"Politicians only listen to the people when the elections come around." This phrase, already converted into a cliché, is once again topical in view of the next municipal elections on May 28. Just when there are two months left before the appointment with the polls, La Vanguardia launches the participation campaign Your opinion has a macro-survey aimed at its readers that analyzes and examines not only the main problems of Barcelonans, expressed periodically in the municipal Barometer , but also which model of the city of the future they prefer.
But, to prepare the questionnaire for this great survey, La Vanguardia has not only felt the current moment, at the gates of the elections, but has scrutinized the most recurring problems and approaches expressed in the reader's letters published by the newspaper during the last four years. Because, for La Vanguardia, the opinion of its readers always counts, not only when the elections arrive.
In this way, making an effort to synthesize, it has been possible to summarize in 15 questions not only the main problems expressed by the people of Barcelona on issues such as mobility, housing, security, tourism or cleaning, but also the issues that will define the city model for the next four years, such as the urban planning of the superblocks, the possible extension or not of the Barcelona-El Prat airport, the union of the trams along Avenida Diagonal or the implementation or not of an urban toll.
The survey is designed so that, in less than 1 minute, readers can provide their opinion on all these issues that will mark the future of the city. In order to participate, the questionnaire is already available on the La Vanguardia website, where you can also vote on another form that allows you to discover which candidate to vote for in the Barcelona mayoral elections according to the program of each party and the affinities of the reader.
The participation campaign Your opinion counts will be active until the day of the next municipal elections, but, during the electoral campaign, La Vanguardia will send all the candidates a preliminary summary with the first results, which will also be published in the newspaper.
In this way, with the help of readers' opinions, it will be possible to have an x-ray not only of the current state of Barcelona, but also of where the city should be headed in the immediate future.
In short, with the Your opinion counts participation initiative, the newspaper La Vanguardia wants to know how readers would improve the city of Barcelona, what its main proposals are and how they can be carried out. Having analyzed the reader's letters from the last four years, the survey incorporates issues such as whether it is necessary to make a city safer for women, whether or not there is an excess of radars, whether the circulation of scooters and bicycles needs to be regulated more , what is the best formula to reduce social inequalities, if Barcelona is too expensive to live in, how to deal with the issue of rental prices, if the cultural offer must be improved, what measures must be implemented to deal with the problems derived from the pollution or what is the best tourism model for the city.
The participation campaign Your opinion counts will also be carried out in Madrid and Valencia, where people from Madrid and Valencia will be able to contribute their points of view on the problems they have and the city model they want.
