Barcelona ages. It has a growing number of elderly people in solitude. More people die than are born and abortion wreaks havoc; 31% of pregnancies end this way. It expels native young couples, and the population is maintained by a continuous flow of foreigners. Almost 30% have immigrated to Barcelona from other states. In 1996, they were only 3.6%. This brief profile describes a ticking time bomb of ignored problems.
Ada Colau has governed for eight years and has had a budget of 24,000 million euros. After so much time and money, does the city seem better to you? What great transformations have been made? We have directly paid more than 11,000 million in taxes and fees. Do you feel compensated for the municipal services you receive?
Colau and Janet Sanz talk endlessly about the excess of cars as the mother of all problems. And if the main cause was its management? Barcelona is the Spanish capital with the lowest proportion of journeys by private vehicle. Only 24%. In Madrid they are 40%; in Seville, 56%, and in Malaga, 58%. At the same time, the annual study on travel time in 416 world cities tells us that Barcelona is the worst Spanish capital, with 29% of excess time, followed by Granada (25%) and Madrid (23%).
Madrid (and the other capitals), with twice the number of journeys by car, experiences less loss of time than Barcelona. How is it possible? Well, because the problem is caused by a Barcelonan reason: the mismanagement of mobility by the government of Ada Colau. And to more clogged mobility, more pollution and higher costs in time and money... for citizens. It is evidence. According to the RACC, for 80% of Barcelonans the flow of traffic has worsened in the last four years. They are the consequences of the brutalities committed with tactical urbanism, at the entrances and exits of the city (from the Glòries tunnel to Diagonal, passing through Via Augusta). It is the result of confusing the mobility of the city with the ideology of Colau.
And they still want to suffocate us more. The mobility plan for 2024 aims to reduce the percentage to 18.5%. Colau maximizes inefficiency: fewer cars and worse mobility and air quality. If they were really concerned about pollution, they would have acted years ago to reduce the source responsible for a third of it: taxis and delivery vehicles. They haven't done anything.
They preach social justice and equality, but they destroy what was there. They have done so with gentrification in the Sant Antoni neighborhood and expel the young residents of the 22@ district of Poblenou and La Llacuna. Right now, there is a speculative tsunami in the price of Consell de Cent flats. It is the first sample of the Colau superblock, which generates a first class city in 33% of the streets of the Eixample, that of the so-called "green axes", and a hell of traffic, pollution and noise in two thirds of the streets remaining, as is evident in Valencia street. It is the destruction –if we do not avoid it– of the Cerdà plan and its historic success in building an urbanization that would provide the space for social cohesion: the Eixample.
A municipal government, which defines itself as progressive, eco-socialist and feminist, rien va plus concentrates the great investment in the Eixample, and forgets about the neighborhoods on the outskirts and the degradation of the Raval. Almost as much will have been spent on the Neighborhood Plan in 2021 and 2022 as the cost of the Consell de Cent green axis. And that, without counting the tram on the Diagonal, which will cost an investment of 175 million, delivered to the exploitation of a private company.
And what about the house? As in all demagogy, words go one way and reality on the other. In Madrid, the rental price has grown by 3.7%, and the purchase, by 3.2% between 2018 and 2022. In Barcelona, it has grown by 13.6% and 15.2%. What a failure, what a huge failure. Regarding the environment, only one piece of information is needed: the only meteorological station, among all Spanish cities, that systematically exceeds the level of carbon dioxide pollution is in the Eixample.
I have been a councilor three times, the last time as CiU spokesperson when Hereu was mayor. From the opposition I have known the management of Serra, Maragall, Clos and Hereu, and already from outside, that of Trias. And never, never has Barcelona been so much the victim of disordered desires and priorities as in the mandates of Ada Colau.
