Urban Change and the European Left: Tales from the New Barcelona

Urban Change and the European Left

Urban Change and the European Left takes us on a journey through the cityscapes of one of the favourite holiday destinations of the contemporary European left. Taking five themes current to debates on the future of socialism in the city—Marxism and memory; European regionalism and city-states; social democrat new realism; the future of the urban social movements celebrated by Manuel Castells; and a ‘designer’ socialism of architecture and public space—the book looks at the way politicians and critics use the city to ground their political messages. Through the mixing of methods and genres, the book explores local narratives of urban change through ethnography, biography, travelogue, and social history. Drawing on novels, architectural commentaries, urban plans, political speeches, history and autobiography, Urban Change and the European Left provides accounts of public art, architecture, grassroots struggle from the SEAT car factory to the peripheral housing estates of Nou Barris, battles for control of the 1992 Olympics, and the city and Catalan identity; Containing critical commentary on Barcelona previously unavailable in English, this book helps to make sense of the shape of contemporary urban change and describes the way in which cities are central to the construction of place-based political identities. Donald McNeill is a lecturer in Geography at the University of Strathclyde.

Urban Change and the European Left Tales from the New Barcelona

Donald McNeill

London and New York

First published 1999 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 1999 Donald McNeill The right of Donald McNeill to be identified as the Author of this Work has been asserted by him in accordance with Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data McNeill, Donald, 1969– Urban Change and the European Left: Tales from the New Barcelona /Donald McNeill. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p.) and index. 1. City planning—Political aspects—Spain—Barcelona. 2. Socialism— Spain—Barcelona. I. Title. HT169.S652B362 1999 307.76′0946′72–dc21 98–49106 CIP ISBN 0-203-98191-X Master e-book ISBN

ISBN 0-415-17062-1 (Print Edition)

Contents

1

2

3

List of illustrations

vi

Acknowledgements

vii

Chronology

viii

Introduction

1

The New Barcelona

1

The city and the European Left

2

Urban reportage

3

A rough guide to the New Barcelona

7

From the air, homage to Blair

7

The birth of the New Barcelona

11

An electoral map

14

Red heritage: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán as socialist flâneur

23

Barcelona noir

25

The Barrio Chino and the triumph of the middle classes

30

‘From the long march to the marathon’

37

Barcelona as theme park

44

Battles for Barcelona

56

City-states or bourgeois regions?

57

Barcelona. as capital of la anti-España

59

Pujol, Maragall and the National Question: two visions

66

Battle I:

Barcelona vs. Catalonia?

72

The Olympics

74

Battle II:

v

4

5

6

7

The gospel according to Pasqual: mayor Maragall’s new urban realism

84

Barcelona in la decada socialista and beyond

85

Maragallisme as social democratic new realism

88

Globalisation: Barcelona as competitive city

93

Beaches, malls and office blocks: the ‘Barcelona model’

97

Europe, solidarity and citizenship

103

Manuel Castells in the Eurocity

112

Manuel Castells and the Barcelona Left

113

Porciolismo 1957–76: the developers’ city

117

The city from the grassroots

121

‘Porciolismo with an Olympic shirt on’

129

Contesting the Eurocity

134

Designer socialism: the politics of architecture and public space

140

The city of architects

141

The Left, space and its public

147

Public art in the New Barcelona

155

More state than civil society? The enlightened despots

160

Progressive futures?

173

The Eurocity and urban entrepreneurialism

174

Culture capitals: the politics of spectacle

177

Political spaces in the New Europe

179

Red heritage, green future?

180

Glossary

184

References

188

Index

197

Illustrations

Figures 1 2 3 4

Barcelona: an electoral map Map of Ciutat Vella/old city Map of Barcelona’s red belt Butifarra!

15 32 63 125 Plates

1 ‘Franco ha muerto’ 2 A street demonstration at Olivetti, Plaça de Glories 3 October 1986: Pasqual Maragall takes the acclaim of the crowds in Plaça de Catalunya 4 The Olympic Village from Barceloneta 5 Carrer Tarragona from Hostafrancs 6 Parc de l’Espanya Industrial 7 Calatrava’s tower from Sants 8 Homenatge a Picasso/Homage to Picasso 9 MACBA. Richard Meier’s contemporary art gallery 10 Plaça dels Països Catalans

24 65 77 99 101 127 143 159 164 167

Acknowledgements

Thanks first of all to Vicky and my parents, for putting up with long periods of virtual unemployment. In Barcelona, I have to thank the many guiris and post-guiris who helped me settle in: in particular Gordon McK. and Sharon at the start, Ross and Louise for being extremely well-informed and flexible flatmates, and everyone else who made my stay an illuminating experience. In Cardiff, thanks to everyone at the Department of City and Regional Planning who provided support in various ways. I am also grateful to the Department of Geography, University of Strathclyde, who supported me during the closing stages of the work. For information gathering, the following institutions in Barcelona were extremely helpful: Institut Municipal de Història de la Ciutat; Federació d’Associacions de Veïns de Barcelona; libraries at the Universitat de Barcelona and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona; the Arxiu Fotogràfic and the library at the Ajuntament de Barcelona. Truly invaluable were the numerous new and second-hand bookshops which yielded a lot of diverse and surprising material. A number of people have either commented on various aspects of the text, or have provided stimulating discussion concerning many of the themes addressed, or have given me particular research leads. In no particular order, thanks to: Chris Ealham, Caragh Wells, John Lovering, John Punter, Kevin Morgan, Nick Fyfe, Mark Boyle, Aidan While, Ross Montgomery and two anonymous referees. Thanks to Sharon Galleitch for the maps, Vicky for most of the photographs, the Arxiu Fotogràfic/Pérez de Rozas for Plates 1, 2 and 3, and the Federació d’Associacions de Veins de Barcelona for permission to reproduce from La Veu del Carrer. The generous financial support given by the Department of City and Regional Planning, University of Wales, Cardiff was crucial in allowing me the opportunity of undertaking the research visits to Barcelona during 1995 and 1996.

Chronology1, 2

1861

1888 1929

1931 1936

1937

1939 1951 1952

1953 1957

The Eixample (extension) is urbanised under a variant of a plan proposed by Ildefons Cerdà, the beginning of modern Barcelona. This would connect the old city with the townships surrounding it, such as Gràcia and Sants. World’s Fair at the Ciutadella park on the edge of the Case Antic. Exp in Barcelona sees the urbanisation of Plaça d’Espanya and parts of Montjuïc, and the building of the Mies van der Rohe German Pavilion. Formation of the Second Republic. Victory of left-wing Popular Front at general election leads to army rising in Morocco, under the leadership of General Franco. By 18th July the Civil War has begun. 13th February: Barcelona bombarded by Italian warships (leaving 17 dead), a prelude to the blanket bombing of the Basque town of Guernica two months later. Meanwhile, 500 the in internecine warfare between anarchist and Stalinist resistance (see Orwell’s Homage to Catalonia). Fall of Barcelona on 26th January effectively ends war. In June, public use of Catalan is banned. Tram strike in Barcelona over fare increase, first major act of resistance to regime (and sign of gradual stirrings of opposition). Regime opens SEAT car factory in Zona Franca, Barcelona, with technology and business acumen supplied by Fiat of Italy, who insist on its Barcelona location despite the government’s (prescient) fears of disciplinary problems. Military base agreement signed between US and Spain. Camp Nou, home of FC Barcelona (el Barça) is inaugurated; first SEAT 600 rolls off assembly line—will transform Spain into a society of mass mobility.

ix

1962 1965

1971

1973

1975 1976

1977

1979

1980

1981

‘Generation of 62’ agitating in universities and factories show signs of widespread organised political opposition to regime. Beatles appear at Monumental bull-ring; Coca-Cola factory established at La Verneda; end of 2nd (modernising) Vatican Council. All symbols of inexorable tide of cultural modernity. Birth in Barcelona of Assemblea de Catalunya: successful coalition of nationalist, communist, socialist and civil opposition to dictatorship. On 20th December, Franco’s prime minister and favoured successor, Admiral Carrero Blanco, is assassinated by Basque terrorist group ETA in a Madrid car bomb. 20th November: Franco dies in hospital. Two days later, Juan Carlos is crowned king of Spain and new head of state. Hot transition begins with wave of strikes. Adolfo Suárez is appointed prime minister, and initiates rapid political reforms. On 1st and 8th February, FAVB co-ordinates vital street protests in Barcelona demanding ‘Llibertat, Amnistia, Estatut d’Autonomia’ (Liberty, Amnesty, Statute of Autonomy). Socias Humbert becomes transition mayor, his tenure marked by policy of municipal land-buying and end of Porciolismo. First democratic elections since 1936 won by Suárez’s right-wing reformers, the UCD. Labour unions and PCE legalised. Moncloa accords (austerity measures) signed by all major parties, including communists. Huge demonstrations in Barcelona demanding return of Generalitat, soon delivered by Suárez. In March, Right under UCD win general election again, PSOE subsequently drops Marxism under pressure from González. In April, Left (PSC and PSUC) sweep to victory in Barcelona local elections, a pattern repeated across urban Spain. Narcís Serra appointed mayor of Barcelona. Pujol and CiU win surprise victory at Generalitat elections, as many voters of Hispanic origin abstain (due to indifference). They will repeat their victory in 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1995 (losing their absolute majority in the last case, however). 23rd February: attempted coup by disaffected Francoist rump fails when King Juan Carlos refuses to support them. For a tense night, however, parliament is held hostage and tanks appear on the streets of Valencia; psychologically, this would further cement the need for a social trace and a non-radical transition.

x

1982

1983 1986 1987

1992

1993 1995 1996 1997

PSOE wins huge general election victory (October). Serra becomes Defence Minister, and Pasqual Maragall mayor of Barcelona. PSC wins overall control of Barcelona again. In October, Barcelona wins 1992 Olympic nomination. PSOE loses control of 21 out of 27 large cities in local elections, but Maragall retains control of Barcelona (to be repeated in 1991). Barcelona holds Olympics, while Seville (Expo) and Madrid (European City of Culture) confirm Spain’s full international economic and cultural integration. PSOE wins general election but loses absolute majority due to rise of PP. PSC/Maragall narrowly retain control of Barcelona in face of PSOE calamity in rest of Spain at local elections. PSOE finally ousted from government, but PP reliant on CiU and other regionalist parties to retain control. In September, Maragall steps down as mayor amid speculation that he is preparing a bid to lead the PSC in imminent Generalitat elections. He is replaced by his deputy, Joan Clos. Notes

1 Drawn primarily from Fabre and Huertas (1989) and Graham and Labanyi (1995). 2 All translations in the text are from Catalan or Castilian and are by the author unless stated in the bibliography. Barcelona is a city where both languages are used. As a general tule, I have rendered place names in Catalan with certain exceptions.

Introduction

The New Barcelona I love Barcelona. I love its streets, its buildings, the soupy air, the smelly hammy bars, the Mediterranean in the winter, the diversity of its neighbourhoods, the music on the metro (Midnight Cowboy, muzak and Mozart), the arty urban parks, the way they rub tomato on their bread before they make sandwiches, the harsh rasping Catalan, the Rambla after it has rained, the magnificent combination of football and concrete at the Camp Nou, expat shopping at Marks and Spencer, the lush hills which pop up all over the city, the density which means you could walk across the whole city—a city of 1.5 million people—in half a day, the greasy butifarra sausages. The beaches and the beer. I am not alone in this homage to Barcelona, being joined by multitudes of curious or hedonistic visitors on architecture field trips, football weekends, honeymoons, raves, inter-rails, cultural espionage forays, conference circuits, and Thomson city-breaks. Its popularity has been an indicator of the city’s success in marketing itself abroad, helped by the boundless free publicity of the 1992 Olympics and a grapevine that has wended its way throughout Europe and as far afield as North America and Japan. The New Barcelona: modern, efficient, ‘cosmopolitan’ (due largely to the huge weight of tourists pressing down on its delicately tiled pavements rather than to any striking ethnic diversity), a model of how cities should look in the New Europe. And this explains its popularity with the European centre-left, consummate consumers of fine food and architecture, and anxious to retain the city as a focus of activity. Barcelona has undergone an urban renaissance second-to-none, and has done so largely because of the efforts of its social-democrat-led city council, since their arrival in the mayoral office in 1979. While Los Angeles has become ‘the essential destination on the itinerary of any late twentieth-century intellectual…the terrain and subject of fierce ideological struggle’, torn between boosterist dreams and dystopian nightmare, Barcelona represents a less polarised —but equally ideological —vision of the happy marriage of state intervention and economic competitiveness.1 As such, it has featured heavily on the agendas of urban policymakers and politicians around the world, from Atlanta to Lisbon to Shanghai to London. And from Leeds to Manchester, Glasgow and Cardiff.

2 INTRODUCTION

But it signifies something else, too: the negation or death of the old city, be this its vanishing Marxist heritage, the destruction of the dusty, sunny informality of its streets, the spirit of collectivity that flourished under the 40-year dictatorship suffered by its citizens, or the very difference that marked it out, redolent with a local colour eulogised by writers from Jean Genet to Robert Hughes. To get to the New Barcelona, the city went through some sort of transition. As it was modernised, so some things were destroyed: the ‘tragedy of development’ perhaps, but out of this transition there were winners and losers, presumably. Or was this all a Whiggish welcome to the New Europe?2 I undertook this study precisely because Barcelona was so popular in the soundbites of municipal politicians and Sunday supplements, precisely because of the extent to which it has captured the imagination of a lot of trend-setters and policy-makers. And while it cannot compete with Los Angeles as a ‘laboratory’ of social science research (with the Chicago School or the Paris of Benjamin being clear predecessors), I would maintain that within lies an important set of lessons about how politicians, critics, social movements and parties have interpreted urban change in contemporary Europe. Furthermore, it is important that our understanding of urban change is informed by studies from a variety of geographical locations, not just the usual examples of London, New York and Los Angeles. A focus on Barcelona reveals a lot which contradicts, qualifies or modifies the anglophone normality of much contemporary urban research. And it allows a privileged viewpoint of some of the anxieties of the European Left as it has struggled to retain control of the European metropolis. But why the Left? The city and the European Left Why indeed? Despite the fact that many geographers pride themselves on a concern for ‘a progressive politics of place’3 (which includes—of course—the claims of nonparty political actors such as the women’s movement, anti-racist organisations, etc.), there is a curious lack of engagement with the role of socialist or Left parties today. Some may say that this is because they are no longer socialist, no longer progressive. If so, fine. This does not invalidate a search for what went wrong, and how changing political values are communicated. In other words, the whole issue of the Left and the city is something which geographers have tended to ignore, yet something to which they can contribute hugely The fact is that behind the city’s transition a whole range of Left political traditions have been re-invented and rewritten. And what is particularly interesting is the way that Barcelona as a place has been redefined in this process. That cities often embody or signify sites of both material and symbolic political struggles has been recognised in recent geographical work. For example, Jane M. Jacobs, in Postcolonialism and the City, shows how struggles over the production and use of space in cities such as London are reflections of broader cultural conflicts. Gerry Kearns’ excellent account of the Paris of 1989 illustrates how the city was a kind of political theatre for the Mitterrand presidency. Driver and Gilbert’s

INTRODUCTION 3

historical geography of imperial London employs the metaphor of ‘performance’ as a means of highlighting ‘spaces in movement’ rather than seeing urban space as static and predictable. And the importance of recognising how urban change is discursively constructed has been developed in Beauregard’s Voices of Decline, with reference to changing public discourses about the American city.4 My interest here, then, is to take this conception of the city as both a discursive and a material site of struggle and performance and use it as a contribution to attempts to chart the recent trajectory of the European Left. This has been taken forward at the level of the nation-state by a couple of recent studies, Anderson and Camiller’s Mapping the West European Left and Donald Sassoon’s One Hundred Years of Socialism,5 but comparable material on how this has affected both urban life and the political discourse of municipal politicians has been thin on the ground. Defining what it is to be Left or socialist for the purposes of an academic study is notoriously difficult. As Sassoon notes in his substantial historical monograph, there is often very little alternative for the historian or analyst of the Left but to accept ‘all self-styled socialist, social-democratic, labour and workers’ parties as the frame of reference’.6 Such an approach may be necessary when examining socialism as a movement. However, in this study I think it is important to look not just at socialism or social democracy where it is represented by a political party, as in Barcelona city council (chapter 4), but also where it is disappearing (chapter 2), or challenged from the grassroots (chapter 5), or is defined by place-specific criteria such as civic, regional or national identity (chapter 3) or indeed, where it is appearing in unusual guises—the designer socialism which I describe in chapter 6. These are all aspects of Left politics which the urban-sensitised geographer can contribute to. In this sense a tight definition of the Left is restrictive. Instead, the thematic focus helps to identify areas where Left identity is being negotiated, where it is subject to processes which help clarify its relationship to concrete phenomena. In many ways the book is an attempt to personalise the contemporary dilemmas facing the Left through a focus on autobiography and biography, through a meshing of historical narrative with observation and thick description.7 This is a conscious response to suggestions that work on the Left has been written from the standpoint of the political party, rather than through more social historical narratives. Sassoon’s mammoth work has been criticised on this very point, one commentator suggesting that he has over-emphasised the Left as technocrats, and arguing the need to move ‘outside the conference halls and committee rooms of socialist party policy-making into the streets’.8 I would agree with this. We need to explore alternative modes of representation to understand how politics and urban change are intertwined. Here I pursue what I call urban reportage, the search for a style of writing that emphasises the importance of local narratives. Urban reportage I have already cited Mike Davis’s City of Quartz, and I am happy to claim that this was for me—as for many contemporary urban geographers—a formative text, a

