A new governance for the Barcelona Metropolitan Area

Barcelona now

José Enrique Ruiz-Domènec

HeAdvice of one hundredAs an example

Memory of a municipal institution

The first step in the constitution of the Council of one hundred, theAdvice of one hundred, they are linked to the economic policy of King Jaime I, well defined in 1265 in the decree of constitution of aAdviceLocal formed by one hundredprohomsojury. Before, in the fifties, a series of privileges, edited by Antonio de Capmany and Monpaalau in their monumentalHistorical memories about the Navy, Commerce and Arts of the old city of Barcelona,It allowed to place the city of Barcelona at the height of the other large commercial metropolis of the Western Mediterranean, in particular, Marseille, Genoa, Pisa, Livorno, Naples and Palermo; And he did it thanks to men like Ramón de Pustamans, a rich citizen of Barcelona, very practical in the sea, as King Jaime I says in him in theBook of feyts. For one of those fortunate randoms in history, the creation of theAdviceIt adopts the same tone as the interest of the royal house to take the kingdom of Sicily as a key piece in an expansion by some islands of the Mediterranean that would allow it to enter the healthy good business of the overseas spices.

In Barcelona, in the last third of the thirteenth century, with the passage of the crown of Jaime I to his son Pedro the Great, married to the highly distinguished Constance, descendant of Emperor Federico II, everything is scrambled: the interest of honest citizens is to place themselves in the foreground in the routes of international trade in what the great medievalist Roberto Sabatino López called the world of open horizons; heAdvice of one hundredIt is the key piece in this decision to turn Barcelona an important commercial metropolis. A series of decisive events, the Sicilian eve, the French invasion, the change of the cultured language of the Catalan with which DESCLOT is drafted the chronicle, the consolidation of the entrepreneurial bourgeoisie. The Royal House supports all the initiatives to the point of sending one of the most conspicuous representatives of honest citizens, Guillem Durfort II, whose mother Saurina was the confidence lady of Queen Constance, to negotiate with Pope Bonifacio VIII, a splendid autocrat, the legal situation of the crown in the litigation by Sicily. A Recommendation of the King, before Guillem Durfort II departed ("a bourgeois from Barcelona who was his and his house”, Writes Declot), becomes a call for attention of the many who were at stake in those years, the future of the city of Barcelona designed from theAdvice of one hundred.

Soon, before what could be imagined, he arrives at the throne Jaime II, Pedro's youngest son due to the accidental death of his older brother Alfonso El Liberal. A king of great decisions that are thoroughly involved in converting the city of Barcelona into the center of a community of commercial interest. These interests are reflected in urban improvement, with the passion of citizens honest to decorate their homes with chivalrous theme paintings. Even the King himself when supporting the construction of the Clarisas Monastery in Pedralbes to withdraw his last wife Elisenda de Montcada, is joining the economic development of the city with the beggar morality, after all the Franciscans and the Dominicans set the values system of this increasingly limited society; in fact an oligarchy with the image of an urban patricious.

In the bookPrinceps RegimentFrom the Franciscan Francesc eiximenis, the plane of the ideal city is drawn, a quadrilateral in whose center is the Plaza de la Cathedral, divided into four neighborhoods, one for begging order. The first decades of the fourteenth century were a promising era, as Ferrer Bassa reflects in his delicious paintings in Pedralbes. By 1330 the optimism and hope reigned among the Barcelona population that, already surpassed by the fabulous deeds of the late 13th century, contemplated economic expansion, an expression that evoked the beginning of a Catalan era in the Mediterranean. People began to imagine a municipal future capable of reconciling private luxury with beggar piety. Barcelona aspires to receive good income to improve their homes thinking about the need to build a new wall as a symbol of economy growth. An immense confidence in its institutions always linked to loyalty with the Royal House prevailed. Opulence made these decades a promising period. Prosperity presented tempting opportunities to be on the foot of equality with the great maritime powers in the spice business, while planning to rebuild the culture under the matrix of the Mediterranean Gothic that began to leave excellent signs in hospitals, churches, convents and palace of the high bourgeoisie. But the new changes required leaders capable of establishing an order of priorities and making decisions. It was at this point that the balance was broken and not in an alleged, and of course very exaggerated crisis of the agrarian economy of the Principality. Let's look at this point in detail. History is usually more complex than simplifying stories so current taste.

Avatars of a municipal institution

Helled by the agrarian crisis but above all decimated by the erroneous policy of the generality, the members of theAdvice of one hundredthat represented the citizens of Barcelona, in the mid -fourteenth century, however, they were aimed at one of the great times in their history. That atmosphere was often critical of some measures taken by the city government but was always Lozana and attentive to the values that were noticed in the future. A part of them prepared to receive the good news of Italian humanism that with Petrarca and Bocaccio had acquired full maturity. The literary halls of the ladies of Barcelona ask Bernat Metge to translate the last story of the Catalan from CatalanCoup, the one that refers to the history of Griselda. And he does so in honor of Mrs. Guimerà, who reads it in her social circle with remarkable event.

A promising future opens before the city of Barcelona as the members of their distinguished council think about two laces that last as an evil weight: first of all, the political corruption that sends many men linked to the State's finances in jail in a famous litigation that had as its main accused the Piamontés Financiero Luchino Scarambi, and second 1391 in which the homes of the Jewish Call are looted. But the dream of a better society is expanding among the members of the Council in the midst of a political conflict of enormous draft that in Caspe's commitment of 1412 ended up introducing a new dynasty into the Royal House.

The investments recovered, the vital tone of the city felt again in the good march of business or maritime trade, theChange tableIt served as a support for small business, corruption reduced although it followed the political tension with the tired partisan of the Count of Urgell, called "Jaume el Distat", who, from the lands of the interior of Catalonia, demanded the crown for him, declaring illegitimate the agreement that had been reached in Caspe in which the honest citizens of Barcelona had so much influence of Barcelona, and therefore in part in part. The art world refuses. That was very important. With an allegorical tone with Lluís Borrassá who presents a boy in the window watching the world pass before his inquisitive look; Symbolic with Bernat Martorell that represents the problem as the opposition between a prisoner princess and a dragon who expires San Jorge with his spear in a list. But, finally, we had to look for the neutral, objective, realistic zone. In 1445 Lluís Dalmau prepares to do in Barcelona what the great flamenco teacher Jan van Eyck was doing in Gante and Bruges: imposing a new pictorial language where the truth of a society that bets on well -being is expressed. But that truth to which they aspire is not the transcendental truth of the Mendicant clergy who still snorted in the public squares (and in the pulpits) with allegations of a common culture for all, but the truth of nature. The facts as they are. Clear, clear, that show the tone of a society and it is here that the influence of a mentality is perceived that should not be called bourgeois without betraying their deep aspirations, but that all the Barcelona who wanted to improve the social life of their city was characterized. A practical human group, oblivious to the whirlwind of the ideologies that dominated the social conflicts between the search and the Biga, among those who believed in the dynasty and those who detest it, those who dreamed of being part of a solid state and those who were content to cry a past that actually had never existed.

In the middle, of all this barahúnda, numerous Barcelona learned the trade with precision. Indispensable to judge at first glance the objectives of the modern world that was at the doors. It was about understanding themerchandise, the world of business extended throughout the world, beginning of a rebirth of the city. They wanted to impose that part of theReasonthat the Italians of their time said, a reason that is not theratioEcclesiastical, but the reason for the business, of the well -made work, of the moral of work. And here Lluís Dalmau receives the commission of the Municipal Council. Note well: receive the order; That is the great novelty of the moment. And paint about flamenco oak wood, and oil,The Virgin of the Councilors, where he makes veristic portraits of the political leaders who had asked for this painting. The work is an icon in Barcelona at the doors of an economic takeoff. The reform made by King Alfonso The magnanimous ten years after the commission to Dalmau means an increase in the number of the Cent's jurs to accommodate each of the four estates, honest citizens, merchants, artists and menestral, and thus the number reached the number of one hundred twenty -eight, thirty -two for each estate. It also sets the duration of the position of the consellers, two years, and the commissions that allow to activate this body were created.

Unfortunately, the danger continued. Far from the values of the modern world, perceived on the horizon, the reaction was gestated on behalf of the essences of an invented homeland. A pernicious tradition for Catalonia develops below: the rebellion of generality against the king, and his nefarious corollary, the civil war, which lasted ten years, between 1462-1472. The decade in which everything was spoiled. Will it use this story?

I. Improve metropolitan and global governance

In February 2019 theInstitute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona,heBarcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB)and theMetropolitan Strategic PlanHe published the work "What policies for what metropolis", in his presentation Ada Colau affirm:

“The 21st century is called to be the century of cities, while they have become the main spaces of collaboration, innovation and impulse of the world economy, in the same way that the great challenges of today”.

It is an idea, without a doubt, powerful and that we can share; but that needs to be completed to the extent that the great challenges that Ada Colau synthesizes have an urban decline; But they also have a dimension that overflows urbanly and goes far beyond state borders. They are global problems that require global responses.

