The debate on the role that the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona (AMB) should have has focused in recent years on a hypothetical territorial expansion. The discussion dealt with the pros and cons of moving from the current 36 municipalities and 3.3 million inhabitants to the entire metropolitan region, incorporating Maresme, Vallès, Alt Penedès and Garraf, where 5.5 millions of people With this issue still to be resolved, the mayor of the capital, Jaume Collboni, has started another plan: that of the transfer of powers by other administrations to the supra-municipal in order to strengthen its capacity to act in areas that are key , such as housing, economic promotion and social policies.
"There must be a transfer from top to bottom (General and Central Government) and from bottom to top (councils) to respond to concrete realities", said Collboni on October 3 at an event at Foment del Treball. The proposal of the also president of the AMB follows in the footsteps of Pasqual Maragall, who already defended something similar when he was in charge of the mayor's office in the eighties and nineties. And since then, all the Barcelona teams have defended in one way or another a commitment to the metropolitan dimension, even if, in recent times, neither Xavier Trias nor Ada Colau have done much. Collboni is the first socialist mayor to have the law approved in 2010 in which the AMB is endowed with many of the powers that Maragall dreamed of years ago, with the ability to deploy policies and manage services, directly or by delegation from the municipalities, to the second most important local administration in Catalonia by budget, with 2,470 million for this 2023.
To give shape to what are still words today, Barcelona City Council has commissioned several reports to help determine how to proceed towards this greater exploitation of the AMB's area of competence, as well as on territorial expansion, according to municipal sources. It begins a path that arouses reluctance expressed privately by some mayors, but unanimity among experts.
"Municipalities should see the metropolitan dimension as an opportunity and not as a threat because it helps to improve their public policies", argues Ricard Gomà, professor in the Department of Political Science and Public Law at the UAB and director of the Institute Metropolis, convinced that "the AMB has not developed its full potential". For example, he explains, "with the metropolitan neighborhood plan, which is there, but it is tenuous, and it would be a good tool for social cohesion in the most vulnerable municipalities, which are the ones with the least economic capacity to deal with it". Barcelona can, but Sant Adrià or Cornellà are probably not in a position to do anything similar.
In the same vein, Oriol Estela, general coordinator of the Metropolitan Strategic Plan of Barcelona (PEMB), points out that "the amounts of the social benefits of the councils cannot be different in two neighboring municipalities, this generates an unequal treatment that must be 'eliminate, and the issues that deepen inequalities must be sorted out', he sums up, convinced of the urgency of balancing criteria between all the neighbours. Aware of the complexity of the matter, he urges to immediately address "issues as basic as the register or the cadastre, which should be unified".
Mobility is one of the issues that shows the potential that the AMB has already developed, at the same time that it highlights the shortcomings that have so far existed due to a mixture of lack of political will and bureaucracy. Although many citizens are not aware of it, the metro and buses of Transports Metropolitans de Barcelona (TMB) depend on the AMB, as does the regulation of taxis, to give two prominent examples. Even the city bus services of numerous cities around the capital have been transferred to the supra-municipal entity.
Instead, the metropolis has been unable to deploy a public bicycle service for the conurbation. The recent installation at the diffuse borders of the Barcelona municipality of interchange stations between the Bicing and its counterpart in the first crown, AMBici, are the living image of the lack of overall vision. The procedure to make this new service a reality – still in the deployment phase – also shows that an idea conceived from a supra-municipal level has then had to go through each plenary session of the councils involved, which has caused an uneven pace in implementation.
There is the circumstance that it is another body, the Metropolitan Transport Authority (ATM) - a consortium participated by the AMB; the Generalitat, which has the majority; the Barcelona City Council, and the Association of Municipalities for Mobility and Urban Transport (AMTU), those of the second crown and beyond -, which is behind the action that has probably done the most to build the metropolis in the eyes of the citizens, according to Carme Miralles-Guasch, professor in the Department of Geography at the UAB. "Tariff integration has consolidated metropolitan integration. It makes us live in a city, especially in the first crown", says this researcher, who is part of the Group of Studies in Mobility, Transport and Territory (Gemott), while advocating not so much a reinforcement of supra-municipal powers as correctly defining the its function, "how we organize the metropolis so that it is useful to the citizens".