4 INTRODUCTION

wholly refreshing way of looking at a city. And while the following sketches of Barcelona are far less detailed, far less sparklingly rendered than the Californian textual experience, the book is empathetic with Davis’s attention to searching for a political mode of representation. Davis may be too tendentious for some (and James Duncan has written a useful critique from this perspective)9 but he shatters the myth of the disembodied author and—most importantly—forces open the contemporary city, talking about real people wielding enormous power. This could be called ‘muckraking’ academia,10 and his targets—priests, politicians, police chiefs and Frank Gehry—are all savaged within a coherent narrative framework. This idea of narrative frameworks is important, as narrative—the act of telling stories—is an alternative way of structuring academic work to the conventional theoretical or conceptual approach. In carrying out the 12 months of fieldwork in Barcelona (made on several visits between 1995 and 1997) the sifting of newspaper reports, urban histories, the city council’s plans and economic strategies, biographies and autobiographies of key protagonists, published interviews and dialogues, social histories, novels and the grassroots press has revealed a number of ‘stories’ which show how political actors make sense of the city—the ‘performance’ metaphor referred to above. These are often informal knowledges, and I have woven them into political and economic commentaries on the city and Spain as a means of providing context and interpretation. The result is a thematic set of tales, each more or less chronologically narrated. The downside of this is that the issues dealt with overlap between chapters, but where possible I have tried to avoid this. I would suggest that the book be read sequentially as the major themes of urban politics in Barcelona, Catalonia and Spain are set out in the earlier chapters, and the major characters are also introduced early on. The representational approach I have taken here is deliberately provocative. I am not claiming that reportage is ‘scientifically rigorous’. I am already braced for accusations that this work is mere ‘journalism’. Yet it is rooted in a belief that academic writing in certain spheres should be addressed to audiences wider than the author’s immediate discipline. George Orwell argued for this very strongly, and as Bernard Crick—Orwell’s biographer—has lamented at some length, academic books about political issues ‘were once written in plain English not in social science, whether in the Marxiological or the American methodological dialect’. And as both Crick and Raymond Williams have noted of Orwell, there was an intention in the latter’s work to make political writing something of an art, as well as a means of communication.11 Others have extended this approach to understanding the city, specifically, and I have been influenced by the likes of Walter Benjamin, Patrick Wright, Hans Magnus Enzensberger, François Maspero and Mike Davis, who have all thrown a highly illuminating spotlight on daily life in their chosen cities, each engaging with the elusive politics of the street, or rather politics as seen from street level, but who are also aware of the hidden forces which have to be uncovered to understand how cities and political identities are changing.12 I begin by providing a brief political travelogue to Barcelona, as a means of orientation and scene-setting for the chapters that follow. In chapter 2 I examine the

INTRODUCTION 5

idea that the contemporary European city is becoming more and more alien to a Left politics. Drawing primarily on the work of local critic and novelist Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, I examine how the New Barcelona of the 1980s and 1990s is distanced from what we might call ‘classic’ socialist culture, in the sense of it being internationalised, modernised and gentrified, while the popular landscapes and places in the city are being redefined and redesigned by the city council. One of Vázquez Montalbán’s obsessions is the degree to which once Marxist political activists have now become leading advocates of capitalist modernity, expressed most succinctly in the organisation of the Olympics. From the idea of a loss of Left identity, I move in chapter 3 to examining how the city has been integral to the development of Catalan political identities, and how this has split between the socially inclusive ‘city-state’ notion of social democratic mayor Pasqual Maragall, and the ‘bourgeois regionalism’ of Catalan president Jordi Pujol.13 In chapter 4, I confront the key issue of the Left in power in today’s city, pulling out some distinctive themes of Maragall’s re-interpretation of municipal social democracy, an urban ‘new realism’. This is followed in chapter 5 by a critique from those in the city’s grassroots citizens’ movements of Maragall’s version of Left identity, which argues that this does nothing for the most vulnerable sections of the city’s population, and that the property development pursued in building a New Barcelona is directly counter to their interests. I illustrate how this relates to the redefinition of socialist politics in the city by linking it to the biography and work of Manuel Castells, whose analysis of capitalism was influential among the generation who came to power in the late 1970s. This link illuminates how the Barcelona urban Left has often been extremely sensitive to the workings of capitalism and urban restructuring. In chapter 6 I argue that there is an interesting Left interpretation of the built environment at play in Barcelona, expressed in the choice of architects and projects which have heralded the city’s renaissance. Finally, I try to draw together some of the themes explored, relating them to the broader strategic issues facing the European Left. Notes 1 Davis (1990), pp. 19–20. 2 Marshall Berman’s (1983) account of the agonies of modernity and modernisation are as applicable to Barcelona as they are to New York, coupled as they are with a very acute sense of how the transition was politicised. 3 Massey (1993). 4 J.M.Jacobs (1996); see also J.M.Jacobs (1994), which expands the methodological discussion on this point; Kearns (1993); Driver and Gilbert (1998), quotation from p. 14; Beauregard (1993). 5 Anderson and Camiller (1994); Sassoon (1996). 6 Sassoon (1996), p. xxiv. 7 For more detail on this, see McNeill (1998). 8 Eley (1998), p. 114.

6 INTRODUCTION

9 Duncan (1996). 10 See Lindner (1996). 11 Bernard Crick, ‘Politics and the English language’, Guardian 29 March 1997, p. 23; Williams (1991). 12 Benjamin’s urban writing is well described by Gilloch (1996); Wright (1993); Enzensberger (1989), and Chalmers and Lumley (1989) for a commentary; Maspero (1994); Davis (1990). 13 The phrase is Harvie’s (1994).

1 A rough guide to the New Barcelona

From the air, homage to Blair 2nd April, 1997, 10.30pm (local time). As the British Airways flight descends, I look out of the window at inky Barcelona flickering below, an invisible city but with tell-tale landmarks for the frequent flier: the green neon Sony sign in Plaça dels Països Catalans, Santiago Calatrava’s graceful wishbone tower, the evenly spaced streetlights of the Eixample. I had just left a Britain underwhelmed by election fever, my in-flight reading consisting of an Economist election guide. Putting it aside, my thoughts turn from New Labour’s spending plans to the city humming away below, people glued to Sorpresa Sorpresa or Telenoticias, drinking coffee and eating magdalenas, stacked high in their apartments in Sant Andreu, in Les Corts, in L’Hospitalet. And I am happy to be back because I like Barcelona a lot, and I calculate the best way to get from the airport to my waiting box-room in a friend’s flat in Sants, and the approximate time it will take between getting off the plane and levering open the first cold bottle of Estrella beer, Barcelona’s national drink. I had come to Barcelona because of its reputation as a heartland of socialism. It interested me because it had changed dramatically in a short space of time, throwing up the same sort of tensions and dilemmas posed to the Left in cities such as Glasgow and Sheffield, Lille and Paris—cities with strong traditions of socialism and working class protest, but now lumbering under the burden of deindustrialisation, unemployment, and Maastricht. I had come because Tony Blair and his New Labour colleagues had gone on record as big fans of what the long-serving social democrat mayor—Pasqual Maragall—had done for the city. But I had also come because Barcelona has a special place in the literary heritage of British socialists, thanks to the efforts of one Eric Blair, aka George Orwell, whose first visit to Barcelona shocked him: It was the first time that I had ever been in a town where the working class was in the saddle. Practically every building of any size had been seized by the workers and was draped by red flags or with the red and black flag of the Anarchists; every wall was scrawled with the hammer and sickle and with the initials of the revolutionary parties; almost every church had been gutted

8 A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE NEW BARCELONA

and its images burnt… Down the Ramblas, the wide central artery of the town where crowds of people streamed constantly to and fro, the loudspeakers were bellowing revolutionary songs all day and far into the night. And it was the aspect of the crowds that was the queerest thing of all. In outward appearance, it was a town in which the wealthy classes had practically ceased to exist. Except for a small number of women and foreigners there were no ‘well-dressed’ people at all. Practically everyone wore rough workingclass clothes, or blue overalls or some variant of the militia uniform. (George Orwell, Homage to Catalonia)1 This was 1936, and Orwell had come to Barcelona as an enthusiastic, idealistic member of the International Brigades—the volunteers who arrived from all over the world to fight against fascism. The state of affairs which he found upon his arrival would not last for long. As a result of bitter struggles within the Republican forces— between pro-Stalinist communists on one hand, and Anarchists and Trotskyists on the other—one of Europe’s most revolutionary cities fell to Franco’s Nationalists in 1939. For much of the following three or four decades, until Franco’s death in 1975, little trace would be left of this radical political culture. The banning of political parties, the often violent suppression of the labour movement, the constant surveillance, harassment and imprisonment of socialist intellectuals and shopfloor activists—many of whom would be locked up in the Model prison close to the city centre—were a constant of everyday life as the dictatorship tried to ensure that red Barcelona would not be seen again. In writing Homage to Catalonia Orwell set out to correct some of the mistruths circulating about the course of the Civil War in Spain, and the events of Barcelona in particular. His sympathy for the Trotskyists and Anarchists went beyond his immediate experience as a militia-member at the Aragonese front, seeing the events of Spain as being a microcosm of the closing horizon of Europe at the time: ‘[t]his squalid brawl in a distant city is more important than might appear at first sight’.2 Going out to fight in Spain with the International Brigades—as did many British socialists of his generation—was one way of making an individual stand against the rising shadow of European fascism. So what would he say now, Orwell, were he to return to the Barcelona of the 1990s, if he had flown into El Prat airport in 1992 as the world’s greatest athletes arrived to participate in an Olympic Games financed by some of the most powerful transnational corporations in the world? What would Orwell say if he were to open the British lifestyle magazines, travel guides or Sunday supplements which have rushed to eulogise the city, almost without exception beginning their pieces with ‘Homage to…’? In a lengthy appendix to Homage to Catalonia Orwell made clear what he felt about those parts of the British media either on the Right— such as the Daily Mail—which presented Franco as a patriot coming to Spain’s aid, or on the Left which presented the Trotskyists as being saboteurs of the Republican cause. So what would he feel about the status of his work, what would he feel about socialism, were he to read the British media now?

A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE NEW BARCELONA 9

It is worth speculating that—given his apparently total disillusionment with Stalinist-tainted communism before his death—he may have turned into one of those who learnt to stop worrying and love capitalism. Once Barcelona was a capital of European socialism, a microcosm of the great ideological battles of the first half of the 20th century. Think again of the symbolic importance of the Republican cause in the Civil War for the rest of Europe. But by the 1990s, the city had become subject to what John Urry calls ‘aesthetic cosmopolitanism’, a move beyond mass tourism which includes a ‘curiosity about all places, peoples and cultures and at least a rudimentary ability to map such places and cultures historically, geographically and anthropologically [along with] an openness to other peoples and cultures and a willingness/ability to appreciate some elements of the language/culture of the place that one is visiting’.3 Barcelona was now host to a whole generation of tourists and visitors for whom the great choices of the first half of the 20th century were increasingly irrelevant. As such, the altruistic internationalism of the International Brigades has been replaced by a more hedonistic attitude displayed by visitors to the city. Of course, over the years Homage to Catalonia has provided a foundational text for anglophone visitors to Barcelona. For the British, the city has taken a firm hold on the imagination of Guardian readers, clubbers, foodies, and high-disposable-income football followers. As a recent feature in the London-based Time Out listings magazine began, ‘Leave the grey skies of London behind for the wild buzz of Barcelona, where culture vultures swoop by day and party animals whoop it up at night. Our guide steers you through this born-again city, from a ramble down the Rambla to a gawp at Gaudí and the city’s high-design culture palaces and clubs’.4 This affinity with the city had been building up slowly over the years. But rather than waning after the Olympics, its popularity seems to have increased. The arrival of budget air travel—courtesy of the Easyjet line from Luton to Barcelona—sees an extra 2000 people a week flying out to the city at peak times. And why? ‘We get off on Barcelona’s ubiquitous sense of taste and design, Gaudí s freeform lunacy, the carefully-cultivated hedonism, the 24-hour-a-day lifestyle free from drunken oafishness (except our own)’, says a surprisingly reflective Guardian travel piece.5 And besides Mark Hughes, Steve Archibald, Terry Venables, Bobby Robson and Gary Lineker—all maintaining British interest in the Bança team over the last few years—the evocative blaugrana (blue and purple) striped shirts worn by Cruyff, Maradona and Ronaldo have long kept the city’s name among Europe’s urban footballing elite. So the aesthetic cosmopolitans of the 1990s, Europe’s reasonably affluent, are able to ‘wander as tourists—which is to say consumers of images—from one historical culture to another, delightfully free from the need to commit themselves to any, and free to criticise while determining for themselves the extent of their responsibility’.6 Instead of idealistic commitment to political and humanistic principle, they are able to use their knowledge and education to consume the political heritage of places. And this political agenda has two dimensions: an openness

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to the idea of a New Europe, and a fondness for the—often related— notions of civilised life: café culture, modern art, long lunches, strolling. The European city. This may help to explain the popularity of Barcelona with sections of British society. For Blairites of all varieties, for urban designers, architects and journalists, the city has provided a treasure-trove of warm Euro-urbanity. However, this only serves to highlight the yawning gap between the political commitment in Homage to Catalonia and the rather glib references to the city in Sunday supplements and political soundbites. For Europe and place-identity are not the soft options they are often made out to be by centre-left imagineers. Few would contest the suggestion that European integration has had a profound impact on the political and economic life of the continent. It is often argued that this process has at its core a logic of deregulation and competitiveness, with its goal ‘the creation of a Greater Europe that amounts to an enlarged zone of commodity exchange with no supranational social regulation’.7 The essence of the Maastricht Treaty, the inter-governmental agreement which planned closer economic integration, is to prioritise the control of inflation over the reduction of unemployment. Worse still, the pursuit of aesthetically pleasing environments is not necessarily an innocent process. The new cityscapes may directly conceal a worsening in social polarisation and a de facto reduction in democratic control over the city and its spaces as steps are taken to lure in large corporations, or as councils are mortgaged with huge spending on arts and museum budgets. As city governments have been forced to become more competitive, so they struggle with their counterparts both far and near for a limited amount of mobile capital. And when moderate socialists look elsewhere for successful examples that they can copy, they look to Barcelona. Barcelona retains a hold on the centre-left imagination precisely because it shows the results of a re-invented municipal socialism, aware of globalisation, willing to work in partnership with the private sector. But most of all the city is glamorous. In contrast to the rather miserable affair of British municipal labourism, Barcelona’s lifestyle and public spaces seem dynamic, exciting, infusing New Labour’s thinking on cities. Its mayor, Pasqual Maragall, received ‘a hero’s welcome’ when he addressed a high-profile Evening Standard-sponsored conference on the future of London in 1996.8 For Tony Blair, ‘Mr Maragall’s work has shown what can be achieved in reinventing a city’s identity through rebuilding and regenerating the public sphere’.9 The Guardian has gone further: ‘brilliant Barcelona’, it enthused, ‘represents a virtuous circle, in which daring enterprise catches people’s imagination, and the flowering of that imagination encourages even greater daring… Why can’t we be more like the Barceloneses?’. This in the editorial column, entitled ‘Homage from Barcelona’, of course.10 Tony Blair’s New Labour would subsequently win the 1997 general election by a landslide, and within a year Blair and family would holiday with the new Spanish prime minister José Maria Aznar and his family, appearing with him in Hello! and sharing mother-in-law jokes about his trip with Des O’Connor on prime time. Little matter that Aznar’s Partido Popular is the inheritor of many of the social bases which sustained Francoism. Now, I’m not going to say who the British PM can be

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friends with, but isn’t this a little strange? Between 1936 and 1996, between the arrival of the first and the second Blair in Spain, a lot has clearly happened to political ideology. The Spanish social democrats (the PSOE) have been similarly pragmatic. As James Petras has argued, ‘[t]he Socialist party elite has followed a typical three-stage pattern: early militancy involving popular mobilization, leading to election victories and public office, followed by the conversion of public office into entrée into elite circles, investments, and high incomes’.11 In order to cement this social transition, the PSOE years were characterised by clientelism and spectacle, both designed to ensure the party’s hegemony in Spanish society. Through a variety of mechanisms— free holidays to pensioners, a tight control of the handing out of public jobs, and an increase in the extent of the hitherto non-existent welfare state—the PSOE was able to establish dominance within society And with 1992 being the magic year of the Olympics, Madrid’s turn as European City of Culture, and—above all—the Seville Expo, there was a lot of energy devoted to creating a New Spain built on the joint values of economic internationalisation and fiesta. The PSOE years were characterised by a period of ideological cooling, as the dictatorship was laid to rest with the minimum of fuss and a collective amnesia with regard to the conflicts of the recent past. And with a New Spain came a New Barcelona. The birth of the New Barcelona Over the centuries, the capture or the sacking of Barcelona was never halted by the city walls. The city’s growth, however, was. While within the walls the population density went on rising, making life intolerable, without lay open fields and wasteland. In the evenings or on public holidays, people in neighbouring villages would go up on the hilltops (today known as Putxet, Gràcia, San José de la Montana etc.) and look down, sometimes with brass telescopes, on the citizens of Barcelona milling to and fro, orderly and punctilious, greeting one another, disappearing from sight in the maze of back streets, only to meet again with more handshaking, further inquiries as to their respective health and fortunes, and another round of leave-takings. The villagers enjoyed the spectacle. Occasionally a simple rustic would attempt to score a hit on a city dweller with a stone, though this was impossible, given the distance, not to mention the walls. (Eduardo Mendoza, City of Marvels)12 How cities change. Standing on Barcelona’s hills today—in the leafy park of Putxet, the crisp promontory of Tibidabo, the lush Olympic magic mountain of Montjuïc, or on the proletarian peaks of Carmel—you would today have considerably better odds of hitting a resident with a random stone. All around you the city has grown up. The medieval walls have gone, although the area they enclosed, the Ciutat Vella, can still be made out, roofs jammed together around its narrow streets and

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alleys, before being engulfed on three sides by the 19th century grid plan known as the Eixample. From these hilltops you can guess the location of the old industrial townships which the city ate up voraciously around the turn of the century, villages which became colonised by the city’s main industries of textiles and, later, engineering. Such districts—Sants, Sant Martí de Provençals, Gràcia, and Sant Andreu—still retain the marks of the past. Industrial archaeologists must adore Barcelona, its streets betraying traces of the old manufacturing landscape, brick chimneys and dusty workshops still popping up unexpectedly down side-streets and behind towering apartment blocks. But the industry has gone now, migrating over its natural boundaries, its collar of valleys and hills, and the two rivers that neatly bound it to north and south (the Besòs and Llobregat). Beyond these natural limits lies a metropolitan area of 4 million people, vastly swollen in Spain ‘s economic boom of the 1960s, when car ownership rose from 9 to 70 per 1000 people, and when TV ownership soared from 1% to a staggering 90% of the population.13 The medieval city had burst forth from its army-imposed walls in 1854, opening the way for the urbanisation of the Eixample: it would continue growing and eating land until all its floorspace was exhausted. The visitor is unlikely to see much of the landscape of the periphery, save on a trip to the airport. But should you wish to visit it, you would do well to take Ignasi Riera’s Off Barcelona,14 a travel guide to those towns hidden from the eyes of the tourist. He ventures into the submerged fabric of rural villages, the archaeology of the early industrial revolution in Badalona and Cornellà, the coastal towns such as Castelldefels, temporary home of one Ronaldo and once the projected site of a Corbusieran garden city, and he describes the compulsory metropolitan experience of visiting els hipers for a multi-pack of anchovy fillets. This world, criss-crossed by motorways and railways, was created in the delayed arrival of Spanish industrial modernity, housing the thousands of immigrants who came from Andalusia and Extremadura to the big cities, Spanish-speaking ghettos where it was difficult to become accustomed to the indigenous Catalan-speakers and the fact that ‘one did not say “good morning” to people in the streets’.15 And it was here that many of the most militant workers’ movements sprang up in the late 1960s and 1970s, in Sabadell (still with a communist mayor) or Cornellà, lending it the nickname of the city’s ‘red belt’. It is these areas which question the assumption that Barcelona is a Catalan city, and it is worth noting that some have seen Barcelona as a dilution of Catalan identity (a key issue in the city’s electoral battles between social democrats and nationalists). Barcelona remains a city with a high proportion of Castilian speakers, the majority of whom came to the city in the 1950s and 1960s, many settling in the peripheral towns and estates of the metropolitan area. Perhaps the most notable attempt to recognise the struggles of this Castilian-speaking working class to gain acceptance in Catalan society has come from Francese Candel, a novelist and journalist from Zona Franca, whose book Els Altres Catalans (1963) brought to the attention of a wide audience the problems of integration faced by many incomers. In Santa Coloma de Gramenet they have a successful Feria de Abril modelled on the