That is why we can affirm that the 21st century will be, in addition to the century of cities, the century of global governance, in the same way that the 20th century was the century of opposing blocs and the two world wars, and the 19th century was the century of States and Imperialism.

Powerfully attracts the attention that the five challenges that the mayor of Barcelona and president of the AMB identifies are as complex in their causes as in the policies they require to face them. They are problems where economic causes overlap others of a political nature and that, having a strong "urban" component; But also a supraestatal extension, require definite solutions globally, sanctioned at the state level and applied many times at the local level.

We face challenges that demand the collaboration of multiple public administrations, which not only belong to different states, but often respond to different cultural guidelines and operate, primarily, on territories and distant and different populations, despite the fact that their acts can affect us all. We must establish models of collaboration between administrations and we must make it aware that representative democracy is, at the same time, mechanism for the solution and one of the problems to be solved.

We are obliged to improve global, state and local governance systems if we want to respond to the challenges we face, and that are effective and fair.

The document to which we have referred to the beginning of this chapter contemplates various sections: the first two related to the "challenges and proposals of metropolitan governance" in the territorial scope, in the institutional (political power, citizen participation and democratic legitimacy) and in that of specific metropolitan policies and projects, the third section collects individual contributions on the potential of the AMB and its external projection, the future projection, the future of the cities and the future Metropolitan Strategic Planning, Inclusive and Sustainable Economic Development of Metropolitan Barcelona and «last but not least»A reflection on the governance of metropolitan mobility that responds to the challenges of digitalization and the environment.

To this we must add that the publication of № 61 of thePapers of the Institute of Regional and Metropolitan Studies of Barcelona, done very shortly before, it is titled "Metropolitan Governance" and that, also contemporary, the AMB made public the "Dream project" (diagnosis. Metropolitan strategy and action) A strategic reflection with three axes:

(I) Social and territorial cohesion (inclusion)

(Ii) Urban metabolism (sustainable mobility, energy transition, climate change and pro diversity)

(Iii) governance (technological sovereignty and transparency)

It is obliged to verify that governance has become one of the main matters on the agenda of the Barcelona City Council, the scientific community and the AMB, also the central nucleus of the № 9 of the publication «Politics & prose» dated April 2019 and entitled «Les Claus de Barcelona«. It cannot be surprised, in this context, that it is also the central nucleus of this new BDF publication.

Concern for governance is not a priority only for our municipal and metropolitan authorities, but is shared by outstanding political scientists and important international institutions aware that the world faces global problems that require global responses, responses that can only be executed by elaborating and maintaining a robust principle of international legality.

The strengthening of international legality becomes more necessary at a time when not only the problems we face are global, but also the political and economic context in which we live, a "globalization" that, even in opinion of its hardest critics, is irreversible.

This is the opinion of Joseph E. Stiglitz formulated in 2002 in one of his best known works: «The discomfort in globalization». In this work, written at a time when the 2008 crisis was not yet predictable, Stiglitz argues that globalization is not working properly; But that neoproteccionism is not the solution, but that we must think of an improvement in governance globally.

To put it in your own words:

«Current globalization does not work. For many of the poor of the earth it is not working. For much of the environment it does not work. For global economic stability it does not work«.

And this being your opinion, we also want to highlight its diagnosis about the cause of this malfunction:

«Worldwide, the reason why globalization does not work is governance ».

Also, the way for the solution:

«The most fundamental change required for globalization to work as it should be produced in governance. "

In our previous work "a project for the Metropolitan Barcelona", we said that Barcelona is a metropolis connected to the Nodal Network of Cities where knowledge and innovation are concentrated, the network where the future is built. We are part of a whole that is questioning its governance model at the same time that we question our own model.

We live a time when the gaze focuses on a "we" too limited and close. This attitude makes us often forget that we share problems with many others and that we can find help working in collaboration with others, next or farther, thus comolas answers we need, while sharing our experiences.

It is true that at a global level we have long abandoned the conviction that liberal democracy and market economy are the highest state of human evolution, it is true that the same idea that a system can be considered the end of history has been replaced by the conviction that history, sooner or later, takes all systems to an end.

This change of optics seems, on many occasions, to proceed with a deep disappointment that affects, in a very generalized way, government institutions at all levels and that, in a particular way, is a crisis of confidence in democracy.

This is the intellectual climate in which we consider the reform of our governance and precisely for this reason we consider fundamental importance to be clear about the principles we should govern. Once again, we will take Stiglitz's words.

"Good governance must be based on a few simple principles of representativeness, legitimacy, transparency and responsibility."

We will return in detail about them.

II.- Government for a crisis time

1.- What is happening to us?

We attend a change of great importance that can have unpredictable consequences regarding our societies, consequently, for our lives. The disaffection towards democracy of much of the citizenship of Western countries.

In 1989, six months before the fall of the Berlin Wall, Francis Fukuyama wrote a short article in the magazine "National Interest" entitled "The end of the story." His thesis later expanded them by publishing in 1992 his best known work "the end of history and the last man", insisting that liberal democracy and free market had become the form of social organization at a planetary scale without an alternative that could discuss that hegemony and find that this system had proven to be compatible with any of the civilizations existing in the world.

In Fukuyama's thesis, the end of the story did not mean, obviously, that facts of historical relevance could not occur, but there would be no project of social, political and economic organization alternative to the then dominant.

Paradoxically, reality seemed initially confirmed Fukuyama's thesis with the disappearance of the USSR and the incorporation of China into the market economy, to later contradict it radically. The dominant perception today is that we are not living the end of the story, but a time when the market economy generates strong tensions and is causing a loss of generalized and extended confidence in the middle western classes that seem to be putting in a matter simultaneously, globalization and its results and the effectiveness of the democratic representation system.

In statistical terms, globalization has meant an important decrease in poverty in the world, but simultaneously has produced an exponential increase in inequality. Wealth accumulates every time in the hands of less, while the middle classes are impoverished until they feel that their economic and social status is at risk.

2.- Five books

Growing sectors of the western population see that precisely because of these risks democracy does not work and as a visible consequence:

1 The representatives live as far from those represented ...

2 There is no confidence in politicians by citizens.

The population distrusts democracy because it has defrauded. And that translates into low electoral participation and a disinterest in politics. The hope that apparently produced the end of the Cold War has ended up giving way to growing frustration. It has not been the "end of history" and we will have to prevent frustration from driving towards positions away from what democracy is.

It is a current debate. There is a lot of bibliography that analyzes what is happening regarding that disagreement with democracy, that disenchantment of the population. And there is both in Europe and in the United States, left and right. We have made a selection of five books whose authors have sought to interpret the reason and find solutions.

• Slavojzizek: "Problems in paradise"

Zizek mentions Fukuyama indirectly in the subtitle itself ... and in fact among other things questions the thesis of the American.

For Zizek there is no "capitalist civilization" and therefore that system can operate in different ways in other civilizational contexts. The market economy can work in many areas as it is a way of organizing the economy. Thus, it can coexist with the Chinese authoritarian model or with that of the European welfare state.

In the book, Zizek tries to explain through common links the different revolts that are occurring on the planet, Arab springs included, which sees how the result of the contradictions inherent in capitalism itself.

Zizek introduces a novel element in the Marxist consideration of "the unemployed as a reserve work army." For him it would be necessary to include all those located outside the system, whether entire areas or countries. Being exploited is a way of existing. Its denial, its location outside the system, is also exploitation. Zizek considers that capitalism introduces a novel and radical class division: a planetary division that separates those who are protected and those that are out of protection. The conflict would remain of classes however for Zizek it is necessary to expand the concept to include all the exploited. This set should include those who do not even have the option of being exploited.

Zizek does not accept the blackmail of the traditional left that says it is the only way to stop to the right. He denies that right and that denial does not arise more right and if a left more leftist than the official left.

It states that only from communism, paradoxes of the situation, you can understand the causes of the negative result of globalization. It also raises an iconoclastic idea that the financial system must be reformulated and speaks of a kind of “socialization of banks”. And there is still a new proposal, this to the seemingly leftist idea of basic income, which, again a paradox with respect to the classic proposal of the left of payment mechanism to reduce the suffering of unemployment, is valued as an acceptance that the productivity derives from a collective intelligence and that is why we generate wealth.

Zizek values that there is a tendency to decline regarding democracy promoted in turn by the end of the containment element that was represented by the so -called communist bloc. His disappearance meant the erosion of the welfare state. In the EU we are witnessing the fact.

It remains including ideas in its analysis regarding the growing indebtedness of countries and people. Go to current indebtedness as a control mechanism, domination. It is not expected to be returned because its existence is precisely the source of power of those who manage it.

Zizek, concerned about divorce between democracy and capitalism, enters to analyze the different protests that have emerged in different areas of the planet. Consider that all protests have a common element. It states that only a democracy that goes beyond politics and deepens in economic and social life can overcome divorce. It makes clear in its analysis that state socialism is not the solution to the problem generated by capitalism as it is still a substitution of forms of domination.

