"My hand will not shake". This is how forceful Daniel Sirera is when proposing the removal of the Diagonal tramway and an absolute rethinking of the superblocks, urban planning symbols of Ada Colau's time in Barcelona City Council that the PP candidate in the mayor's office considers it a "disgrace" for the city.
"The tram has to go out", assured Sirera vehemently yesterday at Círculo Ecuestre, where he took the lead in a lunch-colloquium with La Vanguardia journalist Joaquín Luna, which was attended by representatives of the business and economic world of the capital Catalan
"Split the city in two", argued the popular mayor, who not only ruled out connecting Trambaix and Trambesòs through Diagonal, but even reversing the works that are currently underway, already well advanced, and remove the tracks between Glòries and Plaça de Mossèn Jacint Verdaguer.
"Barcelona will be unimaginable chaos", predicted Sirera, for whom Colau's desire to remove 350,000 vehicles from the streets "dynamites the Cerdà plan" and favors the existence of a "first class city and another second class" with congested arteries , such as Valencia, where he himself lives and where, according to him, traffic, traffic jams and pollution have increased, while other areas, such as Consell de Cent, are landscaped and become a pedestrian zone.
In this sense, he proposed a top-down review of the urban layout to decide which superblocks placed by Colau at random, "throwing a dart" on the city plan, ironically, remain, which are modified and which ones are permanently deleted.
He defined Pasqual Maragall as "a good mayor" and praised his ability to unite citizens and institutions around an exciting project; an "Olympic spirit" that Sirera longs to recover, so that the people of Barcelona, he said, feel "proud" of their city again.
"We live in a city that with the current municipal government has no future", said Sirera, who was willing to talk, after the elections, with Xavier Trias and Jaume Collboni, but not with Colau or the republican Ernest Maragall . However, the candidate for the PSC recalled that "he is part of the problem", because he was deputy mayor of the mayoress until recently, "and he will hardly be able to be a solution".
As for Trias, he joked that it is like choosing "between fear and death" and recalled that he is a colleague of Carles Puigdemont or Clara Ponsatí to emphasize the pro-independence affiliation of Junts' candidate, which, according to Sirera, does not manage the city well during his time as mayor and he will also not be able to lead Colau's "Barcelona of no at all" to the "Barcelona of yes" that he advocates.
However, if it is necessary to talk with socialists or post-convergents, or with both, "about things that benefit the city to get it out of the mud", Sirera is willing to do so, but prioritizing the what of the project before the who of the leader , he clarified.
The popular candidate took the opportunity to ask for the useful vote and called on the voters of Valents, Ciutadans and Vox to support his list, the only one that, in his opinion, can obtain representation, a milestone for which requires a minimum of 5%. With the contribution of these three streams, it could reach 18% of the votes and, adding up to nine councillors, be at the level of commons, the PSC and Junts.
The PP, he acknowledged, has not always been seen as an alternative to nationalism in Catalonia, but Sirera believes that this "anomaly" is being corrected with the arrival of Alberto Núñez Feijóo in the national leadership, facing a PSOE that "weakens in the barrier" against independence. And, led by this bullish wink at his interlocutor, he ended the speech by saying that he will leave "the skin" in the fight: "If the people of Barcelona help me, why can't I be mayor?".