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Seville extravaganza, and when Real Betis—the most popular Seville team—play at FC Barcelona’s Camp Nou, they are assured of significant support both in the stadium and in the bars of the red belt. Porciolismo and the Castilian language, two of the major cultural marks left by the dictatorship, now help to make up a suburban culture a long way from the image of Barcelona as Catalan city, and bring home the reality that Manuel from Fawlty Towers really was from ‘Bar-theh-lona’, and not the Bar-sa-lona of Catalan pronunciation. You may miss these areas if you are driving, entering Barcelona through one of its numerous expressways. Searing in from the northeast is the Meridiana, from the northwest the Diagonal, both of which slice through the city before intersecting at Plaça de les Glories, an engineering merry-go-round which whirls cars off left, right and centre to the city’s different barris. From the airport, the Gran Via speeds into the city on a course parallel with the sea, passing within a block of Plaça de Catalunya, before heading straight on out towards the Costa Brava. Alternatives include the Ronda de Dalt and Ronda Litoral, which skirt the peripheries of the city via the northern suburbs and the coast, respectively. As in most large cities, the observant urban anthropologist will use such expressways to note down the fleeting landscape of the metropolitan area, before being dropped into metaphorical heartlands marked by medieval stones, art nouveau lamp-posts and prawn restaurants. Edge-city connoisseurs worried about such cultural time-space compression may be interested in taking the Gran Via from the airport, and could note the case of Sant Cosme housing estate a mere AmEx card’s flick away, hidden from the view of inflooding Olympic visitors by strategically placed M and M billboards, echoes of Mussolini’s cardboard street-fronts, or they will marvel at Bellvitge to their left, the high-rise housing that billboards cannot hide, plonked on the periphery with the barest of services provided and the minimum of public space provision. This is the landscape of a city which, by the end of the 1960s, had thrown itself into modernity with disastrous consequences. It was a raw, dusty modernity. Labouring under a creaking, puzzled dictatorship, Barcelona was everywhere touched by spreading power pylons, shambolic car-strewn no man’s lands, and concrete fly-overs. In the heart of the old town, the tree-lined Rambla which runs from the sea up to the expansive Plaça de Catalunya (site of El Corte Inglés, the city’s major department store, hence landmark) still provided Barcelona’s citizenry with one of Europe’s most beautiful boulevards. Towards the bottom of this lay the seamy district of the Barrio Chino, a haven of petty crime specialising, as ever, in drugs and cheap sex, all tucked into narrow, dingy streets—an illegal but tolerated agglomeration economy which gathered in sailors, travellers and assorted locals. The sea, the dirty Mediterranean, was visible only from a few, narrow points: near the towering statue of Columbus at the foot of La Rambla, or from the arcadian heights of Montjuïc. Elsewhere the docks and warehouses barred it off, with only the close salty air giving a hint of its proximity. From the 1980s, all this began to change. The end of dictatorship had brought a democratic city council to power, which set about comprehensively replanning the

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city. Progress was slow at first, and reflected the demands of the citizenry: new public spaces in an overcrowded city. But suddenly there was a change in pace: Barcelona was to bid for the 1992 Olympics. Even before the award was formally made in 1986, the pavements were being thrown up and buildings demolished, as preparations were made for the relaunch into European modernity. Under the Barcelona Posa’t Guapa (Barcelona Make Yourself Beautiful) campaign, the council encouraged business and property owners to invest in the cleaning of the tarnished facades of many of the fine art nouveau (modernista) buildings clustered in the Eixample, and the Gothic stone of the old city. The discovery of the work of Gaudí by a mass international audience—the Japanese being particular devotees—helped shift the image of the city significantly up-market. Here was the New Barcelona, efficient, clean, cultured, the envy of city halls across the world. But this is a rough guide, and the essence of such guides is to get away from the tourist circuit, to get below the city’s skin. A reasonable start to any travelogue would be to hear what the experts think, and I draw here from the 1994 edition of Spain: the Rough Guide: Barcelona, the self-confident and progressive capital of Catalunya, is a tremendous place to be. A thriving port and the most prosperous commercial centre in Spain, it has a sophistication and cultural dynamism way ahead of the rest of the country…. Barcelona has long had the reputation of being the most cosmopolitan city in Spain, especially in design and architecture… But there are darker sides to this new-found prosperity and confidence. As more money is poured into the sleek image, poorer areas are left behind. Indeed, despite the post-Olympic sheen and the high-tech edge to much of the city infrastructure, there is a great deal of poverty here and hard drugs are rapidly acquiring a high profile.16 Such a discourse is interesting, coming as close as a tourist guide will come to engaging with the politics of the city, and highlighting the dual city metaphor which permeates many contemporary alternative travel guides (bibles of the aesthetic cosmopolitans). In what follows, I want to extend the rough guide to a brief, descriptive travelogue of the city’s electoral map. An electoral map17 In the 1995 election, the most recent municipal election to be held in the city (at the time of writing), the Catalan social democrats of the PSC were narrowly victorious over the Catalan nationalist coalition, CiU. Some of the implications of this will be discussed in later chapters, but in attempting to capture some of the political geographies of Barcelona I want to provide a breakdown of the city’s electoral map. In part, this is to reflect the social differentiation which exists within the city, as well as providing a fairly coherent gazetteer of its districts. However, recent work in geography has stressed that places are, above all, representations: an

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Figure 1 Barcelona: an electoral map. Electoral districts: 1, Ciutat Vella; 2, Eixample; 3, Sants-Montjuic; 4, Les Corts; 5, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi; 6, Gràcia; 7, HortaGuinardó; 8, Nou Barris; 9, Sant Andreu; 10, Sant Martí. Major roads: A, Diagonal; B, Ronda Litoral; C, Gran Via; D, Ronda Del Mig/General Mitre; E, Ronda de Dalt.

electoral map helps balance off those places rich in symbolic meaning (above all in Barcelona’s old town) with those areas of the city that are less picturesque, but certainly more important in terms of electoral power and, for example, tax revenues. So in what follows I provide thumbnail sketches of the 10 electoral divisions which constitute the contemporary city, beginning with the Ciutat Vella and running roughly clockwise around the map shown in Figure 1. Ciutat Vella For many, this is the real Barcelona, the site of its historic institutions, much of its radical history, its Gothic quarter, many of its restaurants and bars, the opera house, the Rambla, the port…yet in electoral terms it counts for little, with turnout

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regularly falling below 50%, and with an ageing and marginalised population. In 1995, the PSC was easily the most popular party with a 46.6% share of the vote on a 48% turn-out. The Ciutat Vella is one of the most resonant landscapes for the Marxist Left, and as I discuss it in some detail in the following chapter I limit myself to a few introductory comments here. It is defined by La Rambla (often referred to in the plural, either Las Ramblas (Castilian) or Les Rambles (Catalan)), the gently wending promenade of strollers, probably the most socially heterogeneous street in the city, and a veritable nightmare at peak strolling times for getting from A (Plaça de Catalunya) to B (the sea-front), and back, at anything more than a shuffle. Gridlock is assured by the presence of countless obstacles, including newspaper kiosks, flower stalls, lamp-posts, cigarette vendors, street cafés, battery-hen bird cages, human statues (Roman centurion, Elvis, Virgin Mary [I presume], etc. etc.), Euro-trash jugglers and the dozens of plane trees that give the street its beautifully shadowed ambience. It’s all so charming at first…. Eixample There have been other New Barcelonas. The first was probably that constructed from the 1860s, under Ildefons Cerdà’s Eixample (extension) plan, which stretched out around the old city gobbling up the land available between the Ciutat Vella and the towns and villages a couple of kilometres outside the city walls—the likes of Sants, Poble Nou, Clot, Sant Martí. With urban expansion came a new social class, effectively satirised in Eduardo Mendoza’s City of Marvels, whose picaresque antihero, Onofre Bouvila, rises ruthlessly from penniless peasant to arriviste local worthy on the back of the city’s expansion between the two world fairs of 1888 and 1929, harnessing every technological breakthrough, picking up on every investment opportunity. As a subtext to the city’s Olympic rebirth, the message was clear: the city’s rentier and political class would stop at nothing in their drive to valorise and revalorise Barcelona. The book appeared in Spain at the moment at which the Olympics had been given the go-ahead, and the pace of reconstruction would suddenly step up several gears. Little surprise that much was made in the local papers about mayor Maragall’s city of marvels. Cerdà’s Eixample plan—another early (utopian) socialist plan—was soon seized upon by the type of speculator represented by Mendoza’s Onofre. The model of Marx’s assertion that all capitalists must, by definition, have begun their primitive accumulation through robbery, Bouvila starts by buying a tiny lot in a remote part of the new Eixample grid, sucking in a naïve punter by starting a rumour that a high-class confectioner would soon be moving its premises to the benighted spot, thus valorising—through coca and tortell18—the surrounding property values meaning that ‘the entire city was at last moving outward, for in late-nineteenthcentury Barcelona nothing had the distinction and respectability of a high-class confectioners’. And so his accumulation continues, as the Eixample’s empty lots begin to be filled in:

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With his profit from this first sale he bought more lots in another place. ‘Let’s see what he’ll do now,’ said the experts in that kind of business… The lots were far from the city center—at what is now the corner of Rosellón and Gerona streets. ‘Who would want to live there?’ people said. One day, several carts appeared; sunlight gleaming on lengths of metal could be seen by the masons working on the towers of the Sagrada Familia not far from there. These were streetcar rails. A team of laborers began digging trenches in the stony ground of Calle Rosellón… ‘This time it’s for real,’ people said. ‘This area is going places without a doubt.’ Within three or four days Onofre was relieved of all his lots for the price he chose to name…a few days later, the same workmen who began laying the rails pulled them up, loaded them back on the carts, and took them away.19 The property developer has never been popular among the city’s socialists, at least not until the Olympics forced a change of mind. They speculate, they make money from nothing, they accumulate, they disfigure the face of the city and ensure that the best-laid plans of social housing go astray. For two of the sternest critics of the city’s Olympic development—Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Eduardo Moreno —‘Barcelona has always been in the hands of the Right’, rescued from the hands of military and monarchy by a new, rapacious, commercial bourgeoisie.20 The Eixample today reflects the results of this, built up to its eyeballs, every plot of land built upon up to eight storeys high, with illegally added attics and superattics, with sheds and workshops filling the spaces in the interior of the blocks. Its streets are roaring canyons, its chamfered corners claimed by the car. Split into two main sections—Esquerra de l’Eixample (the left-hand, westward section), and Dreta de l’Eixample (right-hand, eastward)—this is firm CiU territory. Polling 39% in 1995 to the PSCs 29.8% and the PP’s 17.4%, the Eixample still remains a bit of a social mix, with up to a third of its sizeable population (c. 290,000 in 1986) of working class occupation or background. In particular, the extreme edges of the grid, and the district of Sant Antoni which is squeezed between the Paral·lel and the Ciutat Vella, remain less affluent, exacerbated by the abnormally high rate of residents over the age of 65 (almost 20% in 1986). At its heart lies Passeig de Gràcia, an elegant if somewhat dull boulevard of office blocks, banks and pavement cafés, spiced up by some superb Gaudí and art nouveau town houses. To the east is the icon of Barcelona, the unfinished cathedral of the Sagrada Familia, which takes up a whole block to itself. Sants-Montjuïc A medley of urban uses, this is probably the most diverse district in the entire city. Dominated by the Olympic hill of Montjuïc, a fertile area of cultural and sporting attractions, this was once a major manufacturing zone in the city. Included within it is the Zona Franca, the site of the SEAT car factory for several decades and also

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home to much of its workforce, stacked up in apartment slabs which line the foot of the westward slopes of the hill. To the immediate north—across the Gran Via, which links the city centre with the airport—lie Badal and La Bordeta, both working class districts riven by subterranean motorways and train lines. Continuing north, Sants—almost a town in itself—is the principal service and commercial centre, and houses the main railway station, with its associated hotels, car parks and offices. Finally, the old anarchist neighbourhood of Poble Sec remains one of the most atmospheric parts of the district. Climbing steeply up from the Paral·lel, it terminates at the green Olympic skirt of Montjuïc, and retains a significant cluster of restaurants and bars. The district, unsurprisingly, is strongly behind the PSC—40. 8% in 1995, with CiU second with 28.6%. Les Corts Les Corts consists of two districts: Les Corts itself—a high-rise middle class neighbourhood dominated by the huge expanse of FC Barcelona’s football stadium and associated facilities—and Pedralbes, the most exclusive of the city’s neighbourhoods and characterised by its luxury flats and villas. The two areas are divided by the upper reaches of the Diagonal, which is lined with the faculty buildings of the Universitat de Barcelona and, towards the city centre, office blocks and luxury hotels. The area is firmly behind the Catalan nationalists (37.44% in 1995), though both they and the PSC saw a sizeable increase in the PP share of the vote. Sarrià-Sant Gervasi The heartland of the city’s upper-middle classes, this is the only electoral district where the PSC fell into third place in the city, trailing behind both CiU and the PP in the symbolic landscapes of la zona alta. Dominated by the Ronda de General Mitre which sweeps through a landscape of higher-end apartments, in the home district of Generalitat president Jordi Pujol CiU polled a fairly astonishing 53.6% in the 1991 municipal elections, but lost ground to the PP in 1995 (still retaining a convincing 44.64% of the votes in comparison with the conservatives’ 24.22%). Away from the main thoroughfares, both Sarrià and Sant Gervasi retain aspects of their semi-rural past, before the huge expansion of the post-war period. Gràcia Proudly Catalan, and recording the lowest PP vote in 1995 in the whole of the city (13.69%), Gràcia is renowned for its distinctive bohemian atmosphere, in parts feeling genuinely village-like with its secluded squares, aged general stores, and an annual festa, generally recognised as the best in the city. Predominantly middle class, the municipal division also includes the sharply sloping and more proletarian Vallcarca, which backs up against Parc Güell. It would be enough for any city to

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possess a Parc Güell alone. The winding paths, sculpted grottoes, and gingerbread houses that dot the wooded slopes of the park transport you far from the trafficchoked streets below. From its vantage point on one of the hills which mark the beginning of the valleys that skirt the city, you can gaze out over Barcelona, over the black gashes of two of the Eixample’s main thoroughfares, Montaner and Via Augusta, over the squat green slopes of Montjuïc, taking in the towers that jut across the skyscape—the Sagrada Familia, the three jabbing points of the chimneys at the Sant Adrià power station, the office blocks which flag out the path of the Diagonal as it cuts across the city, while on the horizon vou can see the dirty blue wash of the Mediterranean. Here the cameras whirr and click, and packs of French, Italian and Japanese tourists crunch the gravel paths with ambling locals. On a crisp, sunny winter’s day the park alone is enough to justify one’s presence in the city. Back down below, Gràcia, with a population of 133,000 (1985), votes primarily for CiU (38% in 1995) and PSC (32% in 1995). And, less surprising given the extent of the graffiti on the walls and the somewhat anarchic music festivals occasionally held in one or other of its small squares, the youth-leaning ERC polls better here than in the rest of the city, its 7% of the share helping it achieve two seats in the current council. Horta-Guinardó One of the most heterogeneous of the electoral divisions, this is an amalgamation of several distinct barris. The most physically dramatic is Carmel, a hilltop district with a large Andalusian population, marked by its striking green tower-blocks a mere chipped-tile’s throw from Parc Güell. To the north lies Horta, one of the historic villages of Barcelona which was transformed by the in-migration of the 1960s, yet which still retains a lush, cobbled core set around the Plaça d’Eivissa. Adjacent and slightly west sits the Vall d’Hebron, one of the four sub-sites of the 1992 Olympics and which underwent a considerable amount of new apartment and hotel building both before and after the Games. Finally, to the south, after sweeping down from the heights of Carmel you reach the district of Guinardó, which takes in part of the Eixample. This is where the city’s electoral map turns decisively red, the PSC polling 43.06% in 1995, with CiU lying second (25.67%). Nou Barris The only electoral district where the PSC achieved over half the vote (51.28%) in 1995, the ‘nine districts’ is the most solidly working class, and Castilian-speaking, part of the city, consisting of almost 200,000 inhabitants. The ex-communists, IC, achieved their best vote in Barcelona in 1995 in Nou Barris (10%). In the 1950s and 1960s, this was the principal area of low-cost speculative building within Barcelona proper, with profitability prioritised over environmental quality, service and infrastructure provision. When many of these structures were proved to be

20 A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE NEW BARCELONA

substandard by the discovery of aluminosis (a disease caused by humidity which affects cement, and exacerbated by the cheap building methods), it would be Nou Barris that would be among the hardest hit, local authority teams suddenly appearing to shore up living rooms with scaffolding. Sliced hither and thither by giant expressways—the Meridiana and the Ronda de Dalt—the area has been home to one of the most active protest movements in the city, which demanded that the latter road be covered for up to 60% of its surface to reduce noise and pollution. It wasn’t lost on those critical of the Olympics that Juan Antonio Samaranch—the president of the international Olympic movement—had been the driving force behind the construction of the most marginalised of these districts, Ciutat Meridiana. In 1984 the neighbourhood associations held protest meetings under the title ‘Nou Barris enfront de [against] la Barcelona Olímpica’, a clear statement that these peripheral districts would be unlikely to benefit from the 1992 party.21 In the city council’s defence, much of their urban policy of the 1980s was directed towards improving the quality of life of these districts, attempting to provide coherence and dignity with new public spaces, services and artworks. Sant Andreu Sant Andreu was tragically put on the world stage on 19th June, 1987 when a bomb planted by ETA in the Hipercor supermarket on the Meridiana took 20 lives. Ironically, Sant Andreu was an anti-Francoist stronghold during the Civil War, and formed an important focus of clandestine struggle in the years leading up to the dismantling of the dictatorship. The district is composed of solidly working class areas such as Bon Pastor and Trinitat Vella, lying to the east, with the old cores of Sant Andreu and Sagrera again retaining their historic hearts and a greater social mix. In 1995 the PSC polled 45.7% of the vote, with CiU second (25%). The landscape of the area around the Meridiana is particularly interesting: huge apartment slabs offer an impressive vista as one enters the city; behind, however, there are stretches of small, two-storey housing, workshops, small shops and bars as well as a number of urban parks, considerable evidence of the architect-led municipal regeneration of the early 1980s. Santiago Calatrava’s road-bridge— a striking, glistening white monument to the council’s commitment to sprucing up the city’s periphery—lies in the unlikely setting of backwoods Sagrera; nearby is the Parc de la Pegaso, former site of the eponymous lorry manufacturers, and a genuine oasis for the residents of the surrounding high-rises; a few streets away sits the Plaça Masadas, a pretty arcaded square which is not without a film-set unreality. Sant Andreu is particularly renowned for its social heritage of industrial struggle. As well as housing Pegaso, the district was dominated by La Maquinista engineering plant, along with SEAT in Zona Franca one of the major sites of industrial unrest during the early 1970s.