With all the aforementioned elements Zizek analyzes the Arab springs, both of Egypt and Turquia, the phenomenon of the outraged or the clashes in the borders of Russia, with Ukraine as a prominent element. Go in those movements as a call to someone, "another", which would be seen as the one who makes decisions, acts. And there is no other. Zizek is only possible to change things with each citizen's own activity

The Ukrainian case allows you to introduce the idea that ethnic and religious passions are in parallel to a setback of the illustration values. Go to those emotional drives as an example that a dark age is coming. Zizek shows surprise for the enormous shamelessness with which those old passions have appeared.

In his continuous reflections on the left he makes a special mention to Piketty. He accepts his vision that the internal logic of the capitalist tends to increase inequality and with it to a weakening of democracy. Both agree that the alternatives to historically rehearsed capitalism did not work and therefore conclude that there is no alternative. Only a global power to contain the drifts that democracy are hearing. That power should allow to take advantage of the capabilities of wealth of capitalism with adequate redistribution that maintained inequality and thereby safeguard democracy. Again, both agree that this power is unimaginable in the limits of current global capitalism.

From that pessimistic vision regarding a solution based on that global power, it introduces the need to act, understood as opposed to pseudo-activity, which is related to participation, a mask that hides that finally nothing happens. Zizek believes necessary the action of the "self -managed crowds" from which the revolutionary impulse has to arise. And all this considering that the conditions to act are never perfect, that it was always something too early and yet we would have to start somewhere with a concrete intervention and always analyze the future complications that could arise from those actions.

He considers that a strong leader, he calls him "new master," is essential. Its function is liberating, you must overcome the "You must!" And replace it with a "You can!" And that "you can" refers to thinking beyond capitalism and liberal democracy as a definitive framework. Zizek analyzes revolutionary experiences and their violence component. It establishes a comparison between the violence of the system that allows its continuity and the revolutionary of those who seek to transform it. Although Zizek clarifies that he should not go further with violence, that the important thing is to change the frame. Zizek relocates the conceptual space related to violence by considering that what is considered as normal, almost natural, such as an economic crisis, which has an important capacity for devastation, and yet we should consider it as a type of violence.

• Steven Levitskyy Daniel Dibatt: "As democracies die"

The authors confirm in this essay the value of American democracy. Its equilibrium system and powers forms a counterweight system that has exceeded a multitude of crisis. The US Constitution has demonstrated its solidity overcoming the secession war, the great depression ...

Levitsky and Zibatt warn in this work that democracy can be gradually eroded, almost imperceptible. They consider that institutions are not enough to stop elected autocrats. Any constitutional system needs unwritten norms that act as a complement. Thus they see in the US that among rival parties there is mutual tolerance, the consideration of legitimate adversaries and containment are key to the support of the democratic system.

They value as very important that it was necessary to wait for 1965 to make democracy full when the civil rights of the African -American population were recognized. The authors highlight the conversion of American parties as parties designed for specific identity groups. Thus, the Republican Party is the majority party of white citizens and the Democratic Party that of identity groups and ethnic minorities.

Levitsky and Zibatt highlight that equality civism and freedom are the keys that guarantee the survival of democracy. From this perspective, the partisan control of institutions that should act on counterweights, and the progressive radicalization of political discourse in Western Europe and, specifically among us, are signs that warn about the weakening of our democracy.

• T. Todorov: "The intimate enemies of democracy"

Why is there discomfort in democracy? Todorov observes that there is discomfort in our democratic societies. His thesis, a deep analysis of the enemies of democracy, part of the idea that once defeated the fascism and communist totalitarianism, it is impossible to resurface the totalitarian threat from the outside of democratic societies, despite the fact that the word freedom has become the commercial name of nationalist, xenophobic and extreme right parties.

He does not see the fundamentalist Islam as the new enemy of democracies, however, it emphasizes that in our societies the extreme reactions produced before Islamist attacks have changed sensitivity to facts such as torture, mass destruction of populations, minority discrimination and the limitation of civil freedoms. It see precisely that in the interior of democracies that enemies have appeared very difficult to fight since, in their condition, apparently claiming internal defuerzas of democracy, they seem legitimate.

For Todorov, democracy is not defined only by how power is constituted, but also by how it is exercised. Thus, although the essential is the principle of popular sovereignty is also the respect that power owes the person in their individual sphere. Although every system is improvable is precisely the balance between progress, freedom and people what must be monitored because from each of those three factors the internal enemies arise: populism, ultraliberalism and messianism.

Messianism, based on the fact that human reason can transform the world into a justice direction. There is a similar trend in disparate elements such as Napoleon, Saint Simon, Marx ... in offering the world Freedom and Justice want it or not. Although totalitarian messianisms have been overcome we observe that our democracies now intend to impose democracy with bombs. This is the case of NATO's intervention in Kosovo that seeks to guarantee its independence from Serbia. The idea that prevailed was that the US had the duty to graf in other countries for the greatest purpose of democracy and free enterprise. Doctrine that initially sought to build a fairer international order and in the end turned out to be the imposition of the will of the US to the rest of the world. For Todorov, the violence of the media disable any nobility of the ends. The final result is an obvious deterioration of democratic postulates in that it is intended to justify the right to attack other countries, to torture and stop without any process.

Ultraliberalism. If liberalism is the movement that guarantees individual freedom against the power of the State, a basic principle of the French Revolution, it can be seen that after communism there was a substantial change from the contributions of von Mises, Hayek, Ayn Rand ... that mark a very different vision that ends in ultraliberalism, with the previous phase of neoliberalism. Todorov sees how a sample of his perversion in the result achieved. Now the benefits are still individual but the risks are socialized. For Todorov, which considers humanism a key element of European thought, equality and fraternity are as important as freedom. The limitations that the law introduces is what allows us to reflect the will of the people. Todorov sees limits to individual freedom. The democratic principle requires limiting to power, not only that of the State also to that of individuals if these are so powerful that they are a threat to the freedom of others.

Populism. If popular sovereignty is the basic principle of democracy, it can also become threat when populist discourse arises, understanding that it acts on the emotion of the moment, without hardly considering present and future. Todorov thinks that all populism has an axis around the rejection of multiculturalism, although that phenomenon is not exclusive to populism. Consider that this debate on multiculturalism is used, as well as that of national identity, as a way of diverting the center of care for real problems difficult to solve. The human need to be part of a group makes Europeans feel their traditional identity in danger of the progress of globalization and individualism. The rejection of immigrants and xenophobia are the central elements of populism.

• Marlene Wind: "The tribalization of Europe"

WIND considers that the most relevant current trends are anti -globalism and identity policy. That is visible in six European countries that depart from liberal democracy and adopt populist approaches. The author believes that in populism the majority rule applies without restrictions in the midst of a "fake news" and a cultural fundamentalism. The consequence of these trends is the crisis and questioning of the European project, despite having been the most innovative and successful that has been developed in the continent.

Identity issues are the origin of the decline of democracy and the EU crisis. WIND considers that the consideration of identity communities as natural phenomena is in itself a fallacy in terms of communities have always been imaginary, invented things. Identity, religious or national policies place their bases and foundations beyond rational analysis and therefore outside the political debate. All aggravated by the effectiveness of power when using social engineering to create and build identity communities.

Wind analyzes the procés in Catalonia, the referendum of secession of Scotland and Brexit and concludes that there are strong similarities and that are based on an exacerbation of the differences. The us against others, pretending to solve everything with a yes or not binary to some poorly formulated questions.

The sign of a disenchantment with democracy can be measured in the decrease in electoral participation. The fact that The Economist reflects in its publication the decrease in democratic quality in a majority of countries, six in Europe, is a sample of the problem. The fact that the aggressiveness of the Trump Cabinet and the policies of China and Russia is added to a planetary level, it can not be advanced towards a greater interrelation and if towards a globalization that accentuates the contradictions, inequality and conflict.

Wind recalls that in democracy the essentials is not only the vote, and that it is not possible to forget the mechanisms that protect minorities and ensure the empire of the law. The judges are the guardians of freedom and constitute a counter -chair mechanism because it limits the imposition of the majority to the minority without limitations. This judicial control, constitutionally taken to parliamentary activity, is the one that is at risk in cases such as Hungary and Poland.

• Joseph Stiglitz: "The discomfort in globalization"

Stiglitz considers that globalization does not work. It has not worked for many of the poor, has not worked for the environment and either for economic stability.

The author is necessary to reconcile the market with the regulatory role of the State and the redefinition of institutions such as the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. He considers that regardless of the state of political and economic development of the countries, it is the governments that make the differences. Your own summary: the fundamental change required for globalization to function as it should occur in governance. This thesis would mean the resignation of the Veto de USA right in the IMF and that the vote rights in the cited institutions are distributed equally. Stiglitz does not intend to stop globalization, which he considers inevitable, and if the way in which we govern it, in how we manage it.

