Barcelona is back. If Barcelona is the engine of Spain, the director of ABC, Julián Quirós, and the mayor Jaume Collboni modulate that power in Casa Seat. Five million souls between the city and its metropolitan area. A metropolis that accounts for more than half of the Catalan GDP. After the secessionist process, Greater Barcelona returns to provide “uniqueness in a larger space of belonging,” Quirós announces.
ABC made it clear in the presentation text of the supplement ‘Barcelona, engine of Spain’: “The tensions derived from the sovereignty process not only had an impact on the political and institutional level, but were they ended up infecting to the whole of society and the economy, in a decline that is difficult to estimate but that is already colloquially defined as a lost decade. Thousands of companies in flight, political isolationism, cultural provincialism, legal uncertainty… Barcelona’s engine had seized.
A decisive Barcelona in the reunion with Spain, observes Quirós. “Must create an institutional framework without stridency, normalized and slow,” adds Collboni. Institutional disagreement was the rule; and the agreement, the exception. What it is about now, explains Collboni, is that these institutions are only in the news for their service to citizens.
Barcelona plays strong in the technological fieldlife sciences or the pharmaceutical industry. But the rivalry between cities is no longer limited to Barcelona and Madrid, we must count on Bilbao, Valencia or Malaga, warns Quirós. Collboni picks up the gauntlet: “Spain has understood that cities are the solution and has become a network of cities.” Barcelona and Madrid, the eternal rivalry: “They must compete and cooperate,” says Collboni and gives as an example his excellent relationship with Mayor Martínez Almeida. The director of ABC, a good reader of Josep Pla, remembers the Madrid of officials and rentiers that the Empordà writer described in 1931. Nothing to do with the entrepreneurial Madrid of 2024. The important thing is that each city stands out in what it knows how to do best . In the case of Barcelona, its commitment to science parks and the “blue economy,” says Collboni.
“Barcelona is a powerhouse of urban tourism,” says Quirós. A power that has detected the contraindications of the tourism industry points out Collboni: «We can’t grow indefinitely and that the local population is expelled from a historic center converted into a theme park. The city has to bet on business tourism. Quirós mentions the expansion of El Prat Airport, of which Collboni declares himself a supporter. “If talent and the economy are our assets to compete, we must be connected to Asia and the United States,” he emphasizes.
The director of ABC does not leave any question in the pipeline so that the audience, which is from all of Spain, better knows that Barcelona that returns after eight years of Ada Colau in the mayor’s office and a long decade of independence governments in the Generalitat. Housing: «The rising price is fought with more public and private offer and less regulatory delay,” says Collboni. The insecurity. Three hundred and fifty repeat offenders who take advantage of the judicial slowness. “Barcelona once again cooperates with the State Security Forces and Corps, something that had been ignored for years and encourages the increase of the penal system to break the funnel of trials that last for years and allow recidivism,” announces the mayor.
Among the public, personalities from Barcelona’s civil society express their relief at finally hearing a constructive dialogue after the lost decade for Barcelona. Quirós and Collboni make Ortega’s exhortation to Argentines a reality: “Get to things!” That’s what Greater Barcelona is coming back for.
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