A ROUGH GUIDE TO THE NEW BARCELONA 21

Sant Martí And finally, the Catalan Manchester. The second most populous district after the Eixample, the amalgamation of Sant Martí dels Provençals, the sea-front Poble Nou, the old villages of Clot and Camp de l’Arpa, and the 1950s and 1960s highrises of La Verneda, La Pau, and the Barris Besòs makes this a PSC heartland (46% in 1995, though having lost 9 percentage points since the 1991 election; the rising protest vote for IC and ERC, but most notably for the PP, is a worrying trend for the social democrats). Of course, it now contains the high-income Olympic Village, which might help explain much of the electoral erosion. Again, this is an area of enormous significance in the creation of a Catalan working class, once dominated by the many textile factories which gave the city its Mancunian reputation. The regeneration of parts of Poble Nou which marked the run-up to the 1992 Games saw the formation of Barcelona’s most striking post-industrial landscape, something not lost on those proud of its socialist heritage. ✤✤✤ This brief account of the city hopefully provides some idea of the landscape against which the following tales are set. The important point is that the New Barcelona is, still, controlled by a social democratic Left which has governed in partnership with the ex-communists of IC, and the Left republican ERC. That this could be potentially defeated by an emerging CiU-PP axis is apparent from the overall results from 1995, when PSC+IC+ERC won 21 council seats, and CiU+PP accounted for 20. Control of the city is still on a knife-edge, and we await 1999 with interest. In the meantime, the work has been done. The New Barcelona has been a creation of the PSC, and particularly its long-serving ex-mayor Pasqual Maragall. The city is now replete with public spaces and efficient infrastructures. But this is not a balance-sheet of the PSC’s period in office. It is instead an enquiry into how the New Barcelona has been constructed by a variety of figures from various Left traditions, and as such is an attempt to chart how this has, in part, been a struggle over particular versions of the city. It has a modest objective: to cast a little bit more light on some of the dilemmas and tensions facing the Left as the metropolises they once sought to control are changing before their eyes. And this in turn derives from a dissatisfaction with the way the rhetoric of the New Barcelona has been swallowed whole: just as previous generations of the Left would act as ‘tourists of the revolution’, blindly lapping up a Soviet Union of caviar and model factories, so their present-day contemporaries rush to embrace their 1990s equivalent—neorevisionist social democracy—without any historical awareness or critical ability.22 This has been epitomised by the repeated homages made to Barcelona, which have lacked the willingness to identify very real areas where political identity has been renegotiated. It is time to separate out some of these themes, some of these polarised strands of socialist praxis, in an attempt to shed some light on the New Barcelona.

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Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22

Orwell (1938/1989), pp. 2–3. Orwell (1938/1989), p. 216. Urry (1995), p. 167. Nick Rider and Ethel Rimmer, ‘Homage to Catalonia’, Time Out 18–25 September 1996, pp. 28–35. Rajan Datar, ‘Barca bravo’ [sic], Guardian 17 June 1997, G2, pp. 4–5. Pocock (1997), p. 312. Dunford and Kafkalas (1992), p. 4. David Taylor, ‘Londoners call for new mayor to oil the wheels’, Architects’ Journal 25 April 1996, p. 19. Cited in Elizabeth Nash, ‘A capital vision—from Spain’, Independent 29 October 1996, p. 14. ‘Homage from Barcelona’, Guardian 6 July 1996, p. 28. Petras (1993), pp. 95–6. Mendoza (1990), pp. 174–5. Carr and Fusi (1981). Riera (1993). Balfour (1989), p. 55. Ellingham and Fisher (1994), p. 512. Much of the data that follows were drawn from Huertas (1996). The electoral figures are from La Vanguardia 18 May 1995, p. 35. Such delicacies—a kind of mini-pizza, and a jam and cream-filled pastry, respectively— appear in Catalan bakeries to celebrate particular religious festivals. Mendoza (1990), pp. 201–2. Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), chapter 2. La Veu del Carrer 10–11, November-December 1992, p. 25. Enzensberger (1976).

2 Red heritage: Manuel Vázquez Montalbán as socialist flâneur

And the General gradually passed away, a hypodermic needle in every vein, every heartbeat going through a tube leading to eternity. Day after day, the city sounded out the medical reports and imagined the dictator dissolving in blood and excrement, a blood-stained surrealist agony. For months before Franco’s thrombophlebitis, bottles of champagne had chilled in insurgents’ refrigerators, their turbid joy contained by the dictator’s merely biological resistance. […] Until, finally, we found out that the dictator was dead and throughout 20 November 1975, the city filled with silent passers-by, walls reflected in their eyes, their throats dried with prudent silence. Up the Rambla and down. As ever. […] Above the skyline of the Collserola mountains, champagne corks soared into the autumn twilight. But nobody heard a sound. Barcelona was, after all, a city which had been taught good manners. Silent in both its joy and its sadness.1 Who else has written of the death of Franco with such venomous enthusiasm? Manuel Vázquez Montalbán’s ‘surrealist agony’, so closely entwined with his memories of Barcelona on that day in 1975, is as good a demonstration as any of the biting urban prose which has become his trademark. His own biography is etched into the walls, hills and asphalt of the city; his identity is indelibly marked by a life which began in 1939, the year in which Franco’s Nationalist forces entered Barcelona over the cordon of hills which ring the city. The legacy is in his prose: Vázquez Montalbán’s voluminous output stretches across bookshop shelves and column inches—20+ detective novels, poetry, treatises on politics, sociology, gastronomy, history, including his formidable ‘autobiography of General Franco’, and an account of his native city—Barcelonas—of remarkable fluency and vivacity, chronicles of a changing Spain, several published dialogues about the city’s urban politics, along with regular political columns for El País and other dailies. He watches, listens, writes. Cooks, eats and drinks. He is a flâneur, nose, memory. He is (was) a communist—now, as he puts it himself, a Grouchoist Marxist. Vázquez Montalbán—socialist botanist of the asphalt. In his works we can smell, see, taste the city and follow his psychogeographical wanderings and mental maps. And he is very

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Plate 1 ‘Franco ha muerto’: The death of Franco on 20th November, 1975, left the citizens of Barcelona unsure as to the future (a period captured in the novels of Manuel Vázquez Montalbán). (Source: Arxiu Fotogràfic de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona; Pérez de Rozas)

necessary. While most of the city’s intellectuals have achieved respect for their work in the clandestine opposition to the dictatorship, Vázquez Montalbán has gained his through his critique of the new Spanish democracy. While the 1992 Olympics focused eyes on a Barcelona, refashioned by the Catalanist social democrats of the PSC, and grouchy foreign journalists looking for an angle were quick to pick up on motifs of a dual city, he went deeper, far deeper, digging through his memories to evoke a soft city with very hard edges. These recollections—from childhood, from adolescence—would gather meaning through a life which included the standard imprisonments and beatings handed out to left-wing radicals, followed by the desencanto, disenchantment, of the reality of post-Francoist liberal democracy. By 1992 he had emerged as the city’s head cynic, as one of the few critical intellectuals who remained untouched by the PSC’s patronage or duties of office. Here, as well as in chapter 5 when I draw on his criticisms of property development and planning more explicitly, I want to use him as a guide to what I identified above as ‘red heritage’, the position of Marxist political identities in decreasingly red cities. His melancholy bitterness at the way his city is changing before his eyes, taunting him with memories, eluding his possession, gives his books a depth of insight and a rare poignancy. And so I begin this chapter by discussing Vázquez Montalbán as flâneur, after a fashion—a learned walker, who observes, smells, views and breathes the city. Yet he is, unequivocally, a socialist flâneur. He is invaluable to my attempt to demonstrate how the city is a constant presence in the

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realities of political life, and in turn how the flâneur’s city is structured by invisible— or rather, partially glimpsed—forces. The Barcelona of Vázquez Montalbán is a unique fusion of asphalt, fiction and reportage. Here, I identify three of the Barcelonas which form such clear motifs in his work. There is his use of his childhood neighbourhood—the Barrio Chino—as a canvas to illuminate the links between poverty, history, geography and memory—a microcosm of his over-arching political themes. Here, Barcelona is the defeated city of los rojos (the reds), the city of three sins that supported the wrong side in the Civil War. Then there is the city of transition, tracing how the Barcelona of buoyant Marxist-Leninist optimism at the end of the 1960s became the city of desencanto, as Spanish communism and socialism self-combusted and hope turned to disillusion. Finally, he has often made reference to the city as theme park, the Olympic city of 1992 representing a disorientation, a move from the sensual to the sanitised city. All of these cities are rendered in a powerful register of noir. Barcelona noir As a means of representing cities, noir has become particularly relevant in recent urban geographies. The most fascinating chapter in Mike Davis’s City of Quartz is a reading of the history of Los Angeles as a ‘dialectic of sunshine and noir’, an interplay of boosterism and dystopian critique. The recuperation of Walter Benjamin in recent years has, similarly, equated the ruins of the Left with the shadows of the city street, murked by historical trauma. And in the genre of noir, a story-teller is required, prepared to head down the mean streets of the metropolis. This figure, the detective, has a lot of similarities with the flâneur, as Benjamin himself noted, the two sharing an interest in smells, sights, traces, hidden histories, the ability to read society through a ‘physiognomy of the streets’.2 Furthermore, the ‘image and activity of flânerie is tied to the emergence of the popular genre of the detective novel and also to the literary practice and social justification of the labour time of journalists’.3 What do these roles all share? For David Frisby, ‘a form of looking, observing (of people, social types, social contexts and constellations), a form of reading the city and its population (its spatial images, its architecture, its human configurations), and a form of reading written texts…’.4 Here the city conceals all sorts of hidden stories, and it calls for a dedicated, politically aware urban archaeologist to reveal them, and reconstruct them. Vázquez Montalbán fits this tradition comfortably. In his detective novels he brings in all sorts of picaresque characters from the city’s underworld: pimps, prostitutes, hairdressers acting suspiciously, petty thieves and boot-blacks. And he also works in characters from the city’s progre middle classes, educated, materially comfortable lawyers, industrialists, property developers, bankers and university lecturers. He weaves these figures into a landscape drawn deep from the special insights of the flâneur, ‘associated with the dream world of the surrealist perspective on the city—an intoxicated world, a particular form of remembrance or recall of the past as an immediacy in the present’.5 This surrealist (or, occasionally, magic

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realist?) Barcelona is sometimes far-fetched, under-plotted, and very masculinist. Yet as a means of going beyond the modes of representation of the history book and newspapers, Vázquez Montalbán’s fiction has no peers in its ability to get beneath the city’s grimy political skin. The figure who bears the weight of this tradition is Pepe Carvalho, Galician, lapsed Marxist, a private detective with no friends beyond his prostitute girlfriend Charo, his foetal personal assistant Biscuter, and his boot-black mole Bromuro. First appearing in a satire on the Kennedy conspiracy (To Maté a Kennedy/I killed Kennedy) (1972) Carvalho would emerge as a fully-rounded character in Tatuaje (1974), which also marked the introduction of Barcelona as an evocative milieu drawn upon throughout the series. Vázquez Montalbán thus employed the detective novel as a means of communicating to a wide audience, inspired explicitly by Gramsci’s concern that intellectuals should use popular culture as a means of challenging the cultural hegemony of the established order. More directly, it allowed a certain amount of leeway in evading—at least in the earliest works—the censorship of the dictatorship.6 Carvalho functions to give the author critical distance from his commentaries, allowing him to play with ambiguity and contradiction (the detective has all manner of quirks and traits which his creator presumably does not share: emotional immaturity, political nihilism, sexual brutality, a penchant for burning books…). The lifting of censorship in the transition would allow him to embark upon a far fuller critique of Barcelona and Spanish society than had previously been allowed to him, and led him to reflect on just how the Carvalho detective novels could be used: From Los Mares del Sur [Southern Seas, 1978]… I realised that it served for all I had wanted to do: to write a type of factual chronicle in which was reflected a bit of the transition, not just the Spanish one but the European one too. It was the transition of a Marxist-capitalist optimism which ran up against the oil crisis at the peak of the capitalist boom.7 With Carvalho novels appearing at an astounding rate—almost annually—they constitute a kind of chronicle, as detective, novelist and city age together. Each novel reflects some of the psychological preoccupations of the time, taking the temperature of the city streets, the snatched political barbs, the hidden worlds of political corruption, police brutality, the harshness of city life, the deceptions and disappointments of the transition. Vázquez Montalbán’s method of chronicling history and change is in itself worthy of note. He is obsessed with the interplay between urban popular culture and more distant narratives. He achieves this with remarkable aplomb in his urban history Barcelonas, where he is as likely to render his argument through poetry or song or rumour as through statistics or graven historical record. He sees turning points in the city’s pathways in the most unlikely sources; he describes the historically crucial co-operation between the US and the dictatorship in the 1950s not through an account of the diplomacy involved, but in the rather more uncouth

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arrival of the US marines in the 1950s ‘mingling with the whores in El Cosmos and El Venezuela and the motley crowds of lumpens in El Cádiz, El Gambrinus and Jazz Colón…horny, pallid adolescents who had entered the city’s history for their piss-ups and their whore jokes’. The gradual, inevitable breaching of the regime’s cultural defences is marked by the visit of the Beatles to the Monumental bull-ring ‘despite official misgivings about long hair, even the freshly washed fringes of the Beatles who never showed an armpit or an arse like Mick Jagger’, and the transvestites who ‘appear on Barcelona’s streets like snails, when historical downpours abate’.8 This attention to popular culture is similarly repeated in the detective novels, Carvalho’s investigations progressing through the—sometimes unlikely—insights generated by gathering fragments of memory, jogged by song, street or recipe. Crónica Sentimental de la Transición (1985) reflects this method even more directly, being a detailed account of the long transition running from the dying days of dictatorship of the early 1970s, through to the accession of Spain to the European Community in the mid-1980s.9 Within its 31 chapters, the world is recounted from the vantage point of Barcelona in a way which disrupts the spatial neatness of conventional political commentaries. Here Franco rubs shoulders with Faye Dunaway, olive oil scandals sit by a growing Americanisation of Spanish life, and the signing of Johan Cruyff by FC Barcelona stands, for the author, as the most significant emotional-political event of the early 1970s. Crónica is a witness to the path of Spain and Barcelona’s transition from optimism to desencanto, a diary of historical mayhem: ETA and GRAPO terrorists mingle with the rise and fall of Suárez and the UCD to a changing Abba soundtrack (Waterloo during the last days of Franco, Chiquitita. backing the longest night of the 23-F of 1981), the shadow of Reagan and Thatcher grows against the PSOE landslide, the canonisation of Felipe González, and the return of Picasso’s Guernica to Spain.10 This attention to popular culture is thus a feature of Vázquez Montalbán’s works, carried over into his poetry, collage-like pieces similar to the techniques he uses in his fiction. The frequency with which such cultural insights appear makes his fiction fascinating, but they occasionally jar too: The chronicler and the poet, if not interchangeable, share the stamping ground of media images and mass urban culture, like gumshoe detectives gathering scraps and shreds of evidence from the wind-blown streets; their testimonies are constructed with ephemeral materials, recovered in the texts with a nostalgic insouciance which sometimes appears mannered.11 The concoction of songs, signs, landscapes and memories has strong echoes with the work of Walter Benjamin—the landscape as a trigger for memory, the obsession with tracing the workings of capitalism in an everyday register.12 There is similarity too in the power with which he utilises autobiography: Vázquez Montalbán draws heavily on his life experiences in his reportage and his Carvalho novels—a povertystricken childhood in the Barrio Chino, his time as a communist activist, his own

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escape into fine food and wine, his cultured readings of the city street.13 So, we have the detective, we have the flâneur, we have the social historian and we have Gramsci. The relationship between Carvalho and Vázquez Montalbán is intriguing. Both are children of immigrants from elsewhere in Spain, Vázquez Montalbán’s father and Carvalho’s parents being Galician. Both are obsessive gourmands. A prevalent feature of the Carvalho novels is a digression into the preparation, cooking and eating of food, and a frequent recourse to alcohol, a nod to the Sauternes here, a glass of orujo there.14 Both live in Vallvidrera, the hilltop village which sits directly above the city, from which one can see it spread out below. Both have suffered under the Francoist regime. And many of the preoccupations of Carvalho emerge from his author’s own desire to produce fiction which is also social commentary — whether on football, the decline of Spanish communism, or the property speculation which shapes and reshapes Barcelona. Many of the observations contained in Barcelonas or Crónica Sentimental de la Transición reappear in the novels, adding to the sense of time and place in Carvalho’s interpretation of Barcelona. Vázquez Montalbán includes within his fictional works a political critique of actual figures from local elites—Olympic president Samaranch, or Bança president Núñez, or Catalan business magnate Carles Ferrer Salat—who all usually appear as hybrid characters in the novels.15 It is this latter issue—the relationship of author and fictional subject to Barcelona —which I want to explore briefly here. Inseparable from this is a concern with memory, and the status of memory in everyday life. On a personal level, Vázquez Montalbán’s childhood in the Barrio Chino, his awareness of having gone from an underprivileged background to being an internationally renowned literary figure, his political activism (including time in prison for clandestine opposition to Francoism) have been intimately related to the subject matter of his writing. In particular, the bitter experiences of poverty and repression under the dictatorship and the experience of the negotiated democracy create a tension which continually emerges in his work. This is where the soft city of the fiction feeds from the hard memories of the author. The shudder of fear every time Carvalho enters or passes a police station is in no way vicarious. Vázquez Montalbán recounts one of his own detentions after a 1962 mani (demonstration) in support of the Asturian miners: Los grises [the grey-coated police] detained me and gave me a brutal beating in the middle of the university. I arrived semi-conscious at the Via Laietana [location of the police headquarters] and there Vicente Creix received me with a punch in the stomach, in the presence of my wife, who had already been detained.16 Unsurprisingly, sadistic figures such as Creix, responsible for persecuting students and Catalanists during the later years of the dictatorship, would reappear in the novels, this time working in the service of the newly democratic state—another