Proposals to reform the international financial system that demand to overcome the fundamentalism of the market:

1. Recognition of the dangers associated with the excessive liberalization of capital markets and especially short -term capital movements.
2. Reform the moratorium and bankruptcy system of the debtor states.
3. Avoid great bailouts.
4. Homogenize international bank control.
5. Better risk management.
6. Improve social protection networks.
7. The response to the crisis is not a policy of contraction of spending but, in general, an expansive policy.

The author states that if problems solve globalization, it will not encourage development and generate poverty and instability, and globalization will be strongly answered.

The book, published in 2002, was reviewed after 2008 by verifying that the global economic norms arising in developed countries seriously harmed the middle and low classes, benefiting the financial and business interests of those countries. It was a consequence of broader markets and lower costs with the result of more benefits. That is why it considers international legality and global regulation agencies that proportions valid rules and denounce the poor management of globalization that has had undesirable elements in the market itself. Stiglizt points out that five American companies dominate the digital sector market in the world, except in China. In some areas, a single company dominates the market, that is, there is no efficient market precisely because it is not very competitive.

Washington's consensus was answered, following the 2008 crisis, by the consensus of Stockholm, so that privatization, deregulation, liberalization and inflation control should be replaced by inclusive development, limit inequality, facilitate environmental development and achieve a balance between society, the State and the market.

Although there have been positive elements in globalization such as the one that achieved the most intense and rapid economic growth in history, which the author considers the result of the acceptance of the principle of legality, it cannot be separated from the enormous increase in inequality and weakening of many communities. In fact it has concentrated wealth and increased inequality at a higher rate than economic growth itself.

A regulated globalization through a change in world governance would have made the crisis of 2008 very difficult because the financial excesses of a deregulated market would not have occurred. The control elements established after the World War, BM, IMF ... are not enough. The G7 has had to complement the G20. In that scenario Stiglitz raises three possibilities:

1 Continue without changes and end the conclusion that globalization is not sustainable.

2 Back to old protectionism, the apparent ease of returning to the known

3 MANAGE BETTER NEGATIVE SITUATIONS AND REPRIBE THE RULES TO MAKE THEM FASTERS.

The average and workers classes are the new discontent against globalization. It is these sectors that support Trump, Johnson, Bolsonaro ... their origin has been the malfunction of the system and the deregulation of financial markets. It is that short -termism that only values the immediate and does not enter the indirect or long -term effects. It also influences the increase in options for tax evasion, which has turned Nevada, London, Ireland…. in areas that offer similar opportunities to those of a fiscal paradise. A third element is the way intellectual property is regulated. It is questionable if that property must be maintained or a social function must be recognized and to pass it to the scientific community with a protection of rights to the creator of the new technology.

The author states that governance is the cause of globalization malfunction. The great interdependence between countries has not generated a world government that guarantees justice and effectiveness. Proposes measures for inclusive globalization:

1. Globalization is a means to raise the standard of living of people around the world.
2. World scope rules is necessary when there are cross -border externalities.
3. Only worldwide the problems of safety, health, environment are solved ...
4. Governance has to be based on representativeness, legitimacy, transparency and compromise that they based on a principle of international legality.
5. Market fundamentalism leads to deregulation and crisis. This market needs regulation.
6. Large economies are different from small ones.
7. The standards for developed countries cannot be the same as for those developed.
8. Change produce losers. Some people need help to overcome Choc.
9. Globalization affects society and its culture, in addition to the economy, and the options in favor of the culture itself must be respected.
10. It is questionable that the market is always competitive, as observed with giants who control economic sectors.
11. All these proposals demand effective governance because economics and politics are not separable.

The 21st century can be the century of cities and effective municipal governance. The need is evident and the trends towards it are very strong, however the future can twist and return to the conflict due to inequality, populism or nationalism.

3.- The city as a space for freedom.

The previous section aims to set the framework of the debate on the political-social and economic organization of the current world. It is intended to be a look at the environment, the challenges we face and the instruments we can count on to build acceptable solutions.

We must now return our gaze to the city and to the definition of conditions that allow maintaining its character of space for freedom. To do this we will rely on the work of R. Sennet "build and live. Ethics for the city."

We intend to treat this author from an perspective that mixes the civilizational fact of what is a metropolis, human builder par excellence, with the consequences regarding what this disaffection is for democracy that we have seen embodied in the preceding section. In other words, Sennet makes an assessment of what the city implies with respect to democratic postulates and values.

Sennet's work raises the distinction between the city understood as physical reality (Ville) and as the sum of perceptions, behaviors and beliefs of its inhabitants (cité). This dichotomy forces the main question that the author raises in the pages of his book: Who does who? At different points try to raise answers.

In a world that rapidly concentrates its population in cities and that sees the size and density of these cities exponentially, the key question is whether the man makes the city to the measure of their needs and their desires or the city (urbanized space) modulates the consciousness and behavior of man. What moves the urban planner? Or, to go further, what should move it?

Sennet in "Building and Inhabiting" treats the great urban innovators, with a special accent in Cerda and Haussmann. Two examples of seeing how the city can affect human behaviors. If the structure was modified, they could lead to more rational health practices, something that has been certain.

The city that Cerdá Design intended to make the grid a space of sociability and equality and Sennet does not value it positively as it sees it as an urban monoculture and with that uniformity can get sick. Sennet sees the city as a space of freedom, which was reborn with that function in the Middle Ages and therefore must be open and that is because it is plural, however it concludes that to be open it must be multiform, by aggregation of heterogeneous spaces.

Sennet, a supporter of "opening the city", theorizes on the vault key of urban design: the creation of places with a particular character. This idea is what motivates rejection of interchangeable uniformity in cities. Therefore, in his criticism of the Cerda grid model, he raises the solution of a “supermanzana” that eliminates, reduces, traffic and channels it for his perimeters. Those "superislas" would allow new green areas and offer spaces to the citizen.

The city is a space of freedom.

This idea of the city as a space for freedom, relying on theorists such as Weber, defends a conception in which rights and powers have a local base, which is approaching the city-state, an idea that is not consolidated. The urban planners focused on indifference and insolidarity as a characteristic of the current city. Citizens are oblivious to each other and with the environment. Sennet considers that this trend, crystallized in 1933, reaffirmed the distances between "Ville and Cite."

The author analyzes the work of Jane Jacobs (death and life of the big cities) and her conviction about the basic character of the neighborhood and the door that represents to develop direct democracy. The city cannot be planned in a way that prescribes how its inhabitants should work, circulate, circulate and have fun. Its consequence is a city that is not alive. Study the contrast that observes between the thought of Jacobs and that of Lewis Mumford creator of the concept "sustainable city."

Munford values that there are problems and challenges that cannot be solved from optics and approaches focused on actions of small communities. Only the Ville can face ecological or technological challenges. Sennet, aware of the growing technification of the city, considers that it can lead to prescriptive smart cities or, alternatively. The first imposes criteria and ways of behavior and the second, which values as preferable, generates interactive departmental processes.

What is the path of contemporary urbanism? The author states that in the city the urban has become "indifferent to indifference." Sociology discovered a long time ago that the city makes us "indifferent" towards others. There is no urban community, there are partial "identities" that do not lead to fraternity. Sennett argues that a cooperative intelligent city is more open than the prescriptive intelligent city even if it does not help arouse "sympathy for others."

It seems inevitable to refer your thinking to our space and our time, to this Barcelona that must face inevitable challenges such as climate change and energy transition or the collective and private transport revolution; but that also faces other challenges derived from a governance deficit. A deficit that is manifested by the excessive will to prohibit, suppress, order and conduct the city without looking at the future. Our managers do not act with "modesty" as Sennett recommends, impose behavior patterns as if they were the feudal lords of their time.

Cerdá thought his Barcelona model intuiding urban growth and car development. We need rulers who know how to prepare Barcelona for the mobility of the future, to see it as a polycentric and interconnected metropolis and, above all, that they do not stop it in the name of progress.

It is necessary to remember the existing dynamics in the universe of global cities. Among these cities there is a very strong physical connection, with the consequences of having needs that can become similar and that as a corollary they are increasingly separated from the states to which they belong.

4.- Conclusions

There is a coincidental set of conclusions by the cited authors, a link that unites them. In all of them, the contrast in the feeling produced by the sinking of the Berlin wall and the block that supported it, translated into the book at the end of the story of Francis Fukuyama, in which democracy, free market, liberalism triumphed, with respect to what is verifiable now, democracy does not work.

These authors explain it for the effects of globalization, because this globalization has produced an inequality growth. The population distrusts democracy because it has defrauded. And that means low electoral participation and disinterest in politics.

They emphasize that current policy translates into a boom of identity movements: feminism, LGTBI, minority ethnic groups ... They are not considered as a global alternative although, they have a capacity to undermine the democratic system. Its consequences are:

1) Politics is made regarding these identity groups, whether women, Hispanics, homosexuals, Africans

2) The identity of being among social groups to be among territories, something that explains the rise of nationalisms.

