Anna Grau, the Ciudadanos candidate for mayor of Barcelona, pleads for a rescue urbanism –practically an emergency– for the next mandate, for the application of at least a few hot cloths that, as far as possible, stop the great and controversial transformation of the city that is currently being carried out by the government of Mayor Ada Colau. The Ciudadanos candidate participated this Thursday in the second of the colloquia that are taking place these weeks with the main candidates for mayor of the Catalan capital, organized once again by Barcelona Oberta, the Gremi de Restauració and La Vanguardia.
“We cannot deceive people,” Grau herself said yesterday. There are things that cannot be reversed, such as what is happening on Consell de Cent street. Dismantling the new Eixample superblock would be too expensive. But in other places we do have time to go back, as in the case of Via Laietana. We can still recover its role of connection between the sea and the mountains. Obviously we also want more sustainable and less polluting mobility, but we want it by consensus. We are willing to stop everything that can be stopped, consult with those affected and agree on exits. We are liberals, and we are in favor of business and mobility”. The question is to facilitate economic activity, he came to emphasize, take the sticks out of the wheels and not criminalize it, at least that. What make the most noise? The terraces or the bottles? “Perhaps the solution to coexistence problems does not consist in reducing the hours of the terraces, as the Colau government insists on doing every time it finds a problem, but in having a good civic ordinance, and effective police to ensure compliance.
The Grau candidate wanted to appear before the representatives of a good part of the productive fabric of this city as a kind of Nemesis of the mayoress Colau. "We are liberals," he said over and over again, as a recurring mantra, in order to underline his programmatic recipe in the face of the imminent elections: less taxes, fewer limitations, fewer interventions... "You cannot subsidize the squatters in place of merchants. Many people have not dared to stand up to the supposed moral superiority of Colau and his. In Cuba, the tourism sector is more protected than here. They don't want cruises, they don't want hotels, this is not a Gobi reserve! regulating is not prohibiting, it is not criminalizing activities”.
In fact, at times Grau came to surprise the very merchants and restaurateurs. “The plan for uses of the Ciutat Vella district is Soviet, Stalinist, one prohibition after another! We don't like to ban. We are liberals." In this way, the Citizens also tries to open the elbows in the lower part of the table, between those of Valents and those of the PP. There survival will be very expensive. It is not just about scratching votes among the favorite poker. The orange intends to stand out before the electorate as a reborn formation. So that Grau herself had no problem shelving a good part of the past of this game in Barcelona. "Valls's candidacy was a mistake," she said bluntly. Erase and new account.