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vestige of the desencanto which he expressed so well. And the detentions of Vázquez Montalbán and his wife—without knowing what punishments were being meted out to each other—were psychological tortures which would breed an almost visceral hatred for the Francoist establishment. His detention in 1962 saw him imprisoned in the inland Catalan town of Lleida, which he describes as a ‘university-prison’, a period during which he was able to read and discuss politics and philosophy for 18 hours a day with militants of a similar level of education, and on his release in 1963 —amnestied on the death of Pope John XXIII—he was able to pursue journalism and return to his militancy in the PSUC, the Catalan communists. He would finally resign from his executive positions in the party at the beginning of the 1980s, disillusioned with the day-to-day politicking: ‘After my direct experience as member of the Central Committee and the Executive I realised I would end up with cancer of the arse from having attended so many meetings’.17 It is tempting to think of Carvalho’s nihilistic philosophy (his status as lapsed Marxist is a recurring feature of the books) and retreat into gastronomy as being an expression of his creator’s disillusionment with conventional Marxism. This is of importance when one considers that perhaps the most persistent theme in the novels is the issue of memory, its relationship to self-identity, and the importance of place and landscape to both. As Caragh Wells has argued, ‘the topography of the city contains the topography of Carvalho’s identity. The streets, squares and buildings which surround Carvalho act as secure referents in his conception of who he is. For the detective, Barcelona is full of memory spaces, in which he can identify the scattered pieces of his past.’18 Wells notes that as the series continues, Vázquez Montalbán pays increasing attention to the relationship between the city and the detective, particularly as the latter ages and enters a mid-life crisis. As Carvalho seeks to solve his cases, he moves simultaneously through the past and through the contemporary Barcelona cityscape—reminiscing as he goes—gathering clues. Yet as the series progresses, Carvalho’s bullish self-confidence evaporates as he is unable to make sense of the rapidly changing Olympic city. As he walks through the Chino, as he walks through Poble Nou, he is accosted by the sight of bulldozers and industrial debris. And so with Vázquez Montalbán: the rehabilitation of the old city—the widespread demolitions, the rebuilding, and the changing profile of its inhabitants—makes it difficult for him to orient himself in the city: What surprises me most of the latest changes that Barcelona has gone through is that where before there were prostitutes now you find the Universidad Pompeu Fabra…it’s one thing not to be nostalgic, you can’t glorify houses without electricity, without running water, but you’re dealing with the landscape of your childhood. If I now had to explain to you where I went to the cinema when I was a child…well there is no cinema left. It’s all been destroyed. I’m not complaining. I’m just stating a fact.19

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His identification with the district was political, rooted in his upbringing in the aftermath of the Civil War, and its destruction consequently involves an erosion of the political, and personal, relationship to place. So, what I want to demonstrate through the works of Vázquez Montalbán is the importance of the city to political identity, and how urban restructuring is affecting long-held Marxist or socialist identities. In particular, his fiction and reportage provide an unparalleled reading of how the new city, the (liberal) democratic city, was and is felt psychologically, mapped in a kind of psychogeography, and how it remains rooted in the memories of many of its citizens. These are political tales, and we can now flesh them out a bit more. The Barrio Chino and the triumph of the middle classes The Spanish transition from the dictatorship to democracy was an agreement between executioner and victim and the first thing the executioner demanded of its victim was a loss of memory. In the long run the final result of the civil war has been a triumph of the moderate middle classes. The social classes that were beaten in the civil war have been forgotten or defeated for good.20 Throughout the Carvalho novels, and in a good part of his Barcelonas, Vázquez Montalbán pays homage to certain parts of the city which are dear to his heart. As we shall see, districts such as Poble Nou and Montjuïc form important memoryscapes in both his fiction and his autobiography. But it is the Barrio Chino and the Raval that he revisits with the most poignancy. This is the district of his childhood, ‘that museum of workers and riff-raff, history and poverty, nobility and savagery’21 which has played such an important part in the city’s political history and in the author’s own personal development. The Chino is an almost constant presence in the work of Vázquez Montalbán. It is the primary location of his Carvalho novels, leading the detective through brothels and bars in search of clues, to restaurants in search of deliverance. Carvalho’s office is located in the heart of the district, from where he can look out of the window onto the Rambla, his thoughts intertwined with the flow of citizens in the street below. Here the Chino seems to act as a kind of reaffirmation of popular life in the city, a society reviled by many of the city’s wealthier residents, and under threat from the growing Calvinism and hygienisation which Vázquez Montalbán detects in Barcelona society. But the district also reflects the disappearance of this culture, the destruction of his memories. This is part of the on-going process of forgetting which he sees as being pervasive in contemporary Spanish society. In one of his major Chino novels, El Delantero centro fue asesinado al atardecer (Off Side) (1988), the boot-black Bromide, one of Carvalho’s long-standing informants, laments his declining ability to take the pulse of the district, seeing this as a clearly political trend:

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I don’t know what’s happening in the world, Pepiño. People have lost the ability to remember, and it’s as if they don’t want to be reminded of things. As if there’s no point in remembering. No point? If you take away my memories, what’s left of me? As far as I’m concerned this is all a conspiracy of those bloody socialists. They want everyone to think that everything started with them. But they’re just like all the rest.22 In the remainder of this chapter I want to pursue these themes a little further: the post-Civil War relationship of the district with the rest of the city, as a counterpole to the wealthy areas of the upper town, la zona alta. The Raval is hemmed between the major thoroughfares of the Paral.lel and the Rambla, with much of its activity occurring on the Carrer Hospital and Carrer Nou de la Rambla. The Chino forms a sub-section of the district, squeezed between the port and Carrer Hospital, with its seedy ambience—generally of crime and poverty —spilling across the Rambla and into the narrow streets around Plaça Reial and Carrer Escudellers. Long a centre for popular entertainment, the district is also indissociable from an image of crime and prostitution, since the 1960s harbouring much of Barcelona’s drug distribution industries. As a centre for the informal economy, for hawkers, boot-blacks, black marketeers as well as a dense neighbourhood supporting all manner of local services, and for a long period the home of theatres and cabarets, the Chino provides a noir landscape that Raymond Chandler would have salivated over. With its proximity to the port, the Chino has always been home to a medley of urban ‘others’, a district off-limits to those citizens of more prosperous neighbourhoods wary of its tight streets, dark alleys, and unknown inhabitants. Yet from its heyday in the good-time years before the dictatorship, it has slipped from being genuinely popular to being definitely seedy. Paco Villar’s history of the district documents its attractiveness for all sorts of alternative pleasure-seekers. The ‘Chino’ soubriquet was coined in the mid-1920s — invented by a journalist impressed with the earthy vibrancy of its bars, theatres, brothels and cabarets, which reminded him of the Chinatowns of North American cities—and it soon stuck.23 Bars such as the Marsella or the Pastís would attract motley collections of radicals, workers, and writers (most famously Jean Genet) and artists, the latter adoring the transcendental haze endowed by absinthe, an aniseed and wormwood concoction which induced the imbiber to unrivalled creative heights. In the 1960s, Plaça Reial became ‘Barcelona’s Greenwich Village: existentialism, the “beat generation”, and jazz would seek refuge in its ancient cellars’.24 Moroccan hachís was always easy to come by: today it retains its reputation as a centre for trafficking in soft drugs. Growing through the city’s industrial revolution in the mid-19th century, it has remained a densely populated proletarian district, once a breeding ground for radical working class movements. The cobbled streets of the old town were regularly torn up to form barricades against the police and army and through the Setmana Tràgica of 1909 to the revolution of 1936–9, the Raval formed a focus for the city’s red myth, the ‘rose of fire’. It was here—along with the city’s other industrial

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Figure 2 Map of Ciutat Vella/old city. 1, Plaça Sant Jaume; 2, Plaça Reial; 3, Liceu (Opera House); 4, MACBA/Casa de la Caritat; 5, Maremagnum; 6, Moll de la Fusta; 7, Carrer Escudellers; 8, World Trade Center.

districts—that political unrest tended to ignite. A centre of anarchism, communism and republicanism—adding to Barcelona’s reputation as ‘the city of three sins’—the district’s radical profile meant that after 1939 it received the worst of the repression from the invading Nationalist troops. Extreme shortages throughout the city led to rationing, which in turn created a flourishing black market. Lack of machinery energy and food left the district in dire poverty, with widespread tuberculosis epidemics, homelessness, child prostitution, and an array of decrepit buildings of

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the most basic standard (many damaged during the bombardment of the port in the Civil War). While the arrival of the sixth fleet of the US Navy in 1951 filled the streets and brothels with marines, and signified a slight opening of the regime to the outside world, life remained hard. Those who could get out—Vázquez Montalbán a rare example—did so, discovering the world outside the Raval. By the mid-1970s, the district was in a state of terminal decline. Hard drugs, prostitution, organised crime and appalling housing conditions were the reality behind the bohemian reputation. While it still housed some of the city’s best-known restaurants such as Casa Leopoldo or Los Caracoles, the streets of the Chino, the lower part of the Rambla, Plaça Reial and the area around Carrer Escudellers became transformed by the arrival of heroin. Between 1983 and 1989 almost 350 people died in the Barcelona province from overdoses, and first hepatitis, then AIDS would become a constant danger for addicts sharing needles. This was accompanied by a rise in criminality: desperate ionquis (junkies) mugged to support their habit, Plaça Reial became a theatre for knife-fights and running battles between rival drug gangs, and it was common to see tourists being driven round the square in a police car in the hope of reclaiming lost watches, bags and wallets. The foot of the Rambla was no place for the unwary visitor as groups of transvestites, card sharps, quicktongued confidence tricksters, and straightforward muggers patrolled the area. The effects on the neighbourhood were obvious: metal shutters on shop windows, boarding houses offering beds by the hour, ‘to let’ signs appearing on property. A couple of bloody murders of innocent passers-by prompted outrage from residents: the legend of the Chino was nearing its end.25 And this has formed the backdrop for the Carvalho series. For Vázquez Montalbán, the very desperation and seediness provide a lurid canvas for his narrative. Yet the Raval is a district conveyed with affection, with considerable sympathy: A drunk is calculating the shortest distance between the roadway and the pavement. Schoolchildren are returning from some mezzanine school where the toilets perfume the whole environment and the children’s horizons begin and end with an internal patio divided between the section for the dustbins, a playground for rats and cats, and a number of inside passageways where the washing lines seem to be perennially fall. Pots of geraniums on rickety balconies; the occasional carnation; cages containing thin, nervous budgerigars; and butane gas bottles. Notices advertising the services of midwives and chiropodists. An office of the leftwing PSUC. Maite’s hairdresser’s. A vile smell of frying oil: squid a la romana, fried seafood, spicy potatoes, roast lambs’ heads, sweetbreads, tripe, rabbit thighs, watery eyes and varicose veins. But Carvalho knew these people and their ways. They made him feel alive, and he wouldn’t have changed them for the world, even though at night he preferred to flee the defeated city and make for the pinewood heights. There was nothing to beat the backstreets and alleyways that gave

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onto the Ramblas—tributaries feeding into a river which carries the biology and the history of a city, of the entire world.26 It is reminiscent of Benjamin in Marseilles: ‘Every step stirs a song, a quarrel, a flapping of wet linen, a rattling of boards, a baby’s bawling, a clatter of buckets’.27 Yet it induces schizophrenia—a fondness and a desire to flee—which Vázquez Montalbán has had to struggle with. Escaping to university becoming one of Spain’s leading—and most commercial—novelists, cannot rid his head of the memories of that childhood. For residents of the Chino, the geographical divide of the city was always very explicit. In the 1940s, when they bore the pain of having lost family members either in the Civil War or in the post-war reprisals, they also had to contend with the systematic bullying of the police, the tuberculosis epidemics and the grinding poverty. Meanwhile, Vázquez Montalbán recounts, the richer districts of the city turned Francoist out of opportunism. The city ‘survived and pretended not to hear the firing squads shooting, not to notice the queues outside the Model prison, or the systematic destruction of its own identity’.28 In the Raval, it was less easy to forget the petty brutality of poverty: Sometimes he [Carvalho] began to doubt the reality of his neighbourhood. Looking back, he remembered it as a city that was poor and sunk in a kind of bitter-sweet syrup. People who were defeated and humiliated, forever having to apologise for having been born.29 The contrast with the richer districts—the Eixample, Sant Gervasi, Sarrià—was striking, and Vázquez Montalbán has written about discovering the other world of his university classmates, the world ‘on the other side of the Gran Via’ of the Eixample, with its maids and sophisticated domestic routine, portraying it as a journey to foreign lands.30 This tension between the cramped, dingy streets of the Ciutat Vella and the otherworldly dwellings of the zona alta often appears in Carvalho’s novels, Barcelona as a dual city. Vázquez Montalbán reflects upon this most explicitly in his novel Southern Seas. Here, Carvalho is on the trail of a missing businessman—a classic example of the Barcelona^r0/jT£, a wealthy liberal—who seeks to discover life in the outlying suburbs which he himself had been responsible for constructing. Based on an amalgamation of existing Barcelona peripheral estates, La Pau and Bellvitge,31 Carvalho himself analyses the difference between his own world and that ‘where the city loses its name’:32 The ugly poverty of the Barrio Chino had a patina of history. It was completely different from the ugly, prefabricated poverty of a neighbourhood prefabricated by prefabricated speculators. It’s better for poverty to be sordid rather than mediocre, he thought. In San Magín, there were no drunks piled in doorways, absorbing what little heat they could from those appalling

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stairwells. But this was not progress—quite the contrary. The inhabitants of San Magín could not destroy themselves until they had paid all the bills outstanding for the little corner they occupied in the ‘New Town for a New Life’.33 Carvalho’s musings on the difference between the two areas perhaps reflect the uneasy tension in Vázquez Montalbán’s work about exploiting the district as a noir landscape, vicariously savouring the desperate lives of many of its residents. However, as I shall show in chapter 5, one of his principal concerns has been the lack of democratic control which local people have had on the planning process. The extension to the Liceu opera house on the Rambla—to give but one example — involved the compulsory purchase of several adjoining old apartment blocks, and signified the local state’s attempt to regain control of the streets of the old city. Attempts by the council and police to ‘zone out’ crime have added weight to Vázquez Montalbán’s argument that the authorities are undertaking a straightforward act of colonisation. The impetus was given by a sudden explosion of urban unrest on 22nd February, 1988. Over the previous weekend, five people had died through heroin overdoses, including two brothers of an important gypsy family. At 7.45pm on the night in question, the streets around Plaça Reial, Carrer Avinyó, Carrer Robador and Carrer Sant Ramon were turned into battlegrounds as large groups of armed gitanos sought revenge on the black Africans suspected of supplying the heroin, reputedly pursuing and beating any black people they found carrying drugs. The police quickly restored order, making 50 arrests, and calling for immigrant dealers to be deported. This triggered Operación Sant Ramon, a joint attempt by police and city council to try to crack the drug trade, and to introduce a mix of social classes and uses to the impoverished district. Their initial objective was to wipe off the map the so-called ‘black island’, a block formed by the notoriously heavy streets of Sant Ramon, Barberà, Sant Oleguer and Nou de la Rambla, an objective achieved within six months through a combination of a permanent police presence and round-ups, municipal regulation of the ‘boarding-houses’, and the bulldozer. To reclaim the area for the forces of law and order, a police station was built at the end of Nou de la Rambla.34 This was only the first step in the Ajuntament’s regeneration strategy. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the bulldozer and the crane have been permanent features of the Raval’s landscape as the council pursues its philosophy of esponjament, the selective demolition and rebuilding of the neighbourhood, opening public spaces (see chapter 6) and providing social services such as sports centres and social housing.35 The policy of the council was to try to rehouse in the same area those affected by compulsory purchase. Public and semi-private bodies were also encouraged to locate, and the district became dotted by university faculties, particularly those of the recently founded Pompeu Fabra. In the northern half of the Raval, the council created a culture quarter based around the MACBA (a new modern art gallery) and a contemporary culture centre. Finally the Liceu opera house—which had burnt down in a fire in 1993—was extended and is due to be re-

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opened before the end of the decade. Gradually the Raval has been gentrified and redeveloped, and its identity in relation to the rest of the city will change. So in the 1990s, the rehabilitation of the Chino and Raval puts Vázquez Montalbán in an invidious position. On one hand, he sees the destruction of the landscape of his childhood, a landscape of great importance to his sense of identity. Yet he is aware that he himself has moved on, and is aware also of the difficulty of defending the slum conditions which remain in the Chino. Asked if there is any solution to the Raval’s problem apart from the wrecking ball and bulldozer, he answers: I don’t have any feelings of nostalgia for saving the degraded physiognomy of the Raval, even though I have occasionally written ironically and irrationally that they are taking away my city. I don’t have nostalgia that these streets are disappearing, since you can’t live in them. But it worries me that behind this sanitising effect on the Raval and old Barcelona there is a speculation aimed at expelling the indians towards a new reservation on the city’s periphery.36 In other words, while the council has attempted to retain social housing, there will be a gradual gentrification of the district. And this is often masked by a rhetoric of sanitisation, of social improvement common to slum clearance projects the world over, which has been a recurrent theme in the city’s planning history. The Eixample grid was initially conceived of as a socialist project (before being sabotaged by speculators), a means of defumigating the cramped old city. So too with the Via Laietana—which was carved through a broad swathe of the medieval city in the first decade of the 20th century—as Vázquez Montalbán comments: The promoters of the operation justified it on hygienistic grounds, that they should open spaces up to allow the air to circulate and purify the city’…but it also had an ideological dimension,…of revalorising degraded spaces, by which —making new streets and buildings—the type of population that was there could be changed.37 So the progre belief in sanitisation often went hand in hand with speculation. In the New Barcelona, the old town would be subject to the same processes as those of times past. The Chino, as with the poor districts on the urban periphery, has always been a geographical zone of the dispossessed, be they poor immigrants from other parts of Spain or further afield. It is the residents of the richer areas of the city who have won the Civil War, and they will inherit as reward the old city of the New Barcelona. This attempt to win back the city for the middle classes—replacing brothels with art galleries and drug dens with university departments—has been satirised by journalist Maruja Torres, another literary product of the Raval:

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The old city wouldn’t be a problem if it was on the periphery. The awful thing about this district is that it’s in the centre, next to the architectural jewels of other times. To make matters worse, several [civic] institutions are embedded here, like the Palau de la Generalitat and the Ajuntament and the Liceu [opera house]. And, you just have to put up with it, the Mediterranean is here too, though how convenient it would be if it found itself between the tennis courts of La Bonanova or the mansions of Pedralbes.38 And so disappears the world of Carvalho. The Chino is a metonym for the loss of memory in the new city, the personal feelings of alienation he experiences, and a certain bitterness that the victims of the Civil War, those who have long struggled against Spanish conservatism, are now suffering from being left out of the social truce of the transition. It is this truce, and the capitulation of the Left, that Vázquez Montalbán describes in the city of his desencanto. ‘From the long march to the marathon’ Anyone who has not lived through a period which presages the fall of Fascism, who has not breathed in the bittersweet atmosphere of a dictatorship in decay, will never really know the true meaning of democracy… Maoist columnists wrote for apparently right-wing newspapers and industrialists offered to hold PSUC meetings in their mansions. Appeals on behalf of the Red Cross, the Chinese, TB or cancer sufferers, or the construction of the Sagrada Familia found to their cost that charity began at work where the trade union Comissions Obreres was running lucrative appeals for Franco’s prisoners.39 In the early 1970s, you could feel democracy in the air. The transition is commonly said to have started before Franco had passed away: in that teleological smugness that only Marxists qua religious fundamentalists can maintain, the end of dictatorship was only a matter of time. This was not the dog-end of the 1960s, as in much of Western Europe: love and patchouli still floated in the Barcelona air, social freedoms were still to be won, sexuality flaunted. The proletarian revolution would remain a long way off, however. Despite the waves of industrial action which continuously paralysed the city’s factories, the melting Spanish hegemonic bloc would soon re-solidify. For historian Paul Preston, this was a mere re-alignment of social groups: The forces which united in 1936 to save themselves were to split in 1976 in order to save themselves yet again, albeit this time with an accommodation to, rather than the destruction of, the forces of democracy. In death, as in birth, the legacy of Francoism was political opportunism.40

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But in the heat of the transition, with the PCE and the PSUC in near total control of the workplaces and the citizens’ movements mobilising thousands in cities across Spain, the future stretched ahead, open. People spoke of la ruptura, democrática; the establishment of popular democracy, the Eurocommunist political strategy which was championed by the Italian, French and Spanish communists, by Berlinguer, Marchais and Carrillo. This was the transition. Dates vary, but Vázquez Montalbán’s account in Crónica begins with the ETA assassination of Carrero Blanco in 1973, and ends in 1982 with the victory of the PSOE and the subsequent Spanish arrival in Europe and NATO. This was the closure of a historical window which had promised so much, but which had ended in desencanto, as capitalism emerged strengthened from the straitjacket of the dictatorship. Barcelona was a capital of unrest in the early 1970s, the anger of its citizens fuelled by any number of provocations as an increasingly rudderless state panicked itself into brutality—the garroting of the young anarchist Puig Antich in the Eixample’s Model prison; the fatal police shootings of striking workers: Antonio Ruiz Villalba at the SEAT car factory work-in and Manuel Fernández Márquez at the Sant Adrià power station. These years of constant mobilisation kept the PSUC and the trade union Comissions Obreres in the vanguard of change.41 What interests us here is how such a substantial proportion of the Left should have repositioned themselves throughout the historic process, moving from the ‘long march’ Maoism of the most extreme revolutionary cells, to the planning and organisation of the 1992 Olympics. Vázquez Montalbán is clear in his target: he looks to Madrid and the fatal capitulation of Carrillo’s PCE, whose Eurocommunist strategy of rejecting the Soviet road to socialism was replaced by one of loyalty to parliamentary democracy. Optimism was high: in 1976 the Italian communist party was at the peak of its popularity. Carrillo tried to capitalise on this by inviting French communist leader Georges Marchais and Enrico Belinguer to a Eurocommunist summit in the Spanish capital. The international coverage of this ‘Madrid Spring’, combined with the powerful grassroots and electoral base of the communists, encouraged the new Spanish prime minister Adolfo Suárez to legalise the PCE in 1977, to the revulsion of Francoist hard-liners in the government and army.42 The hopes of the middle of the decade were of a democratic, peaceful transition to socialism, led by an internationally co-operating bloc of Eurocommunist governments. These hopes were undermined, however, by two major blunders made by Carrillo. The first was tactical. Following the Italian experience too closely, ‘the PCE leadership managed to combine an underestimation of its real potential, which would sooner or later have forced legalization on any post-Franco government, with wild illusions that it might score 30 per cent of the vote once legalized’.43 This would be cruelly exposed in the June 1977 general elections when the PCE received a paltry 9.4% of the national vote. The second blunder followed in October, when the major parties from all sides of the political spectrum signed the Moncloa Accords, economic agreements over austerity measures. These accords—fruit of a ‘strange

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mutual infatuation between Suárez and Carrillo’44 —fatally overplayed the communist hand. In keeping with their Eurocommunist line, the PCE had envisaged a popular front with the centre-left (the PSOE, primarily) to ensure Left hegemony in Spain, based on moderation and loyalty to the process of democratisation. Yet González’s social democrats refused to be drawn into any such pact, waiting to see how the transition would unfold (and aware of the yearning of much of the Spanish electorate for a middle ground between dusted-down Francoism and communist extremism). While the PCE vote recovered slightly in the 1979 elections, internal splits between pro-Soviets and Eurocommunists saw it collapse again to a dreadful 4% in 1982. The red carpet had been swept from beneath the feet of the PCE, and the hopes of a ruptura democrática disappeared. So by the spring of 1979, only two years after the triumphant legalisation of the communists, the new mood of desencanto was prevalent throughout the Spanish Left, and being expressed on walls throughout the country. To the PSOE’s campaign slogan ‘Cien años de honradez’ (One hundred years of honour) was added ‘pero cuarenta de vacaciones’ (but 40 on holiday). While the ultra boot-boys of the extreme Right graffitied ‘Con Franco estábamos mejor’ (Under Franco we were better off), those on the Left were writing ‘Contra Franco estábamos mejor’: ‘We were better off AGAINST Franco’.45 The meaning was clear: political commitment and loyalty were stronger under the dictatorship than in the treacherously fluid days of the transition, as sudden opportunities appeared for personal progress and enrichment. While desencanto was expressed both in the cynicism of the still-committed Left, such as Vázquez Montalbán, it was also increasingly referring to the nihilism of pasotista youth: ‘Yo paso de todo’, ‘I couldn’t care less’. Carvalho is definitely on the case: much of the detective series was set against this backdrop of tension and distrust, walk-on characters used to embody and caricature real shifts in Spanish and Barcelona society. In 1977, Carvalho’s hunt for the killer of the Spanish representative of an American multinational took him through a cross-section of the city’s progre middle classes, from a rich kid anarchist to a labour lawyer, a yoghurt manufacturer to an eternal student, friends from university whose paths had diverged variously, but who had all once shared the Marxist doctrine. At this time, much political business was carried out in night-clubs, and Carvalho’s visit to the fictional El Sot cues a bestiary of what became known as the gauche divine, a liberal, middle class, intellectual Left: A poet and ex-prisoner seeking in El Sot a double life that will give him back part of the twenty-five years spent in prison; an extremely young official of the workers’ commissions…; organizational and petitional ladies of the local Left; professional night-owls of more than thirty years’ standing; a homosexual novelist; a concrete poet who has read Trotsky; a chairman of political roundtable discussions…who can conjure up a synthesis where there wasn’t even a thesis to start with; the occasional sensitive intellectual who turns up in the hopes of l’amour fou…; wild and soon-to-be-rich youth; Uruguayans fleeing the terror in Uruguay; Chileans fleeing the terror in Chile; Argentinians

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fleeing successive terrors in Argentina; one of Carrillo’s ten right-hand men; an almost young ex-industrial engineer now publishing independent and radical-Marxist thinkers; a few leftovers of the 1940s, nourished on a diet of Stefan Zweig; puritan left-wing cadres hoping to come into contact with the decadent and definitely scandalous Barcelona Left for just one night.46 Leftists as individuals, however cutting the caricature! While Carvalho was already a mouthpiece for the cynicism of his creator, it is the introduction of individual emotion into the debate that gives this work its edge. Beyond the dialectical power games of structural Marxism, Vázquez Montalbán shows just what desencanto was all about—psychological loss. Loss of faith, loss of hope, loss of enthusiasm, For the Left’s desencanto was ‘rooted in an awareness of the discrepancy between the enormous energy invested over the long years of the anti-Franco struggle and the minimal concessions…gained as a result of the transition [:] …for many…the response was a withdrawal from political activism in search of compensatory fulfilments from a private life that had been for so many years “on hold”’.47 The fascination of the Carvalho novels as period pieces lies in the evocation of the tension in the streets, and the machinations being carried out in flats and offices across the city. In The Angst-Ridden Executive we see the city of 1976: As night settled on the Ramblas, Carvalho began to register the symptoms that marked the onset of the daily confrontation. The riot squad had begun moving into position, according to the prescribed rituals of the ongoing state of siege. Apolitical counter-cultural youth and young counter-cultural politicos maintained their customary distance from each other. At any moment a gang of ultra right-wing provocateurs might appear, and you would see the militants of this and that party disperse and head for their now legalised party offices… Between the hours of eight and ten the prostitutes, the pimps, the gays and the crooks great and small would disappear off the streets so as not to find themselves caught up in a political battle that was not of their making.48 The following year, Carvalho’s search for his missing businessman in Southern Seas takes him to the fictional ‘dusty, sweaty outskirts of San Magín’,49 where he seeks a lead from the SEAT worker Ana Briongos. He meets the local priest, symbol of the radical Catholicism that was dominant in Barcelona of the time— in beard and pullover, his church holds Comissions meetings and has posters advertising ‘Christ Stopped at Eboli’. Briongos, says the priest, is …very, very radical—the kind who got all worked up about the Moncloa Accords, and I’m not sure that she’s calmed down yet… She was in the Model prison before she was out of pigtails. Her father went there to give her a telling-off, and she told him to go take a jump. Too many people like that just get tired though, and then they just dump all those years of work and

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effort. Now she goes around saying that she’s through, and that the bourgeoisie’s got everything under control. All that kind of rubbish.50 The other side of desencanto was the feeling that the PCE had sold out. And had it? Despite the sweeping communist victory in the first post-Francoist municipal elections in 1979, there was widespread discontentment, a kind of psychological panic at the new social order. Many on the Left had hoped that the end of the dictatorship would mean an equality of access to Spain’s booming economy, but global recession and political uncertainty had undermined these hopes: unemployment rose to 7% of the active population, some 900,000 people. The Moncloa Accords meant that businesses were no longer required to provide jobs (a central feature of the corporatist labour policy of the dictatorship). The increased poverty was matched by a rise in petty crime, and victims’ complaints of muggers and drug addicts roaming the streets were said to be met in police stations with a response of, ‘Well, you want democracy, don’t you?’.51 The most dramatic demonstration of this fear occurred in 1981. On 23rd February, disgruntled army officers attempted to restore a military dictatorship in Spain, the coup failing only after the nation spent a long, agonising, sleepless night listening to transistor radios. In May of 1981, an armed group took control of the Banco Central in Plaça de Catalunya, holding 200 employees hostage. Passing themselves off as Francoist ultras to win time in opening a safe, after 37 hours they were overpowered by security forces. These were deeply troubling events, and the need to raise the spirits and the prosperity of the city were the challenges facing the Left as they took the helm of the city council.52 They were faced with a legacy of several years of political stasis. Economic mismanagement provoked a wave of strikes (bakers, metro workers, footballers and prostitutes being among those withdrawing their labour). There was a need to reconstruct the shambolic and literally bankrupt municipal administration. And with a long list of demands from the neighbourhood movements for new social facilities, the council leadership under Narcís Serra felt that they had to find a project by which they could reverse Barcelona’s economic fortunes. The perceived solution was not long in coming, as Serra puts it: The Olympic candidature was decided in the summer of 1980, when the city was suffering a cultural crisis, a lack of projects, the misery of a fierce economic crisis, and it was made public in May 1981, just after the attempted coup of the 23-F, so we were very aware of the need to generate enthusiasm, to set out some tangible goals that the population could see.53 And after several years of intense planning and lobbying they achieved their goal. In Lausanne, in November 1986, Juan Antonio Samaranch, the president of the International Olympic Committee, pronounced that the nomination for the 1992 Olympics Games would go ‘a la ville de… Barcelona!’. The decision was greeted with euphoria by many in the city: crowds swarmed through Plaça de Catalunya, 20,

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000 volunteers signing up to help in the organisation of the event on the first day alone.54 By the time of the victory, the city had been mobilised behind the cause. And some strange bedfellows would come to play a very important role in the construction of the new city. Figures who had recently been reviled by the Left for their unprincipled speculation in local property developments were now at the forefront of developing the new city, with municipal approval. Josep Lluís Núñez, renowned for his huge, characterless middle class housing blocks which dominate much of the Eixample, would become president of FC Barcelona; Josep Maria Figueras—at the centre of many of the most controversial property deals of the 1960s—would take a 10% share in the development of Nova Icària; Roman Sanahuja, whose cheap housing blocks in the city’s northern districts would be plagued with structural problems, would be able to develop one of Barcelona’s prime sites for one of the city’s post-Olympic shopping complexes. But most striking of all would be the presence of Samaranch, who had a long if not altogether smooth record as a leading Francoist functionary, at the unofficial centre of the city’s Olympic bid.55 Samaranch was Catalan, born into a family of rich textile manufacturers. By using part of his business profits to host the 1951 world roller hockey championships he was, at a stroke, able to kick-start his political career in the regime’s political party, the Movimiento, and continued to use sport as a means of popularising the dictatorship. By the mid-1960s, his success was such that Franco appointed him as his sports minister, and he became one of the Spanish members of the International Olympic Committee (IOC). While he fell from favour with the dictatorship in 1970, being sacked from the sports post on account of leading something of a playboy lifestyle, he was still an active member of the Barcelona political class, heading the dictatorship’s regional government in Catalonia, the Diputación. In addition, he was heavily involved in the property development industry in Barcelona, and responsible for the building of Ciutat Meridiana, one of the poorest-serviced, most peripheral districts in the city. The end of the dictatorship would signal the end of his domestic political career, however. When on 23rd April, 1977, a hundred thousand demonstrators marched on the Diputación building chanting ‘Samaranch, fot el camp!’ (which could be loosely translated as ‘Samaranch, bugger off!’), that November day in Lausanne in 1986 would be a long way off. He was fortunate that his political allies in the UCD retained control of the new parliamentary democracy. He was appointed Spanish ambassador to Moscow, from where he was able to stage his final push to becoming the president of the IOC, the number one job in the Olympic community. Elected in 1980, he wasted no time in advising Serra of the possibility that Barcelona could stage the Games in 1992. The staging of the Games in his native city would fulfil a personal goal for Samaranch. In addition, Barcelona was a city unaffected by geopolitical problems, and was seen as a good bet for restoring the credibility of the Olympics after the superpower boycott of Moscow 1980.56

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And so it was that Samaranch—who only 15 years before had been hounded from office by protesters in the streets—was able to sit at the opening ceremony of the Games with the leaders of the New Barcelona. The protocol was significant. His presence was as symbolic as that of the King: Barcelona was to be a loyal participant in the reconstruction of Spain, and the Left—in the guise of the PSOE (and PSC)— were to be the managers of the reconstruction. In turn, the Left dropped their commitment to radical social change and accepted a constitutional monarchy. And the private sector, no longer the enemies, were brought on board to build and finance the hotels and stadia which housed the event. Fait accompli. The Olympic essence crept into every corner of the city’s democratic establishment. Many of those urbanists—politicians, architects, planners—who had been at the forefront of the anti-developer, anti-Francoist resistance in the Barcelona of the 1970s were now carrying out many of the projects, such as building ring-roads and new middle class housing, that they had criticised so vehemently in the previous decade. This time, they had democracy as mandate. They had the Games as excuse. Vázquez Montalbán satirises this in his novel An Olympic Death, where Carvalho mulls over possible contacts who could help him solve his case. He…considered those comrades of yesteryear who were now working on the preparations for the Olympics… […] …In this city, you were either working for the Olympics or you were dreading them—there was no middle ground. The ’92 Olympic Office, the pre-Olympic Office, the post-Olympic Office and the trans-Olympic Office, were now employing people who in normal circumstances would be the least Olympic of anybody… Anyone who has not spent at least half an hour of their lives preparing for revolution will never know how you feel when, years later, you find yourself employed in preparing showcases for prize athletes from the worlds of sport, business and industry. From the Sierra Maestra to Mount Olympus, from the Long March to the marathon.57 The sense of lost comradeship permeates much of Vázquez Montalbán’s work. Bad enough that the poderes fácticos (the de facto powers of army and police, state and capital-owners) had survived the threat to their social dominance which had appeared in the 1970s. What was worse was the apparent capitulation, or even outright enthusiasm, of many of the ex-communists and Marxian socialists in making Barcelona safe for capitalism. While some members of the administration—such as Maragall and Serra—had long been more heterodox and moderate in their political beliefs, certain others had gone through a very rapid political conversion. Figures such as Josep Miquel Abad, the council’s Olympic overlord, or Jordi Borja had not long before been militants in the PSUC. Many of the city’s architectural establishment were now central to the city’s Olympic elite, and with lucrative commissions dangling over them were less prepared to provide the critical voice of before. As such, for Vázquez Montalbán, ‘Barcelona’s politicians have sacrificed the ethical obligations of their office under the

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pressure of completing the preparations on time. They stand accused of having wasted the first opportunity in the history of this city to put a model of democratic growth into practice, based on the objective needs of its inhabitants.’58 And in many of his novels, his Colonel Parra character—an ex-Maoist revolutionary who ends up in a well-paid bank job, forever justifying his career move by some arcane law of dialectical Marxism—serves as a mocking sideswipe at those who had abandoned the ‘long march’. We can understand Vázquez Montalbán’s disquiet at these developments when we bear in mind the importance of the urban fabric for the sustenance of historical memory, and in turn the power of dominant social forces to shape both. And if there is one thing which the changing landscape of the Olympic city demonstrated, it was the reconciliation between the moderate Left and the remnants of the Francoist state, the final, glorious, truce to end the Civil War a little over 40 years after the fighting had ended. So the 1992 Olympics, from initiation to completion, represented the symbolic transformation of old Barcelona. The grasp on the city’s consciousness was such that it was only the isolated voices of the peripheral neighbourhoods that questioned its validity, and this in terms of more bread and butter issues of diverted funding and looming gentrification. But for Vázquez Montalbán the Olympics also marked something dark in the city’s psyche, a collective amnesia as Barcelona was transformed by the designer socialists of posmodernidad. Barcelona as theme park Did the Gulf War take place? And the Olympic Games of Barcelona? Are you sure that a Universal Exposition was organised in Seville in 1992?59 So asks the back cover of Vázquez Montalbán’s Sabotaje Olímpico (1993), a surreal settling of scores with the Olympic city. The Baudrillard reference is no accident: one of the emerging themes of the later Carvalho novels was the sensation that the city was being turned into a simulacrum, a theme park presided over by ‘socialists who don’t believe in socialism, and nationalists who don’t believe in national independence’.60 The New Barcelona was a Disney creation at the end of ideology, the logical cultural consequence of the loss of critical memory. So while the PSC-led city council saw the arrival of the Olympics as a new beginning for Barcelona, a symbolic restatement of the democratic renaissance which had ended the city’s isolation from Europe and the world, for Vázquez Montalbán they acted as a carnival mask. The Olympics were instead representative of the social settlement which had emerged from the transition, the triumph of the middle classes over both the extreme Right and the labour movement. He expressed his hostility through his writings. Throughout the run-up to and the celebration of the event itself he became the most outspoken critic of the Games, the first stop for