That world of group and territorial identities threatens to destroy the concept of "citizen" emerged from the French Revolution, in turn heiress of the Enlightenment.

From certain leftist intellectuals, such as Félix Ovejero ("the reactionary drift of the left"), it is considered that 68 a paradigm shift in the left was produced, placing the center of gravity of its speech in the difference instead of equality. The freedom, equality and fraternity of the enlightened ideal goes to other features that would be what would allow the individual to integrate: religion, sexual orientation, gender ... The difference is what is underlined, equality ceases to be an objective. Position coinciding with the sociologist R.ingleart, who considers that it has gone from the materialism of the 60s and 70s, with a concern for material well-being, to a post-materialism, with respect to minorities, the environment, which in our days became self-expressive values. In conclusion: solved the material the debate becomes about identity. The general situation is surprising because that new role of the current left brings you to positions that were typical of the reaction against the French Revolution and its universal declaration of rights.

Ideological positions impossible to contact. The left happens to empathize with nationalist identity, instead of seeking universal, and religious citizenship, instead of seeking secularism. It is the replacement of the ideal illustrated by the romantic, which accepts the policy based on feelings.

We can highlight in the book of Levitsky and Zibatt that it is easy to appreciate that, despite the structural and short -term differences with the model they studied, USA, it is possible to see parallels with what happens in the EU and even refine the magnifying glass and introduce the political situation of Catalonia and the rest of Spain. It is easy to observe how that basic substrate is not collected in the normative framework of laws that allows a democracy to be stable, "mutual tolerance" among political agents and even among citizens of different ideas. There is no longer "containment", neither among the elect nor among the rest of citizens.

The economic crisis is one of the factors that influences, with the salary decrease the labor insecurity and the increase in inequality, with the corollary of resentment and the subsequent polarization. When the economic stability of the population is replaced by insecurity is when the door opens to the internal enemies of democracy.

It is in that drift that the global city has a new role to claim. A role that avoids that escape to the division position of the population into hundreds of identity base groups, which has among other consequences, to hinder connection strategies.

The metropolis, the space where citizens work and live, which can be in different municipal entities but in turn integrated into metropolitan reality, is the place with which everyone feels identified, because their ability to create wealth is intense enough to eliminate the difference based on ethnic identity, gender, religion, etc ...

The metropolis can mean the environment and limes that allow to achieve a higher democratic quality, than to represent representatives and represented.

It is from the global metropolis from where it is still possible to launch new governance proposals that allow the current identity drifts that democracy and compromise our future.

III.- The Metropolitan Barcelona

1.- What is Metropolitan Barcelona today.

What do we know about her? What affects us? Does it benefit us?

This entity is much closer to us and our day -to -day we are aware, it also benefits us and could still do it much more.

To place us to say that the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona covers 36 municipalities, 636 km2, 3.2 million inhabitants and represents more than 50% of the GDP of Catalonia, in addition to managing the third pubic budget of Catalonia, after the Generalitat and the City Council of Barcelona, and being one of the largest investors in public works. It is an urban continuum with very few examples in southern Europe, one of its main urban areas and one of the great economic engines of the south of the continent.

The municipalities that integrate it have many links with each other but they do not constitute a homogeneous or social, neither cultural, or politically, but rather diverse territory. However, as a whole, it has the elements to play in the league of the big cities, where it must be, depending on its limitation in its own ambition, that is, where its citizens want to place it.It is therefore a diverse territory, full of inequalities but with enormous potential, which requires coordinated policies to be able to compete on equal foot with other large urban concentrations that have already opted to make that jump.

To this end, it requires a political personality and the construction of a true complementary common identity of local identities, which is much more necessary than we want to recognize, constituting the EMB entity only the prelude to what it should or can become. The idea must consist of integrating instead of excluding and collaborating instead of competing.

2.- The legal framework.

The creation of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, through Law 31/2010, of August 3 of the Parliament of Catalonia, is nothing more than the continuation or rather, recovery, of a historical entity that had already begun to walk and develop, but which was annulled by political motivations fearful of taking off skills. Its predecessor was the Metropolitan Corporation of Barcelona created in 1974 and that allowed the elaboration of the General Metropolitan Plan in 1976 and the Metropolitan Sanitation Plan.

Thus, it implies the restitution of an entity that had already existed and that has come to stay, since today the big cities cannot be understood or managed but from their globality, since the rest of the municipalities are not only oblivious to what happens in the big city, but must also be protagonists and benefit from a common metropolitan management. It is, as the preamble of Law 31/2010 says, to ensure the right and effective capacity of municipalities to manage public affairs that affect their citizens.

Art. 93 of the Statute of Catalonia already indicates that "Supramunicipal entities are based on the will for collaboration and association of municipalities and in the recognition of metropolitan areas ”.And the law arises precisely to regulate and develop this collaboration between municipalities, with the desire to improve the efficiency of the administrations operating in the metropolitan territory. The basis for the creation of a metropolitan area lies in the economic and social links between municipalities that make joint planning and coordination of services and works necessary. That is, they are based more on a functional objective of effectiveness than on the existing administrative reality. It is for this reason that its effectiveness, efficiency, decentralization and proximity to the citizen must guide its reason for being.

However, the AMB does not have a true metropolitan government, it lacks exclusive powers, it suffers from a lack of independent financing and suffers from weak democratic legitimation, as it is not a directly elected administration. Although these aspects reveal its weaknesses, its powers show that they positively affect us in our daily lives and are not at all foreign to us, which is why it is necessary to analyze this entity to highlight its strengths, but also its weaknesses and see how to overcome them so that it really provides benefits and does not constitute another entity to support.

3.- Structure and content of the law

Law 31/2010 that creates the AMB contains 48 articles that are structured in a preliminary title, followed by 6 titles, 11 additional provisions, 5 transitional and 2 final. Therefore, it is not an extensive law, it is not very ambitious, but it still constitutes the recovery of the metropolitan entity and therefore the germ of everything it can become.

Its purpose is its creation and regulate its organization, its powers and its financing. It is a supra-municipal local entity of a territorial nature with its own legal personality, formed by municipalities of the metropolitan area to which all those who wish to do so can be added, which have territorial continuity with the rest and by law of the Parliament of Catalonia, which leaves its possible expansion in the hands of another administration.

Title I regulates its organization, which is made up of the following bodies:

• Metropolitan Council: made up of all the mayors and councilors of the city councils of the member municipalities, based on a proportional number according to the number of inhabitants, except in the case of Barcelona, ​​which has 25 members.
• Council of Mayors: its existence is not mandatory but can be created to present proposals for action to the Metropolitan Council.
• Commissionsof the Metropolitan Council: to prepare previous reports or study specific issues of matters to be approved by the Metropolitan Council.
• President and vice presidents: is elected from among the mayors of the Metropolitan Council, which in turn is made up of a majority of members of the Barcelona city council, so in practice, although the law does not expressly say so, he is always the mayor of Barcelona.
• Special Accounts Commission: to examine and study the accounts and budget of the entity, but whose powers do not hinder the Court of Auditors or the Audit Office.

Title II is limited to listing the major metropolitan powers, without going into too much detail about how they are exercised, so here it seems that the law itself is presented as a proposal of possibilities that can be deployed, without constituting a closed list and allowing the needs for the execution of these powers to decide their specific regulation.

Lascurrent powersthat the law grants are limited but very notable and current. They are articulated around the following major areas:

• Territory, urban planning and housing.
• Transportation and mobility.
• Infrastructure, hydraulic services and waste treatment.
• Environmental and renewable energy policy.
• Economic and social development.
• Social and territorial cohesion.

The law does not develop them in detail nor establish any specific procedure for their deployment, although these are areas of vital importance to create a metropolitan identity and to allow inter-municipal solidarity to be put into practice.

Title III is the one that regulates the main competence of the law: territorial planning, urban planning and housing, dedicating the entire title to it.

The territory is the space where a whole series of functional relationships, urban concurrence, services and common supplies are articulated. Therefore, the AMB should be an effective tool at the service of management efficiency and the well-being of the citizens that comprise it.

Urban planning is perhaps the best example that gives life to the metropolitan entity. The land susceptible to new developments is scarce and growth must be analyzed from the entire metropolitan area, an idea with which the current General Metropolitan Plan of 1976 was created. It does not make sense to do it municipality by municipality. The city of Barcelona lacks developable land, although the demand for housing, services, offices, hotels,... does not stop increasing. This implies focusing the urban transformation jointly, taking into account the needs of transportation, mobility and infrastructure so that they unite and benefit all metropolitan municipalities.

The need for affordable housing is undoubtedly one of the most relevant current problems, not only in the city of Barcelona but in practically all municipalities, and its implementation in turn requires the provision of other services such as transport and certain equipment. This necessarily implies comprehensive planning and management of the whole with common policies. For the social housing policy to be efficient and effective, all municipalities must be taken into account, since some have availability of land and others lack it, and the resources available to each of the municipalities do not always coincide with those that need them most.

