Last Sunday, the townspeople of Barcelona elected Ada Colau as their new leader to run City Hall for the next 4 years. This act represents the democracy-in-action and recognizes the freedom of the people, but it may also signal drastic changes in the way our city works.
Barcelona has been for most of its time under the government of central-left party PSC, and run by a central-right party CiU during the last four years. In recent years, the city has leaned into creating a Barcelona brand well known around the world, starting with the Olympic Games in 1992 and developing into a world-leading Smart City, ready for the 21st century technologically speaking, and trying to become one of the top “2.0” cities in the world. Tourism and entrepreneurship have been the keystones of the city the government has been trying to build.
And now the coin has flipped.
A newly created political party, based on a citizen platform that moves towards facing the powerful lobbies in town, that promotes institutions based on helping those in need, that strives to stop evictions, that fights to guarantee basic rights to everyone in Barcelona, and that wants an economy based on social justice, just to name a few of their main ideas, will probably be elected as the running party under the visible head of Ada Colau. Ms. Colau is a political activist, with ties to the squatter movement in Barcelona, co-founder of the PAH (plataforma de afectados por las hipotecas), winner of the Social Rights Defender Award in 2013 for her fight towards the right to decent affordable housing, and with deep links to anti-globalization movements since 2001. Without a college degree, Ms. Colau cites her work expertise as informal studies, collaborations with social organizations, and her participation in popular movements.
How will this affect Barcelona’s Entrepreneur Ecosystem?
Of course with all new change come new doors that need to be opened. Based on campaign messages, political program, and the own Ms. Colau’s soundbites on interviews, the main goal of the new party is to redistribute wealth in order to reduce the friction among social tiers in Barcelona.
The most notorious statement, that has later been modified, was the manifestation against the Mobile World Congress coming to Barcelona. As I just said, this soundbite has been lately altered in the direction of not against the MWC, but with a need to re-evaluate how the economic benefits redirect back into the city and won’t fly away.
Another big issue for the entrepreneurs is Barcelona Activa. The institution with over 25 years of existence, that has helped almost 5.000 businesses, over 2.500 start-up projects and around 10.000 people find a job, will see its wings cut drastically. Barcelona Activa will almost certainly have its funds reduced, its organization de-centralized to different areas of town, and will focus mostly on companies of two or more shareholders and possibly leave sole entrepreneurs to fend for themselves.
The 22@ neighbourhood was a big bet and project on the former Barcelona mayor political plan. The new government plans on redistributing and investing in more needed areas of town, therefore we may see that the hub the city was trying to create, and the talent it was trying to recruit, ends up going somewhere else or not coming at all.
But lets not get too harsh.
It is also true that Ms. Colau is trying to have Barcelona as an open source city. Collaboration among programmers, citizens, and the government can play a key role in making Barcelona successful.
Hopefully we will find some funds redirected into I+D+I, and into college education and social promotion in order to create our own talent in town.
One of the main goals of Ms. Colau is to fight against unemployment, especially at a young age; and to try and promote the local business to help them grow, and help the city with a social and supportive small business network.
As a left wing party and socially concerned, Ms. Colau’s party will have as one of their main goals the redistribution of city funds into healthcare, schools, and protection of infants in need.
Elections just happened on Sunday. Let’s not get too carried away for now. Ms. Colau has four years to try, learn, make mistakes, fix them, and continue to improve Barcelona and the quality of life for its citizens. Lets not interfere with her. Lets help her and lets all together grow bigger.
The views expressed are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent the views of Barcinno Media. At the time of publication, Ada Colau’s mayoral confirmation is still pending.
While I am all for helping the needy and trying to redistribute wealth more equitably I fear she may be a bit too extremist, at least her pre-election talk was. Barcelona is what it is today purely thanks to tourism, the 1992 olympics put it on the map and has tourism has fed much of Barcelona´s financial growth, not only making the rich richer but also helping smaller industries whcih benefit from tourism (small hotels, transportation, retail, etc) I think her moratorium on opening any new hotels in Barcelona is severly misguided. There may be problems with the way tourism is distributed around the city (I am referring here to the illegal establishments and tourist apartments, in large part made possible thanks to Airbnb and the low-end tourist that is more of a problem than a solution) however I think it is ridiculous to chop off your hand cos your finger is bleeding. The solution lies with creating a more sustainable pattern for tourism and other industries.
It is a crazy notion to reduce funding to institutions like BCNActiva that serve a very useful growth and launch platform for budding entrepreneurs. They should be instigating more entrepreneurship (Spain has the highest cost of entrepreneurship in Europe with exorbitant social security costs, albeit a great health care system) They should be trying to drop the language barrier and become more international.
How can a city that until a few months ago was clamouring to become independant, close itself off to tourism and foreign investment? The city will dry up without its lifeblood. The only way this country is going to dig itself out of this rut its been in for so many years is by encouraging people to take risks, to provide protection mechanisms so that people can risk and fail and try again, not just protect workers by making firing and hiring impossible. How can anyone be against the MWC? This is exactly the type of event they should aim to attract, high spenders and foreign firms in off-peak months to balance the city´s coffers.
In trying to be anti-Big Corporation these movements are pushing too far left. It´s true that big corpos are monopolizing everything and eating up all our resources at the expense of smaller businesses but the solution does not consist in starving yourself to kill the cancer.
It feels a bit like a farmer as CEO of Apple, applying his own traditional ideas to a world he doesn´t know. Lets hope I am completely wrong, but the omens do not look promising…
Well said. I’m positive that you’re not alone in your concerns.
As you clearly mention at the beginning of your comment, this is all pre-electoral talk. We need to be aware that even though I might agree with you on some of the statements you make, Ada Colau’s was the most voted list, therefore being able to claim that Barcelona wants to buy what she is selling. Once, and if, she is in finally in charge, and she gets a good look from the inside, maybe she changes her mind on some aspects. We can only wait and see how she handles everything. And support whoever becomes the next mayor.
Thanks for your comment. Highly appreciated.