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the international press seeking a new angle on the Olympic story. A journalist covering the Games for the New Yorker described how when he went to interview him he arrived ‘just behind two TV crews, who interviewed Montalbán in Catalan and French respectively, and just ahead of a third TV crew who…interviewed him in Italian’.61 The redevelopment process of the Games would account for many of the landscapes of the old city. Two districts were subject to particularly profound transformations: the sea-front blue collar neighbourhood of Poble Nou to the east of the city centre, and the green slopes of Montjuïc, which rise above the dense, old neighbourhoods of the Raval and Poble Sec. The former would become the location of l’últim barri, the final district that could be squeezed into the city’s packed urban floorspace. As a means of ensuring that the Games would leave permanent benefits for the city, the council zoned an area of Poble Nou for the creation of the Olympic Village that would house the visiting athletes. On their departure, the Village would be converted into a residential neighbourhood. Montjuïc would achieve world attention as being the site of the main Olympic events themselves—the stadium which housed the track and field competitions was located here, as were the diving competitions, where the trajectory of the flying human fish would be traced against the backdrop of Barcelona’s distinctive cityscape. Yet while the rebuilding and designing of these two areas would radically reshape the city, the process would strip away their historical resonance, their status as the repositories of memory which Vázquez Montalbán sees as being so important a part of urban life. Poble Nou had been the classical proletarian district, renowned as the ‘Catalan Manchester’ both for its centrality in the Northern Spanish industrial revolution, and for the concentration of textile factories which dominated the Barcelona economy. Spurred on by its proximity to the port, the existence of abundant water, and the development of Spain’s first railway which ran north along the coast to the town of Mataró, it would grow from the mid-19th century into one of the reddest districts of the city, a stronghold of anarchism and socialism. But from the mid-1960s Poble Nou entered into slow economic decline and many of its most important factories shut down or moved away, leaving behind a populous area of apartment housing, small factories and warehouses. After initial attempts to redevelop certain parts of the district as middle class housing were defeated by neighbourhood resistance (see chapter 5), by the 1980s the council’s successful acquisition of the Olympics would guarantee that one of the city’s industrial hearts would finally stop beating.62 The council focused on the area as a site for large-scale urban regeneration, a project carried out with the express aim of attracting investment and middle class residents back into the city from the suburbs. The task of developing the Olympic Village—the city’s biggest project since the planning of the Eixample in the mid-19th century—was awarded to an important local architectural practice, MBMP, which included one of the city’s leading architects, Oriol Bohigas. The project’s viability was based on a mix of public and private investment, with two high-rise (44 storey) towers—one a hotel, the other an office block—and a marina and leisure complex providing commercial activity.

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Most controversially, the flats built for the athletes would be sold on the open market after the Games, thus gentrifying one of the city’s most renowned proletarian districts. Here would come the irony. The Village was located on the spot where, two centuries previously, the utopian workers’ settlement of the Proudhonist Etienne Cabet had been founded. The phalanstery’s name, Nova Icària, was adopted by the district’s planners as a means of retaining a historical reference to the colony. As the city council was at that time failing to live up to promises to retain some of the apartments for low-cost housing, there was an understandable perplexity over the reasons for the choice. As Robert Hughes remarked, You might as well call an upscale condo block in Berlin the Rosa Luxemburg Tower’.63 Vázquez Montalbán makes the point fictionally, as one of Carvalho’s more flippant clients in An Olympic Death passes a sign for the construction of the Village: ‘Can you imagine it—one of these days, phalansteries being built by limited companies. Or maybe that’s the only way of building phalansteries! Icària, constructed by limited companies, with financial assistance from the European Community and probably the IMF as well. How about this for an idea— now that communism has gone down the drain, why not convert its dream into a Disneyland theme park for the new bourgeoisie? Carvalho, what do you reckon to the idea of setting up a Disneyland which is a model of the perfect communist city, without the disasters of the communist cities whose collapse we have just witnessed?’ Carvalho called to mind the faces of communists he had known and he had a sudden desire to treat Lebrun to a kick in the balls.64 In An Olympic Death Poble Nou stands in a kind of Benjaminesque way for the ruins of the Left, the destruction of landscapes changing the physiognomy of the city, wiping away another layer of the city’s radical past—as in the Chino. As Carvalho guides a client seeking a missing Greek lover65 between the ragged remnants of the gauche divine—a wonderfully evoked and utterly precious 1968 theme party— and the gloom of Poble Nou on a late 1980s night, they come across the zones of transition where the industrial might of the ‘Catalan Manchester’ has been put to the blade of the bulldozer: After a while, despite the darkness of the night, their eyes began to be assailed by the ambiguity of a landscape in which it was hard to tell where the destruction ended and where the construction began. Cranes, big piles of earth, bulldozers, levelled building plots, foundations for new flats, like the shoots of bulbs peeking out from beneath the membrane of the dead earth, a flat surface of hints about what the Olympic Village was going to look like after a year or eighteen months, between the bare, ugly sea and the terrorized leftovers of what remained of Pueblo Nuevo [Poble Nou]…What they saw

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before them could have been either Dresden or Brasilia—a landscape of ruins or foundations….66 The novel’s meaning is clear. A disoriented Left, a fragmented landscape, and Carvalho’s own mid-life crisis are all signs of the difficulty of adjusting to the new city which the author himself identifies. It is what has replaced this industrial past that has raised the hackles, and not just of Carvalho/Vázquez Montalbán. Travel writer Michael Jacobs, touring the city as part of his journey through Spain, has noted that Barcelona’s foreign admirers ‘can be divided into two main camps’ represented on the one hand by the ‘fashion-obsessed’ and on the other by ‘middleaged men…who fondly remember Barcelona in the 1960s…[and who] feel that the city has become a colder, more superficial and anaemic place than before’.67 Jacobs identifies Robert Hughes as being the prime example of this latter group, the Australian art critic whose 700-page Barcelona history includes a visceral attack on the shallowness of the city’s design obsession. He fondly recalls dinner at the wooden restaurants on the beach in Barceloneta: These restaurants are gone now, swept away by the socialist city government’s redevelopment of the seashore. They were a popular institution then, and cheap. The best of them was called El Salmonete, but they all had much the same layout. One walked past the open kitchen, with its haze of smoke from the roaring grills and crackle of sea things as they were dumped with a flourish in tubs of boiling oil, and past the gargantuan display of ingredients—the round trays of cigalas, each stiffly arched on the ice; the mounds of red shrimp; the arrays of dentex, sea bass, squid, minuscule sand dabs, sardines, and toad-headed anglerfish; the tanks of rock lobsters… One sat down as near the doors to the sea as possible. One struggled with the Catalan menu.68 Victims of the refurbishment of the coastline, by 1992 these xiringuitos had gone and the prawns were being served in plusher, pricier restaurants. The manner of their departure was seen by Vázquez Montalbán as symptomatic of the feebleness of the culture of the new liberal democracy, swept away ‘with a fatalism more appropriate to the Franquist years… ZNot a single demonstration has been held. The isolation of the small restaurant owners is a perfect example of the lack of solidarity which typifies the Olympic city’.69 Frankfurt-Schoolers were quick to note the prominence of designers as the stars of the new city. Their significance was probably overstated, but one figure in particular did achieve celebrity status for a brief period. Awarded the commission to design the Olympic mascot, Cobi, Xavier Mariscal was identified as the inhouse designer of the Olympic city. With his studio in one of the Poble Nou warehouses, the cartoonist represented perfectly the Spanish posmodernidad of which the Marxist Left was so suspicious. Carvalho stumbles upon him designing a giant artichoke during An Olympic Death, ‘even though he couldn’t actually remember his name. Marcial, or Marisco…something like that’.70 Beginning with Merbeye in 1978, Mariscal was

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responsible for a substantial proportion of the cloying overdesigned bars which spread through the Eixample and beyond, transforming the city’s pijo71 night geographies. By the late 1980s the Valencian was everywhere—his enormous prawn sculpture, sitting atop the glass-fronted Gambrinus restaurant on the Passeig Colom, amused and appalled by turn as it forged the essential yuppie link between conspicuous consumption and pop design. His crowning glory was the Torre d’Avila bar on Montjuïc, described by a reviled Robert Hughes as having …some claim to being the most seriously unenjoyable boîte de nuit in Spain, or maybe the world… The Torre d’Avila is built on several levels…[the] floors have holes in them, enabling those above to look down on those below, while those below gaze up the skirts of those above…the tables are tiny, the chairs penitential… On the floor below there is a circular glass billiard table, next to which is the gents’ lavatory, a transparent glass enclosure. The urinal is top lighted by UV bulbs, which turn your piss a lurid green. If you turn around to zip up your fly, you find yourself facing the billiard players through the glass.72 Somewhat chastened, Hughes lets fly on the city’s design obsession, ‘a peculiarly nitwitted and lighthearted mode of design… This is the stuff of franchising clout and media appeal, and it ramps over the city like kudzu’.73 While Madrid had its movida, the initially raw combination of sexual freedom and punkie surrealism that motored the early films of Almodóvar, in Barcelona the immediate response of postFrancoist culture was represented by the Catalan yuppie, an altogether more commodified personage. In the run-up to 1992, Cobi—a scrawled, two-legged, endlessly anthropomorphised dog—was everywhere. An inflatable version was moored on the waterfront during the Games, and he was easily adapted to carry the names of the Olympic sponsors: Cobi Coca-Cola, Cobi Cola-Cao, Cobi-Danone, and so on.74 Michael Jacobs, seeking an interview with Mariscal, found himself embroiled in a slightly surreal afternoon in his studio amongst the ruins in Poble Nou: [As we sat in a small conference room ringed with Cobi dolls] I waited for Mariscal to appear, but it became obvious after a few minutes that I was going to have to endure a preliminary session with the two hostesses… They tried to calm and indoctrinate me… A large blue catalogue of Mariscal’s work had been placed on the desk in front of me, and its pages were turned one by one with a reverence and carefulness normally reserved for the handling of valuable incunabula… The much-awaited closing of the last page of the catalogue was followed only by a display of Cobiana… Cobi plates, Cobi statuettes, Cobi ashtrays, Cobi glasses and Cobi T-shirts began to cover the table… There was a moment of dramatic tension when we got up from our chairs, walked into the main studio, and headed towards a darkened corner where a man who was unquestionably Mariscal was sitting. The moment

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passed, however, when we changed course and sat down in front of a video screen to watch Cobi Discovers the Lost Planet. My glance wandered over to Mariscal’s distant desk, where the designer himself could be seen at work. ‘… As Cobi travels back from the lost planet he becomes happy when he sets eyes once more on Barcelona…’. The desk was made of glass and glowed in the surrounding darkness. Mariscal rose from his seat, opened the shutters slightly, and returned to make a few quick gestures with his brash… As Cobi’s adventures continued in our corner of the studio, I tried to look more closely at Mariscal’s large head, but it moved continually, and eventually vanished out of sight, whisked off by a Japanese businessman in a dark suit. I had not even shaken the great man’s hand.75 Unsurprisingly, the Cobi image was appropriated by all sorts of anti-Olympic graffitists and cartooning opportunists. Jordi Busquet’s critical almanack of Cobiana contains Cobi with syringe, Cobi with bulging money-bag, Cobi with ‘Freedom for Catalonia’ banner, Cobi freaking out. Cobi getting a doing from a grubby anarchist, and Cobi getting torn apart by a savage cat, alongside the logo ‘La Barcelona del 93 ens donarà pel cul’ (The Barcelona of 93 will get us up the arse).76 Ironically, perhaps, Vázquez Montalbán—while noting the shallowness of much of the merchandising campaign—saw in the ludicrousness of Cobi a kind of countercultural double-meaning, that Mariscal himself (with a background in the counterculture) was very aware of.77 In 1992 it was not only Poble Nou which was a site of symbolic change. On Montjuïc, the primary location of the athletics events, there were all sorts of meanings at play. The peculiar dominance of the hill over the old city, dropping sheer into the sea at one end and sloping gently down to the Plaça d’Espanya at the other, gave it a physical presence enhanced by some of Barcelona’s most curious architecture. As the stage of the 1929 Expo and, still, the city’s trade fair, it has long functioned as a showcase of both the local and the Spanish state. As I discuss in chapter 6, the city council had clustered a lot of its aesthetic attention here: it had reconstructed Mies van der Rohe’s minimalist German Pavilion, destroyed after the closure of the 1929 Fair; it was the site of two of Barcelona’s most important art galleries, the Miró Foundation and the Museu Nacional d’Art Català; the Olympic ring had been controversially marked by Santiago Calatrava’s dazzlingly white communications tower-sculpture; and the ring itself comprised several newly designed or renovated sports facilities, such as Arata Izosaki’s Palau Sant Jordi and Gregotti’s renovated Olympic stadium. It is a model of the council’s artistic cosmopolitanism, a lush, sloping parkland of mysterious grottoes and municipal signposts, populated by dog-walkers, cruised by slow-moving tourist coaches, and dotted with reposeful neo-classical nudes and watchful middle-aged men. But Montjuïc has an alternative history, a history at once more popular and more tragic. Vázquez Montalbán remembers it as being the weekend refuge of residents from the cramped, airless streets and apartments of the Raval, who would make the pilgrimage down Carrer Hospital or Conde de Asalto (now Nou de la Rambla),

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across the Paral.lel, up through the steep streets of the anarchist district of Poble Sec to the meadows and springs, before having a lunch of tortilla de patatas, potato omelette. For those without housing in the old town, particularly the wave of immigrants that arrived from Murcia before the Civil War, Montjuïc also housed countless squatters, clustered around the mountain before such barraquisme was gradually eradicated through the 1970s and 1980s. But most poignantly, the trees and slopes and scattered buildings also hide some of the city’s most tragic secrets. The Olympic stadium itself had been built for the 1936 Republican Games, an alternative to Hitler’s official Berlin Olympics. But these were abandoned almost as soon as they had begun, with the news that Franco’s troops had invaded from Morocco and the Civil War was under way. And after the war, the castle which stands at the pinnacle of the mount, overlooking the waterfront, would be the last viewpoint from which many of those opposed to the regime—the anarchists, communists and nationalists—would see their city before being shot, their bodies dumped into the adjacent quarry. Today there remains a discreet shrine to the unknown Republican dead, Beth Galí’s Fossar de la Pedrera, one of the least visited of the city’s new monuments. And this is all part of the culture of forgetting which has accompanied the replacement of ideological struggle by the desire to consume. Vázquez Montalbán, whose love and rehabilitation of Catalan and Spanish cuisine recurs throughout the Carvalho novels, would surely cry out at the direction the city’s food culture is taking. When the first McDonald’s arrived in Barcelona in 1981, it became a target for antiAmerican sentiment, particularly to the scarved radicals who would run amok on Catalonia’s National Day, this becoming such a tradition that it has to board-up every 11th September. By 1996, fast food was taking on a different slant. When Planet Hollywood came to town, hundreds of hopefuls responded to adverts appealing for fluent English speakers and lined up beneath Frank Gehry’s giant Fish sculpture in the Olympic Village to try and insert themselves in the booming tourist-consumer economy. In the elegant boulevard of Passeig de Gràcia, a grinning Joan Clos (then deputy mayor) could be seen shyly shaking hands with a serene Claudia Schiffer as she and Naomi Campbell arrived to open their Fashion Café. Nearby, huge formula tapas restaurants arrived which—along with ubiquitous baguette kings Pans and Company—put a local twist on concept food. What can we call this process? McTapasisation? Claudiaschifferisation? And now, there is a Marks and Spencer, a Habitat and a Hard Rock Café in Plaça de Catalunya. Better than the drab existing landscape of banks, but a nod to the international consumerist homogeneity that is now a feature of all major European cities. Up at the Camp Nou, ‘once a cathedral for a sporadic Mass’,78 the departure of Dutch transition icon Johann Cruyff and the arrival of cheque-book Dutch and Brazilian imports make Barça seem more like the Harlem Globe-trotters than anything else. They still provide a mirror of Catalan society, however: but being a soci (a cardcarrying club member) is now a matter of social prestige, rather than political commitment.