The procedure for developing the different plans is established below:

–Urban Master Plan(PDU): must establish the structuring elements of urban planning, based on sustainable development. It is therefore the framework document that will define the metropolitan strategy at the territorial level, so that the different plans can then be developed based on it and on common guidelines and objectives. In addition to defining its content, the law establishes its approval process which, ultimately, that is, the final approval, depends on the Generalitat of Catalonia.

The current Metropolitan General Plan, which dates back to 1976, is clearly outdated and its review and update is still pending by order of the law creating the AMB. The incipient PDU is the first milestone that is being worked on and which must aspire to be much more than an urban plan to take into account the metropolitan reality as a whole in aspects not only urban and architectural, but also demographic, economic, social, environmental, housing,... that is, constitute the basis on which to articulate and bring together the needs of citizens as a whole and the way in which to offer them solutions. It must propose urban solutions to metropolitan challenges such as housing, land or economic activity policies that must be specified in specific urban plans. From this, all urban planning, both general and derived, must be developed by mandate of the law.

The initial approval of the PDU is scheduled for December of this year and from there the entire process of approvals and citizen participation begins, which must culminate with final approval by the Generalitat of Catalonia. It is worth asking whether it makes sense that a document that establishes the needs of the municipalities of the Metropolitan Area and the way to solve them has to be approved by the Generalitat.

At the same time, it is related to theMetropolitan Urban Mobility Plan, already in process, a matter of vital importance in the development of cohesive and coherent urban proposals among themselves and among all municipalities, since one cannot speak of a network of cities without transportation that unites them. This mobility plan proposes measures that necessarily involve collaboration between the different city councils and other administrations with powers in the matter, which in turn are the ones that contribute most of the budget, which will condition its implementation.

Based on the global analysis of the metropolitan reality carried out by the PDU, the new General Metropolitan Urban Planning Plan can be prepared that will specify the urban planning aspects, based on the knowledge of citizen needs.

• Metropolitan Urban Planning Plan(POUM): multi-municipal instrument that displays the determinations of the PDU at the detailed level of each municipality. It will be carried out by updating the current PGM of 1976 and other general planning instruments. Its processing and approval depends on the AMB itself, the municipalities affected in each case and the AMB Urban Planning Commission.

• Municipal Urban Action Programs(PAUM): prepared by municipalities according to their own land and housing policies, based on the urban planning law and in coherence with territorial plans and senior directors. Its approval therefore depends on the municipalities themselves, unless they have multi-municipal incidents in which case they will go through the AMB and its Urban Planning Commission.

Urban Planning Commission. Although the law presents it as if it were some other instrument, in reality it is a body itself that could have been regulated in title I. It is a body that depends on the Generalitat of Catalonia, in which the presidency falls, and its vice-presidency falls on the president of the AMB. It has 10 members appointed by the Generalitat and 10 appointed by the president of the AMB, in addition to a representative of the State Administration, with voice but without vote. It has powers in the final approval of general planning (POUM), municipal programs and derived planning (partial plans and urban improvement plans) in certain cases, among others. At the same time, the law grants subjective criteria to modify plans provisionally approved by the AMB.

Title IV deals with the relationships between the municipalities and the AMB, based on the form of participation of the former in the entity.

Title V regulates the form of financing of the AMB, which is based on the allocation from certain taxes, fees, public prices, urban planning fees, subsidies, etc. and contributions from the municipalities that make it up. That is, the AMB lacks budgetary autonomy, it has a high level of dependence on transfers from other public administrations.

Title VI establishes that the people who work at the AMB are career civil servants, interim, labor and temporary personnel, within the regime of the Catalan legislation of the public service and the state legislation of local regime for the secretary, intervention and treasury.

However, it is noteworthy that the management staff is appointed by the Metropolitan Council, so, as we have already discussed, it will depend on the mayors and councilors of the municipalities.

Of the provisions of the law, highlight the additional 9th ​​relative to theConstitution of the AMB Urban Planning Commission:

It is established at the time of the entry into force of the PDU, that is, it does not yet exist and therefore we must go to the 1st Transitory Provision which indicates that until then, the powers assigned to it by law will be exercised by the corresponding Territorial Urban Planning Commissions or by whoever is designated by the Generalitat of Catalonia, with the exception of the Barcelona Urban Planning Subcommittee which has previously been assigned them by virtue of the Barcelona Charter of the Law. 22/1998.

Also highlight the 1st Final Provision on the creation of the Territorial Urban Planning Commission for the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona, ​​which the law obliges the government to create within 6 months from its entry into force, and which assumes the corresponding powers, except in the case of the municipality of Barcelona. It will be chaired by the person designated by the Generalitat and made up of 10 members appointed by the Generalitat, 10 by the president of the AMB and a representative of the State Administration, with voice but without vote.

3.- Critical considerations.

Analyzing the law, we can observe a competitive ambition that cannot be deployed in practice as it lacks budgetary autonomy to carry it out and independent political power, since ultimately the one who holds this power is the Generalitat of Catalonia and to a lesser extent the Barcelona City Council. Added to this are the different visions of the metropolitan fact that can occur when different parties govern in both institutions. In fact, we already saw what happened with its predecessor, the Metropolitan Corporation, and therefore we must avoid repeating history.

The law is from 2010 and its first mandate is the preparation of the PDU which, 9 years later, is only in the progress phase and pending initial approval at the end of 2019. We must therefore ask ourselves what is the reason for the delay in the deployment of its effects. This illustrates a clear example of the limitations that the law imposes on itself.

Another point to highlight is that, of all its competencies, only urban planning is the one that is most developed in its articles, although not yet in reality, and the rest, no less important, should also be the subject of greater development depending on the needs that their implementation requires.

We also consider that it is an undemanding law in that it is a passive recipient of powers, not having the active capacity to propose exercising new ones, being only recipient of the powers that this law, or others and the municipalities themselves want to delegate to it. It is the municipalities that must implement it with the transfer of powers that they consider for better management and coordination from the metropolitan level. Any delegation of powers implies a political will to lose certain power and political partisanship should be left aside if the real objective is to turn Barcelona and its metropolitan area into a global player in the world of large cities.

Therefore, one of the ways to promote the AMB is by providing it with more powers to make it useful from a functional point of view. Show its usefulness through facts and especially from a social point of view. Demonstrate that only with its competency policies can a response be given to common problems (housing, transportation, water, energy,...) and achieve social cohesion between the municipalities that comprise it.

During the last campaign for the municipal elections, all the mayors for Barcelona City Council highlighted the need and importance of Metropolitan Barcelona, ​​establishing themselves as great promoters of it. After a few months, nothing has been mentioned about it again. It follows that the idea sells, it looks good, but when it comes to putting it into practice, there is a lack of political will to delegate power to a higher entity.

The way in which the President of the entity is elected and the broad functions and discretion that the law grants him/her, together with the indirect election of the governing bodies, ultimately makes the AMB a very personal institution dependent on the political will of its President, who in practice has always been the mayor of Barcelona City Council.

Therefore, we understand that the institution needs to rethink its governance system so that the active presence of all metropolitan mayors is maintained, increasing the powers and weight of the Council of Mayors; but introducing direct election procedures for all or part of the members of the Metropolitan Council in a way that increases the democratic legitimation of the AMB.

Another alternative studied by those interested in metropolitan governance is to propose the direct election of its President, providing this presidency with stronger democratic legitimation and greater political weight. For this to work, it would be desirable for it to be a manager independent of political interests, otherwise we would be creating just another administration, when the objective must be above partisan interests. Although this is not possible with the current law, its modification is necessary and we are still aware of the political difficulty that this implies, this does not mean we should give up having it as a medium-term objective.

4.- Conclusion

Hecorsetpolicy that encompasses the entity limits its own capacity for action. In short, if we want to talk about a true metropolis or global city that assumes the protagonism it deserves worldwide and becomes a reference for the future, it must be us, its citizens, civil society, that assumes this leadership and gives the definitive push for the takeoff of Greater Barcelona.

The recovery of the metropolitan institution and the many actions that are being carried out from it. Although this is a very good start, the law that gives life to the AMB is unambitious and too dependent on political initiative. It must aspire to much more to place Barcelona as a whole among the large metropolises and be the focus of attention for business, scientific, environmental, technological initiatives,...but in such a way that all of this reverts, above all, to the benefit of its citizens.

V.- GOVERNING METROPOLITAN BARCELONA

1.- The territory of Barcelona Real

There is a Greater Barcelona, ​​just as there is the Grand Paris or the Great London. We experience it every time we go shopping in that city to go to Roca del Vallés, every time we bathe on its beaches in Gavà or Sitges, visit friends in El Maresme, or a wine cellar in Vilafranca del Penedés, or take a plane in El Prat. Its existence is an indisputable fact even though we have not yet been able to define it precisely.

