see in Madrid the creativity, nor the intellectual vitality, nor the business creativity, nor the economic dynamism, nor the civic commitment that I see in Barcelona. Madrid benefits from certain political circumstances, which are an immediate benefit, but which do not respond to the real energies of the city itself. Therefore, seeing oneself reflected in Madrid is a great excuse that does not help to confront Barcelona's problems.

"I see a city that seeks itself and does not find itself. A city that idealizes the past and is not clear on how to build the future"

--- To conform ourselves with being a cultural co-capital, or a co-capital of whatever, is part of the political debate, but it is not part of the citizen debate. Here we continue to have the ambition to be one of the influential cities in Europe. And it is demonstrated by the fact that Barcelona continues to be in many of the European rankings. The Spanish State has, as always, two cities that represent two opposing models. The problem we have, within this political conjuncture, is the underfunding that Barcelona and Catalonia suffer. Barcelona cannot abdicate its role as the capital of Catalonia, otherwise it weakens itself.

--- There is a deficit, agreed. But what is Barcelona's project?

--- At the moment I don't appreciate any. And the Olympic Barcelona one always reappears. Because it is the great moment of modern Barcelona. That is, the last great project that has worked for us as a city and that has made us shine in the world. I believe that Barcelona's future project does not involve breaking with that inertia, but rather perfecting the model. It is true that we have problems to solve. That model, for example, included quantitative tourism and now we must evolve towards a qualitative one. But, at the same time, it brought undeniable values in urban planning. Therefore, the issue is about perfecting the model. And the first condition should be to return to a certain political consensus around this debate.

--- But this implies deciding. For example: Barcelona had always opted for large events and now it seems that they are in question.

--- The large events model is one that has worked. If we have to rethink it, it is not by eliminating them but by outlining what kind of city we want to be. Vienna, many years ago, made a strategic plan to know what it wanted to be and decided that it did not want to become a city of large events, nor did it want to be a city of mass tourism. It decided, with much consensus, that it wanted to be a city of medium events and occupy a space in the international imagination at a cultural level.

--- And assume some costs.

--- Large events impact specific areas of the city and affect the citizens in that environment. It is true and should not be denied. However, to solve these problems, it is not necessary to give up events. What is needed is to analyze how the city compensates those who suffer the negative effects of what collectively makes us grow. Deep strategic reflections are needed, and tactical opportunism must be overcome.

"Barcelona cannot abdicate its role as the capital of Catalonia"

--- Of the first order. It is impossible to think about the cities of the future without public-private collaboration. And public-private collaboration does not happen through decree. It happens through what the word itself says: collaboration. Therefore, everyone has to win, otherwise, there is no possible collaboration. Things are not resolved through the imposition of models. And models cannot be only the product of a majority municipal minority. It must be the product of broad consensus.

--- Consensus is always relative, isn't it?

--- During the Olympic stage, we not only experienced broad consensus from a political perspective, but also among institutions and major national entities around a city project. And it was not easy. But, nevertheless, we built a competitive capital.

"It is impossible to think about the cities of the future without public-private collaboration"

--- Yes, but how was that project done? It wasn't just the vision of one person. That project was born from the development of strategic plans in which all the city's stakeholders and the country's institutions participated. We must recover that spirit.

--- But it seems that every time there is a project that can generate excitement, we end up burying it because it generates some negative externality. Say, Winter Olympics, Hermitage, third runway, etc.

---Yes. But not all respond to the same objectives. That is to say: I would never put the Hermitage and the Winter Olympics in the same bag. The Hermitage and the Winter Olympics do not respond to the same city model. They respond to different city models. One, the Olympic Games, is an ambitious city model with personality. The other is not. If we want to be a reference city, we would have to be intelligently selective.

--- Can culture, like technology and sport, be one of the city's foundations?

--- Barcelona can be, at the same time, all three foundations. And, to some extent, it already is. Barcelona is focused today on technology and even research. It also continues to be a city with important sports infrastructures. But at the same time, it has been a cultural reference for many years. Barcelona is one of the most important open-air architectural museums in the world. The modernist complex is not something we have improvised. It's another thing whether we know how to value it. But we are a cultural reference at an international and European level. We have the MNAC, the Picasso or the Miró. From a literary-editorial perspective, we are references. And we can say the same about the musical world. We must sew things together. Economy, culture, health and prosperity.

"Barcelona is one of the most important open-air architectural museums in the world"

--- First, be aware that, for now, Barcelona, just as it lived with its back to the sea, now lives with its back to Montjuïc. Without being aware of it, we have on this mountain the largest public and private investment in the country in collective infrastructures in the world of sport, commerce, and culture. What should we do? Coordinate all of this.

--- And how is this done?

--- We need to decide urbanistically what we want Montjuïc to be. We have managed to make people understand that Collserola, which is much further from the city center, is a place for recreation, leisure, and sport. Then we discovered, four days ago, that in Barcelona we had beaches and a port. Now we have a natural park, right in the city center, that we almost don't know what it's for. And, furthermore, people don't have it in their imagination. We would have to talk among the different actors on the mountain and redraw its use. Montjuïc cannot be just one thing, probably. We will not have solved the issue until people say: "I'm going to Montjuïc." As long as people only say, "I'm going to the Mercat de les Flors, I'm going to the MNAC, I'm going to the Fira or I'm going to the Picornell pools," we will not have solved the problem. We will have solved the problem the day people start saying "I'm going to spend the day in Montjuïc," because that will mean we have incorporated it into the city. We have to incorporate Montjuïc into the collective imagination of Barcelona.

--- Before, when we talked about Barcelona, we were clear that it was the city. Now, when we talk about Barcelona, do we have to start talking about the entire metropolis?

--- We speak of the metropolis, yes, but we are also speaking of the country. In the end, today, life in Barcelona conditions the Vall d'Aran, the Pallars or les Cases d'Alcanar. And what happens in these places also conditions Barcelona. We have to be able to understand the city globally and with generosity. And citizens have to understand this, but also those who manage the city's politics and, obviously, the country's politics. And businesspeople. The Winter Olympic Games are an example. And here we return to the same place as always: we will only resolve this through consensus and with a joint view on assets. For example: we have great research centers. Our objective in these research centers is not only to put them in a catalog that says "we have the best research centers in Europe," but to find the formula to make these research centers profitable to generate economic growth and social well-being for the country. That is, to think about how we generate an industry capable of creating feedback with this absolutely necessary web. And the same can be said from the point of view of unifying the perspective on the entire cultural heritage of the country, regardless of ownership.

"We will not have resolved the issue until people say: 'I'm going to Montjuïc'"

--- That's clear. The end point is the project. I don't want to have the petulance of defining the city model. I have a clear understanding of the problems and what I can say about certain issues. But we will only build a city project with the participation of many actors and with generosity. If Barcelona doesn't do this, it will lose opportunities.