The deployment of the low emissions zone (ZBE) delimited by the Barcelona roundabouts, which includes the Catalan capital, L'Hospitalet and some areas of Esplugues, Cornellà and Sant Adrià, is another dysfunctional example. The ordinance with the regulations to make it a reality had to go through each City Council, with their respective allegations, and there are even differences in the fine print of the rules between one city and another. And although it is the AMB that manages the procedures for permits and exemptions, if a car is driving without a label, the fine will be sent by a City Council. "The ecological transition is metropolitan, it would not make sense to implement a low-emissions zone that is not metropolitan", Gomà recalls.
Also in the field of mobility, the most immediate challenge that has been worked on since the previous municipal mandate is the extension of motorbike licenses for rental by minutes in Barcelona throughout the metropolitan area. In January 2021, the City Council of the capital approved the transfer of powers to the AMB to develop a model that regulates the number of vehicles and how they are distributed. Two and a half years later, it has not gone beyond a few working groups that have debated and drafted proposals, but without making them a reality.
Another area in which the AMB exercises its power is urban planning, in which it has extensive capacities to plan, to set the rules of the game. The drafting of the Metropolitan Urban Master Plan (PDUM) is the most relevant example. The document, initially approved, is for public information. It lays the foundations for how this territory should be organized by 2050 and updates the drawing that was made in 1976, embodied in the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM), which has undergone about 1,600 modifications to adapt to needs that have been emerging since it was approved. When the PDUM receives the final green light, the Metropolitan Urban Planning Plan (POUMet) will be processed, which will specify the urban qualifications on the map. "The great unknown of the debate that will take place then is the margin left to the municipalities by the new instrument; there are some more favorable to giving more power to the AMB, and others to the municipalities", anticipates Estela.
In contrast to the urban area, the housing area presents clear deficits. The AMB has competences in the matter, but has not developed them by any means. The housing aspect is one of the most serious problems facing the Barcelona conurbation, with skyrocketing prices, which means that many citizens cannot reside not only in the city of Barcelona, but in the first crown of municipalities, and even , beyond. The metropolitan institution has its own business body, the Metropolitan Institute for Land Promotion and Patrimonial Management (Imsol), and an innovative instrument, the public-private operator Habitatge Metròpolis Barcelona (HMB), shared with Barcelona City Council and the real estate companies Cevasa and Neinor, dedicated to the promotion of affordable rental housing. It had a complicated birth, but began in late 2021 with the challenge of building a 4,500-story park in six years.
Housing is an example of how the metropolis overflows territorial boundaries. Actions can be deployed at the AMB, but also outside, in the surrounding municipalities. And here additional political conditions come into play, since other administrations have responsibilities, for example, the Generalitat, in this case through the Catalan Soil Institute (Incasòl).
"What is the function of Barcelona with respect to its hinterland (zone of influence), on the area, the metropolitan region, an axis that goes further, Mediterranean, Catalonia...?", asks Miralles-Guasch, who remembers that, today, "urban and rural are no longer so dichotomous". This is "a delicate political debate - he adds - but it must be resolved. We've had it open since the eighties and it needs to be closed." Gomà believes that the instruments already exist, but they must be activated. "It is not about expanding the AMB, but about strengthening cooperation between the municipalities. The deployment of the Vegueries law, which is pending, should help, since the metropolitan region is a Vegueria". In this sense, Estela wonders: “Where is the Generalitat? It doesn't say anything on the subject and it should."
There is another deficit of the AMB, according to Gomà, which must be decided: "Its democratic functioning - he explains -. There is no direct election of its representatives by citizens or a metropolitan mayor like that of London. And it would make perfect sense, because this territory is actually a metropolitan city, without this calling into question the municipalities that make it up".