The most formal attempt at definition is contained in the Law of 7-27-2010 and in its definition of the seven Veguerías or Regions into which it is proposed to divide Catalonia, at least for the purposes ofGeneral Territorial Plan of Catalonia (PTG).Greater Barcelona would correspond here with the callRegion Iand would be formed by 164 municipalities belonging to seven regions: Alt Penedés, Baix Llobregat, Barcelonés, Garraf, Maresme, Vallès Occidental and Vallès Oriental.

However, the division of Catalonia into veguerías/regions is an idea that is superimposed on a plural and changing Reality. A few months after approving this territorial delimitation, theRegio IIt was deprived of AltPenedes and Garraf, which became a separate area of ​​functional action that in 2017 would become an eighth region of Catalonia. All these changes meant little more than drawing lines on the map without modifying the institutional reality and even less so the social or economic reality.

What the limits of the real Barcelona are depends on what vision you have on the matter, as Mariona Tomás explains in her work “Gobernar la Barcelona Real”:

«From this debate, and in relation to the metropolitan governance models of Barcelona, ​​what we are interested in highlighting is the existence of two visions of the metropolitan territory, especially from the perspective of urban and territorial planning. Indeed, in the debate on proposals for territorial organization in Catalonia there has been a tension between a broader conception of the metropolitan phenomenon (corresponding to Regió I or the metropolitan veguería) and a more reduced vision (focused on the first metropolitan criterion).”

The truth is that Greater Barcelona has always had a variable geography depending on the services to be provided. Thus, the authority ofTransportMetropolitanoperates on the seven regions that initially made up theRegion Ialong with the Anoia, the Solsonès and the Selva.

On the other hand, Aigües Ter Llobregat (ATLL) also acts on the basis of the seven regions attached to theRegion Ior those that add up, as in the previous case of Anoia; but also Bages, Berguedà and Osona but not La Selva or Solsonès.

Added to a diffuse territorial base is a certain lack of definition regarding the services that should be provided with a territorial extension greater than that of the first crown.

Those who have approached the state of this matter (M. Tomas, O. Nel.lo) conclude that certain infrastructure policies, economic impulse and, above all, redistributive policy, only make sense when they are defined and executed on this territorial scale.

However, the common opinion is that in this territorial area, horizontal cooperation (between municipalities) and vertical cooperation (with other administrations) must be intensified before seriously thinking about possible institutionalization.

Also keep in mind that the Territorial Planning laws of 1987 include theLaw 6/1987 of April 4, of the Regional Organization of Cataloniagranting the regions coordination and cooperation functions with the city councils that, to a large extent, coincided with the powers of the Provincial Councils (Mariona Tomas “Gobernar la Barcelona Real” page 135).

The regional organization, configured in this way, also meant the "institutional fragmentation" of the metropolitan territory, in the words of Jordi Borja, and introduced a new entity with which it was necessary to establish coordination links.

We must accept that the territory of Greater Barcelona, ​​as defined by theRegion Ior with the extension that its variable geometry ends up setting, it does not have its own level of institutionalization. Its governance is necessarily federative and is established through sectoral or territorial cooperation mechanisms (“Quinespolitiques per a quina metropolis” point 1.1.) without the proposals contained in the consulted works allowing significant progress beyond the planning functions.

The unknown Administration

The work “Gobernar la Barcelona Real” (M. Tomas) contains a reference to a survey carried out by the CMB in 1984. At that time, only 6% of those interviewed knew of the existence of the CMB and only 2% knew who its president was (page 166).

The same author, in her article contained in "Papers 61", refers to a new survey carried out by theLocal Studies Research Groupfrom the University of Barcelona between 2013 and 2016. Their conclusion is that the people participating in the groups do not know how to describe what the AMB is or determine its territory. However, the degree of "identification" with the AMB is notable (7.4 on a rating of 0 to 10). The author emphasizes that it is a "functional identification" built on the basis that it is an administration that works.

It is not surprising, therefore, that the work «Which policies for which metropolis» insist on the need to generate knowledge of metropolitan urban systems (point 1.a) or highlight that:

"There is not yet - or there is only a very incipient existence - a shared story that recognizes or reinforces the metropolitan area as the political space necessary to implement certain first-order policies and projects" (point 2.1).

To continue insisting that any institutional change involves making more known and valuing the metropolitan reality (point 2.2 and especially 2.2.a) and specifying in Block B, intended for proposals to improve metropolitan governance, various proposals of a substantially informative nature, especially in section B-04"METROPOLITAN DEMOCRATIC LEGITIMACY» in which the aim is to promote a dissemination plan for the metropolitan territorial area and the institution itself as well as give greater visibility to metropolitan policies, specifically including:

«Also facilitate mobility throughout the territory to generate a base that helps build the metropolitan imaginary and, therefore, the metropolitan demos.» (4.2).

The discrepancy between what the AMB says and what it actually does can also help with this lack of knowledge. In reality, this dichotomy dates back a long time, since the CMB dedicated its resources to urban planning, public transportation, water and sanitation while demanding the need to develop social and administrative policies. (Govern Real Barcelona page 77 ff.).

Today, theMetropolitan Strategic Reflection (REM)has identified "six paradigmatic axes" for metropolitan construction:

– social inclusion

-sustainable economic development

-environmental sustainability

– efficient mobility

– cohesive territory

– capitality and governance

In our opinion, these axes draw the metropolitan administration as it wants to be, and even as it should be; However, it is not a correct drawing of what it really is today. Thus, two works by Maite Vilalta, professor at the UB, published respectively in «Papers 61» (in collaboration with Paula Salinas UAB), and in the document «Which policies for which metropolis» show the following situation:

«So, the first thing we need to know is what type of metropolitan area we have and which one we would like to have. The main dilemma is to decide whether the metropolitan government, in addition to providing the typical services of urban transportation, waste collection and environmental policies, should also provide services closely linked to the welfare state, which have a clear redistributive nature. Well, analyzing the spending budget of the Metropolitan Area of ​​Barcelona (AMB) we can affirm that it would be more in the first case than in the second.” (Quines politiques…).

This unknown but recognized as effective administration has a clear vocation to expand its area of ​​action to cover not only the services and actions that benefit the entire area as a whole, but also those that imply a redistribution of resources, those that generate externalities or those that may present economies of scale.

Fighting inequality and exclusion at a metropolitan scale or promoting measures that improve Barcelona's competitiveness compared to other global cities requires institutional modifications and an improvement in metropolitan governance.

These policies can only be conceived, planned and executed from an institutionalized administration and so, indeed, it was attempted between 1974-1987 through the Barcelona Metropolitan Corporation under the leadership of Pascual Maragall and this is how it is being attempted now, starting in 2010, after the constitution of the Barcelona Metropolitan Area (AMB).

Recently Oriol Nel.lo responded to “Político & Prosa”:

«Greater management capacity and agility would surely be necessary. We recovered the Metropolitan Authority of Barcelona with the Law of 2010. Since then, nine years have passed and progress has been modest, there is a general consensus that a push for a stronger metropolitan government would be necessary.(no. 6, April 2019).

This generalized consensus on the need for a stronger metropolitan government capable of effectively developing policies in a broader scope is forged from absolute respect for municipal autonomy and without implying any intention to merge the municipalities that are part of the AMB.

At some point in the past, some prestigious urban planners defended the convenience of merging the municipalities around Barcelona. We understand that this approach is outdated and that it creates a new problem and not solves it.

The survey carried out by theLocal Studies Research Groupof the UB show that a majority of those consulted reject the idea of ​​incorporating their municipality into Barcelona; However, it seems notable that in cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, 48.3% are favorable, 39.1% are opposed and 12.6% are undecided (Papers 61 page 57).

It also seems important to record that those consulted are in favor of simplifying the administration in such a way that they reject creating new positions without eliminating others in parallel.

CHALLENGES AND RESPONSES

TheMetropolitan Strategic Reflection(REM) proposes axes for future action at the metropolitan level that require greater skills and more economic resources. From the initial words of Ada Colau the work «What policies....”poses challenges in relation to territory, institutions and policies, maintaining a certain level of ambiguity with respect to the territorial scope to which it refers.

Sometimes he speaks from BarcelonaRegion Iand in others, the majority, from the AMB as the only institutionalized metropolitan Administration.

To express it in graphic terms, we note that the document «Political quines…”on its map 01 it reflects metropolitan services provided beyond the territory of theRegion I, although certainly with a variable geography. Map 02 is configured as theRegion Iinitial, with Garraf and AltPenedes included, coinciding with map 03; but not with 04 and 05, which by establishing the service and railway infrastructures, reflect the interconnection of the entire territory of Catalonia. Finally, map 06 analyzes income inequality within the strict scope of the AMB. As we have said previously, the geography of Barcelona Real is variable and will continue to be so. It is worth as a symptom that none of the maps reflect theRegion Iin its reduced version of 2017.

The next problem raised is urban planning. At this point we assume that the competence initially attributed to the CMB was assumed by the Generalitat of Catalonia starting in 1987 and later returned to the AMB through the Law of 2010.

Institutional uncertainty has caused delays in strategic planning and coordination between the various administrations involved.The Urban Master Plan (PDU)it will hardly be effective without stronger metropolitan governance.

On the other hand, the powers that the AMB aspires to develop are concurrent with the powers of the State and the Generalitat, which requires the development of systems of multi-level relations and the establishment of cooperation mechanisms.

All of this seems extraordinarily difficult if we conceive of the AMB as a management body without recognizing its status as a political subject.

It is unquestionable that the exercise of these powers requires a rethinking of the AMB financing system.

This reform should guarantee sufficiency and horizontal equity; but it would also require enabling the AMB to directly develop metropolitan policies and projects instead of serving only as a channel for the circulation of transfers to the municipalities.

At this point the Study «What policies..."Leave the following question open:

«Fiscal legitimacy: to what extent can the AMB fiscal and tax system be expanded if the majority of the population does not know the institutions and has a political or identity connection? Is it necessary to establish direct elections to expand the tax system?(point 2.3.b)

Strengthening metropolitan political power cannot be separated from the configuration of its representation system. Indirect representation generates distance between the representatives and the voters, makes it difficult to understand the institution and represents a serious inconvenience when it comes to evaluating the management, to the extent that the representatives must act at the metropolitan level, but are subject to re-election at the local level. To put it in the words of Mariona Tomas:

«The continuity of metropolitan councilors does not depend on their performance at the metropolitan scale, but rather at the municipal level.» (Papers 61 page 54).

Coming to consider the area of ​​economic policy, the challenges are the fight against inequality, the promotion of the circular economy and the promotion of the energy transition. Also in this field, increasing the supply of social housing requires a metropolitan policy that must be supported by existing instruments such as IMPSOL or theMetropolitan Housing ConsortiumyHabitatgeMetropolis Barcelona; but it will not have the necessary potential without a profound institutional and financing reform.

The study “Political Quines…” includes, as an instrument to combat inequality, the creation of Metropolitan Neighborhoods, equivalent to the seventy-three Neighborhoods of Barcelona, ​​understanding that the needs and possibilities are best detected in this area of ​​action.

There is an important discrepancy regarding the level of execution of the “Neighborhood Plan"defined and executed by Barcelona City Council in the last legislature. There is, however, a broad consensus regarding the convenience of operating, at the metropolitan level, on the same type of territorial unit. In this sense, Francesc Magrinyà (Director of the Strategic Planning Area of ​​the AMB) believes that it is necessary:

“The development of a methodology for the establishment of metropolitan neighborhoods and the development of a methodology and application for the definition of synthetic indicators for metropolitan neighborhoods.(“What policies…”page 54)

Finally, it is essential to refer to the international projection of Metropólis Barcelona. Today large metropolises generate 80% of global GDP. In an economy based on knowledge and innovation, growth is concentrated in a network of global cities that covers the world (Xavi Casinos Politica& Prosa n° 6 page 64; Jordi Borja i Mireia Belil “Quinespolitiques..” page 39).

These cities compete with each other to attract talent to create companies and also to be attractive for investment, especially in sectors capable of creating quality employment, such as in the ICT sector. Barcelona entered the network of global cities as a result of the efforts of many, but, especially, under the direction of Pascual Maragall as mayor and all those who made the 1992 Olympic Games possible.

However, staying at the top and remaining an attractive city for investment and talent is not easy and we cannot forget that very recently the EMA has found its new headquarters in Amsterdam and not in Barcelona.

Promoting Barcelona's international presence requires a powerful and effective administration. As Mireia Belil and Jordi Borja indicate, “city ​​diplomacy is expanding” (“What policies..”page 39); but global alliances between cities will only be possible and effective by reinforcing democracy at the local level and specifically at the metropolitan level.

MORE EFFECTIVE GOVERNANCE FOR A CLOSER AND INCLUSIVE ADMINISTRATION

The work of Mariona Tomas “Govern Real Barcelona" was published in 2017; but it is still fully relevant today. It is a work focused on the contributions of Pascual Maragall to the Metropolitan idea, first in his capacity as mayor of Barcelona and later as President of the Generalitat. The work closes with a reflection that we consider appropriate to transcribe:

“However, we are still far from the vision of the Maragall metropolitan area as a political and appropriate space for citizens; A future investigation would have to analyze whether this is carried out or not, and for what reasons.”.

Nowadays, it is easy to see that Maragall was ahead of his time and defended a concept of metropolitan Barcelona that ran into strong resistance that has now been overcome. Waiting for this future research that Mariona Tomás proposes and that the document “What policies…”announces, B.D.F. wants to present its modest contribution to the debate on the governance that Metropolitan Barcelona needs.

For those of us who intend to base ourselves on principles of representativeness, legitimacy and responsibility that must characterize all good government. This means undoubtedly raising the need to overcome the indirect election of the Metropolitan Council and assume as our own the trend that is observed throughout Europe in favor of the direct election of Metropolitan Government bodies, although in doing so we fully respect the specific characteristics of the Barcelona Metropolis.

For multiple reasons we think that, in the specific case of Barcelona, ​​it is more convenient to establish a mixed system in the Metropolitan Council and not the direct election of the Metropolitan Mayor.

For the system to be effective, it would be advisable to increase the current number of ninety councilors to one hundred, not only because this represents the recovery of the Consell de Cent, so deeply associated with the moments of maximum international expansion of Barcelona, ​​but for strictly functional reasons.

A part of these councilors should be ex officio members, directly incorporating the thirty-six mayors of the metropolitan municipalities. Their presence in the Metropolitan Area is already a fact in the current configuration, and it makes complete sense from the perspective of the municipal federalism that we defend, guaranteeing their presence in the highest governing body of the AMB and enhancing the functions currently performed by theCouncil of Mayors.

The remaining sixty-four metropolitan councilors could be elected by single-member districts in a single round. With the current population of the Metropolitan Area, this means one counselor for every fifty thousand inhabitants. Which is exactly the population taken as a reference to attribute the deputies that correspond to the province of Barcelona in the Parliament of Catalonia (Transitional Provision Fourth Section 2 E.A.C.)

The creation of a metropolitan consciousness requires defining electoral constituencies regardless of municipal boundaries, seeking spaces that coincide, as far as possible, with the already existing “neighborhoods” and the projected “metropolitan neighborhoods.”

In terms of territorial representation, our proposal does not substantially change the current situation in which the municipality of Barcelona has twenty-five representatives out of ninety members, now it would have thirty-two out of a total of one hundred. The Metropolitan Council thus configured would elect from among its members the Metropolitan Mayor who would thus enjoy the confidence of a majority in the Council.

The need for there to be a permanent link between representatives and represented and the widespread feeling of crisis around the very idea of ​​representative democracy, make it advisable to grant the electorate the possibility of promoting a recall vote of the elected councilors.

Initiating a recall vote should require that its promoters have the initial support of a reasonable percentage of voters, considering 10% as a minimum advisable, giving rise, if such support is verified, to a strictly recall vote that, if successful, would give rise to a new electoral call only in the affected district.

The system thus conceived ensured, in our opinion, that the level of knowledge of the institution increased rapidly, even with relatively low levels of participation.

The principle of representativeness and legitimacy of origin is also complied with and it is guaranteed that councilors, except those of natural origin, are responsible for their metropolitan management directly to their electorate, breaking the currently existing dysfunction that judges metropolitan management from a local perspective.

It is true that, as the system is proposed, it is not working in any metropolitan administration in our environment. However, the differences compared to other models are substantially two:

1. The incorporation of the mayors as ex officio members of the Metropolitan Council.
2. The admission of the vote to revoke the mandate.

The first is already a reality in our system and responds to the recognition of the federative character that Metropolitan Barcelona has always had and which also constitutes the only possible path towards the future institutionalization of the Barcelona Region.

The second is a contribution that is increasingly used in systems that consider it essential to bring representatives closer to their voters and give voters more effective systems to demand responsibility from their representatives.

It is important to highlight that the new governance proposal formulated by BDF does not imply the creation of new administrations. On the contrary, to the extent that the democratic legitimacy and representativeness of a pre-existing administration increases, it should make possible a reduction in the number of organizations whose personnel, budget and functions would be assumed by the AMB.

Already suppressedBarcelonés County Council, the County Councils of the Baix Llobregat and the Western Vallès should be abolished or redefined, delegating their powers to the AMB.

The same should happen with the Barcelona Provincial Council, which would exercise its powers beyond the territory of the AMB while delegating powers and transferring resources in favor of the AMB.

The result would be a stronger, more effective administration, as it is structurally simpler, and less costly to operate if duplicate organizations are eliminated and powers are appropriately delegated.

Last but not least, the establishment of a new governance system for the AMB does not require complicated processes or constitutional or statutory reforms. The law creating the AMB is a law of the Parliament of Catalonia and the reform of its governance can be done by the same means: it is simply a matter of political will.