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These symptoms of globalisation would probably have happened anyway. But for many it was the Olympics which acted as a watershed in the transition from the old to the new, as post-industrialism and postmodern pop aesthetic began to dominate the streets. It is in these sites of the new city—Poble Nou, Montjuïc— that Vázquez Montalbán’s preoccupations come together, and it is here that he locates the ruins of the Left: Where are the state-subsidized houses? Where are the social policies which might have started to erase the inequalities between North and South which can be found in the same city? Where is the commitment to infrastructure and cultural diversity as opposed to overspending on pretentiousness? Who has rationalized the ‘market’ city? But one cannot write down this inventory of suspicion and dissatisfaction without being consumed by a terrible fear of making a complete fool of oneself… When the future Olympic Village ends up as a radial centre for the redevelopment of mile after mile of working-class housing, nobody will ask whether things might have been different… The most inevitable of all is that which is already complete.79 And with the completion of the Olympic landscape, so ends the hopes of the city’s Marxist Left. Much of the baggage of the Left has been appropriated, then dumped, by the city’s new breed of globalisation-conscious social democrats. ✤✤✤ The ruins of the Left. In the New Barcelona, the Left had been in control in both central and city government for 18 years. Yet Barcelona no longer strikes fear into the hearts of the bourgeoisie: the Chino is a museum, the Raval no longer a focus of discontent and politicised radicalism, the flâneur is left to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of its socialist past. Those beards who had struggled against the dictatorship now make their own version of history, but not in the conditions of their own choosing. Perhaps they overdosed on Marx: too much opposition too young. As Vázquez Montalbán shows (and we will see this in more depth in chapter 5), the anti-developer vanguard of the 1970s is now throwing itself with great gusto into carrying out the very same projects it once excoriated, this time with the backing of historical legitimacy and the righteous claims to being the popular pilots of modernity. Old bugbears are forgotten: they are now changing the world, not merely philosophising. Was there an alternative? The hopes of radical Eurocommunism have receded on the horizon. While there are some who have argued that this was due to the tactical flaws of Spanish communism,80 the failure of the Left—or its re-invention in a more moderate, pragmatic guise—has been a fact of European political life in the 1980s and 1990s. The rise of a neo-liberal Right (Reagan and Thatcher), the failure of Gorbachev to control the changes he unleashed in the Soviet Union, the economic liberalisation which has accompanied European integration, and the loss of intellectual interest in Marxism after 1989 would surely have accounted for any

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democratic socialist alternative. Or has the Left submitted too feebly? Has it embraced with too much enthusiasm the need to be competitive, the need for social partnership with the private sector, the need to forget the recent past? And so the New Barcelona is all about forgetting. Laughter and forgetting, perhaps, bringing to mind Mike Davis’s account of the decline of the socialist intellectual in Los Angeles, who comes to the city not to interrogate but to wallow. Davis pinpoints the likes of Jean Baudrillard as an exemplar, for whom ‘what was once anguish seems to have become fun’.81 The city as political funhouse is, perhaps, a reflection of the disorientation of the Left’s cultural project. In Spain, this is represented in the motif of amnesia, coupled with the happy acceptance of capital back into the fold. Spain and Barcelona from the mid-1980s until the recession of 1993 were places turned upside-down, catching up with the rest of Europe in a frenzy of building, peseta-peddling and corruption scandals. With the cult of modernisation came a culture of forgetting, absorbed into the individual psyche, where the desencanto of those left behind goes beyond the disappointment of failing to achieve political goals. Carvalho and, we presume, Vázquez Montalbán, find their ability to relate to the city has dissipated in the themed shallowness and municipal tidiness of the New Barcelona. They are disorientated, as much by the psychological upheaval of rapid modernisation as by the physically transformed landscapes. The memories of the beatings, the loss of liberty, the restrictions on cultural expression remain alive in the minds of those who experienced them, and who have to suffer seeing their erstwhile social enemies acting side-by-side with their erstwhile comrades. In this country where schoolchildren apparently believe that Franco was a member of the PSOE,82 in this city where the forgotten history of the Republic lies beneath the rubble of the Chino or hidden in the overblown rhetoric of the Olympic city, Vázquez Montalbán remains as conscience, as story-teller, as socialist flâneur. Notes 1 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 175; ‘walls reflected in their eyes’ probably refers to the graffitied messages on the city’s walls which greeted the dictator’s death. 2 See Gilloch (1996) for an excellent commentary on this. 3 Shields (1994), p. 63. 4 Frisby (1994), p. 83, emphasis in original. 5 Frisby (1994), p. 85. 6 Cottam (1992). 7 Cited in Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 298. 8 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), quotations from pp. 154, 179 and 182 respectively. 9 Vázquez Montalbán (1985). 10 GRAPO (Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre) and the FRAP (Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota) were radical Marxist anti-statist terrorist groups responsible for an array of executions and bombings during the transition, although they were also reputedly riddled with police agents provocateurs,

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11 12

13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39

providing a perfect excuse for increasingly harsh state repression. Their activities were a ‘mere side-show’ compared with the paramilitary war taking place between various Basque terrorist groups centred around ETA, and police forces; Preston (1986), quotation from p. 151. Rix (1992), p. 151. Again see Gilloch’s (1996) commentary on Benjamin and the city; Caragh Wells (1998) has noted the importance of the smells and sounds for Vázquez Montalbán: ‘[T]here is no aural memory left. Once I had to write a radio script about the Barcelona of [past times] and I asked the station if they had a recording of the sounds of the trams. They didn’t. And the speeches in the streets, and the old men who sang Machaquito or Rosó… We need a museum of sound, maybe someone has it recorded. The bugle of the rag-and-bone man, the cart wheel on the cobbles…’ (in Vázquez Montalbán and Fuster 1985, p. 35). For explicit autobiography, see Arenós and Saladrigas (1997) or Aranda (1995). Orujo is a Galician firewater, of which Carvalho is particularly fond; for recipes and excerpts from the Carvalho novels, see Vázquez Montalbán (1989). See Hart (1987); Rix (1992); Chivite (1997) twists things around a bit by providing a ‘biography of Carvalho’. Cited in Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 284. Cited in Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 282. See Wells (1998). Cited in Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), pp. 304–5. Translated interview with Vázquez Montalbán on the BBC Radio 4 series ‘Crimescapes’, 21 January 1996. Cited in Wells (1998). Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 205. Vázquez Montalbán (1996b). Villar (1996). Villar (1996), p. 223. Villar (1996), pp. 227–31. Vázquez Montalbán (1990), p. 49. Benjamin (1979), p. 210. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 144. Vázquez Montalbán (1990), p. 122. Arenós and Saladrigas (1997). Quim Aranda (1997), ‘La Barcelona de Pepe Carvalho’, La Veu del Carrer 45, MarchApril, pp. 4–5. This is the name given to one of a series of books by Francese Candel, who played a large part in documenting and bringing to broader attention the living conditions of the non-Catalan immigrants in these ‘new towns’. See Candel (1963, 1985) for a flavour of his work. Vázquez Montalbán (1986), p. 130. Villar (1996), pp. 238–9. Ricard Fayos, ‘Una cirurgia guaridora’, El País 9 November 1995, Quadern, p. 3. In Aranda (1995), p. 23. In Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), p. 22. Maruja Torres, ‘Barcelona: regreso a la ciudad de los prodigios’, El País 13 March 1988, partly reproduced in Subirós (c. 1993), p. 78. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), pp. 171–2.

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40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59

60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80 81

Preston (1986), pp. 5–6. Vázquez Montalbán (1985). Preston (1986), pp. 114–15. Camiller (1994), p. 246. Preston (1986), p. 114. Vázquez Montalbán (1985), pp. 151 and 158. Vázquez Montalbán (1990), p. 52. Graham and Labanyi (1995), p. 313. Vázquez Montalbán (1990), p. 85. Vázquez Montalbán (1986), p. 152. Vázquez Montalbán (1986), pp. 111–12. Vázquez Montalbán (1985), p. 169. For a brief account of this period of Barcelona’s history see Subirós (c. 1993). ‘La ciutat dels alcaldes: conversa amb Narcís Serra i Pasqual Maragall’, in HOLSA (c. 1990), p. 283. Subirós (c. 1993). Rix (1992). These accounts are drawn from Boix and Espada (1991) and Simson and Jennings (1992). Vázquez Montalbán (1992a), pp. 34–5. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 9. Back cover, Vázquez Montalbán (1993); see Baudrillard’s (1995) argument that the Gulf War took place on television, effectively not really ‘happening’ or at least only in a virtual sense. Vázquez Montalbán (1996b), p. 96. Cited in Ladrón de Guevara et al. (1995), p. 109. Fabre and Huertas (1989). Hughes (1992), p. 40. Vázquez Montalbán (1992a), pp. 84–5. An Olympic Death is redolent with Greek metaphors and allusions, allowing a playful take on the city’s Olympic obsession. Carvalho even cooks moussaka at one point. Vázquez Montalbán (1992a), pp. 83–4. M. Jacobs (1994), p. 227. Hughes (1992), p. 5. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 8. Vázquez Montalbán (1992a), p. 98. A pijo is usually a disparaging term signifying a spoilt rich-kid. Hughes (1992), p. 49. Hughes (1992), p. 48. Busquet (1992), p. 11. M.Jacobs (1994), pp. 234–6. Busquet (1992), pp. 126–9. Cited in Busquet (1992), pp. 123–4. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 189. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), pp. 10–11. See Camiller (1994). Davis (1990), p. 54.

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82 Hooper (1995), p. 73. He also cites an opinion poll which suggests that ‘less than half of young Spaniards considered that Francoism had been a mistake’ (p. 78).

3 Battles for Barcelona

As a survey of the international press response to the 1992 Olympics shows, the Games were an overwhelming success in publicity terms for those who sought to stress Barcelona as being a Catalan, as opposed to Spanish, city. Whether in Time, (‘Welcome to the Catalan Olympics’), the International Herald Tribune (‘Barcelona: Catalonia’s appearance on the world stage’), or the less prosaic Il Corriere della Sera (‘The people shout Freedom for Catalonia in the street… Freedom for Catalonia, right in the King’s face’), the image and publicity campaign carried out by the Generalitat immediately prior to the Games made a clear statement of Catalonia’s difference from Spain.1 While this was seen as a necessary reaction to the impact of 1992 as the Spanish annus mirabilis, with Seville’s Expo and Madrid’s year as European City of Culture, it also touched an emergent theme of European politics in the aftermath of the collapse of state communism in eastern and central Europe. The existence of economically powerful sub-central state actors such as Catalonia and Baden-Württemberg had come to attention at a time when economic geographers and policy-makers were re-asserting the potential of regionally agglomerated industrial complexes as a possible antidote to global recession. This had a political dimension as the growing profile of German, French and Spanish regions within the European Community combined with the emergence of postcommunist states such as the Czech Republic to offer a new map of Europe.2 In the years leading up to the 1992 Olympics, the Catalan social democratic party PSC, affiliates of the PSOE, and the right of centre nationalist CiU struggled for control over its planning and staging, a period referred to in the local press as ‘battles for Barcelona’. The struggle was not merely for control of the Games, however. It was a microcosm of a highly politicised and long-running story of competing views on the role of Barcelona within a wider political space, be this Catalonia, Spain or Europe. The battle was personified in the political leadership of two men: Pasqual Maragall as the PSC mayor of the Ajuntament de Barcelona, and Jordi Pujol as the CiU president of the Generalitat de Catalunya. The two had very distinct visions of the relationship between the city and Catalonia, the former arguing for the importance of the city-state as a political formation, the latter downplaying this in favour of a nationalist/regionalist stance. It is these two positions, in this case corresponding to a social democratic vs. bourgeois regionalist dichotomy, which form the focus of this chapter.

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Barcelona has an ambiguous relationship with both Catalonia and Spain. It is undoubtedly the second city of Spain after Madrid, whether viewed politically, economically or in terms of population. As such, it has had a long and tortuous relationship with the evolving Spanish state. And, of course, it is by far the most important city in Catalonia, which has made it a key site of the development of various strands of Catalan nationalism. Yet this, conversely, has also made it the biggest obstacle to the development of a homogeneous Catalan national culture, as we shall see. This chapter describes the evolution of contemporary Catalan political identities over the 20th century. It explores the competing strategies and visions of Pujol and Maragall, before examining how these were played out in the two key ‘battles’ for territory and for control of the Olympics, each central to Barcelona’s growing political importance in the 1980s and 1990s. I begin, however, by locating this within a wider debate about the growing significance of the city for subnational political movements. City-states or bourgeois regions? Is it mere coincidence that, as European parties of the Left lose national election after national election, the approving references multiply in this newspaper’s columns to something called Europe of the Regions?… The notion of regional Europe is part romantic, part fashion. How boring to be mired in alliance with nasty nation states, with their armies and their male rulers in suits… Let’s form different alliances of attractive sounding regions that we think might consist of free-thinking people like us. Out comes the list of agreeable regions, so happily coincidental with places we all like to visit: Catalonia, Lombardy, Bavaria, Slovenia, Aquitaine. All, as it happens, have right-of-centre governments. But don’t worry, facts don’t matter in this day-dream. Why sully the list with places like Serbia, Lithuania or Ulster which few people in their right minds would want to visit?3 Martin Kettle’s short Guardian piece captured with some venom the sloppy thinking with which a rudderless (British) Left viewed European integration. That Catalonia’s name is first on Kettle’s list of ‘favoured regions’ is unsurprising: the boost given by the Olympics to its international profile has been substantial. Yet Catalonia’s prominence in such discourse is problematic in itself: the approaches of Maragall and Pujol are grounded in completely different political visions and worldviews. Both share the desire to lead Catalonia to ever greater influence in international affairs, but there the commonalities end as their distinct political projects clash together over territory and the mobilisation of place identity. Regionalism has a deeply chequered political past, often rooted in opposition to the modernising force of the nation-state and drenched in myths of blood and tradition.4 While the micro-nationalisms which sprang to life in post-war Europe —

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be they Breton, Scottish, Irish, Basque or Catalan—could claim histories of repression as justification, much of their contemporary profile carries some degree of cultural exclusivity. And while regions such as Lombardy or Bavaria may fit in with a new regional economic paradigm,5 the likes of Merseyside have had less to celebrate, stuck on its ‘atlantic are’ periphery.6 So while the Left has promoted regionalism for the possibility it offers of reducing the ‘democratic deficit’ in the European Union, it is also important to recognise that a regionalist programme holds dangers of an opportunistic’ “cocooning” which is isolating the more affluent parts of Europe from the elements of solidarity inherent in the nation-state’. Chris Harvie calls this ‘bourgeois regionalism’, perpetuated by the likes of the Bavarian Christian Social Union, or the ‘Padania’ of Umberto Bossi’s Italian Northern League, a blend of ethnic essentialism and economic dynamism.7 Regionalism should thus be defined, along with nationalism, as a means of building a political project within a particular territory. All such projects contain an inherent ambiguity, rooted in the inevitable tension between a sense of identity based on ethnic purity or community (however ‘open’ a definition this may be) versus a genuinely pluralist stance based on rights of residence.8 That these two poles are rarely so clearly defined is an important reason to contextualise discussion in this area, to illuminate the contours of specific nationalist-regionalist projects. In what follows, then, I think it is useful to look into how Pujol and Maragall construct Catalonia’s political identity and to consider a dual paradigm of European regionalism—a citizen-based ‘city-state’ movement versus ‘bourgeois regionalism’, the ‘particularism of the affluent’ that Chris Harvie has identified in the programmes of many European regionalist movements.9 Both versions are often articulated with reference to ideals of urbanity, of the role of urban modernity— both positive and negative—in the construction of the regionalist-nationalist programme. While narratives of national essentialism may look to selectively chosen ‘historic’ landscapes to tell a nation’s story, civic regionalists are more likely to look to their cities as the crucibles of a newly formed image, with the new sacred sites being the football stadium, the art gallery, the waterfront, the opera house, the museum—all metonyms for regional cultural identity. Hence the growing importance of the ‘second city’ in contemporary Europe as a space which represents the new myths of territorial identity: the informational economy, the cultural capital, the generator of mass taste, all part of what Amin and Thrift have called the ‘institutional thickness’ of a city.10 Perhaps the city acts as a fault-line around which the city-state/bourgeois regionalist dichotomy is arrayed. Across Europe, certainly, the city has—since the onset of modernity—been a generator of both the wealth and economic activity that sustains and disrupts the ‘timeless’ rural world, but those keen on mobilising such essentialist myths also rely on that city for resources. In several cases—in the Paris of the Mitterrand presidency, in the Eurocommunist cities of northern Italy, in the London of the Greater London Council—the Left has been active in using the city as a kind of political theatre, celebrating cultures of modernity and urbanity.11 However, it is also interesting to consider the extent to which nationalist politicians

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may feel forced to ‘deny’ the city, fearful of the influence of cosmopolis on the frail ‘purity’ of ethnic identity. Robert Hughes has noticed the historic tendency of nationalist governments to distrust port cities, open and anarchic in their mix of peoples, unreceptive to metaphors of rootedness and timelessness.12 Barcelona is such a city, and many of the tensions facing a regional Europe will become apparent as we explore the two opposed camps in the on-going ‘battles for Barcelona’. Barcelona as capital of la anti-España …Barcelona was the city of three sins: separatism, communism and the Republic.13 In Franco’s twisted mind, there loomed large the existence of what he called la antiEspaña, embodied by the Second Republic. By contrast with the regime he established and ruled from Madrid, which demanded the total unity of Spain, the subordination of the labour force to a national ideal, and the enshrinement of a Catholic, hierarchical society which was favourable to the eventual re-establishment of monarchy, the nationalist and socialist identities prominent in Catalonia and the Basque country were—literally—heresy. Barcelona was probably the capital of la anti-España (although Bilbao would also have a justifiable claim). The proponents of such ideas, and the cities which nourished them, were constructed as enemies of Spain. So when Barcelona finally capitulated in 1939 to Nationalist troops, it was clear that the power base of the Republic would suffer particularly harshly. As the city of three sins, the repression taken out on Barcelona was fierce, enough to forge lasting memories which still inform the political culture of the city of the 1990s. Catalonia’s statute of autonomy, passed by the Republican government in 1932, was repealed. Francoism was about the recreation of the Patria, the Spanish fatherland, which stood in antithesis to everything that the Republic represented. Through repression, autarky, policies to strengthen national unity and military values, and a resurgence based on imperial and Catholic ideological concepts, Francoism sought to perpetuate the Civil War through the persecution or expulsion of people or ideas which besmirched the idea of a unified, pure Spain.14 Yet the eradication of such ideas is not easy and the sustenance of hegemony is equally problematic. Barcelona remained, along with other urban centres throughout Spain (including Madrid), an important centre of political and cultural opposition, which ultimately provided a contradiction to the Francoist project. The period running from the loss of the Spanish colonies in 1898 through to the establishment of the Second Republic saw the city form a breeding ground for distinctive political identities: the anti-Catalan Spanish nationalism of the Lerrouxist movement, Catalan republican nationalism, and a revolutionary working class movement.15 The first three decades of the 20th century thus became a period of growing selfconfidence in Catalonia, with attempts to counter the long political hegemony of Madrid in Spanish politics.

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With…anti-centralist attitudes widespread, Barcelona became the focus for all discontent, the ‘big city’ which challenged state omnipotence, as important a symbol to anarchists or republicans as to staunch Catalan nationalists. This meant Barcelona was characterised in a seemingly permanent way as a centre of pluralism. However, this appearance of tolerance…was only due to the fact that any political strategy…reflected the essential ambiguity of the city’s status (i.e. the contradiction between its metropolitan scale and its flimsy political authority as a mere provincial capital). Being politically undefined, the Catalan metropolis seemed the key to any sort of large-scale change in Spain.16 So, Barcelona has always had a dual role: as an important centre of European radicalism, be it Trotskyist, Stalinist or anarchist; and as the capital of the Catalan nation, cultural citadel and centre of its economy. The new dictatorship was well aware of this, and set out with the specific aim of weakening the Catalan metropolis. This was easier said than done. Initially the dictatorship was faced with a war on two fronts: as in the Basque country, they had to control a potentially volatile working class, and suppress a vibrant and deep-rooted national identity. Through the banning of Catalan, the exacting of revenge through the ‘law of political responsibilities’ which allowed retrospective punishment for supporting the Republicans, and the bureaucratic centralisation of the state, Barcelona was effectively neutered. Castilian Spanish was to be the language of the city, and all major decisions affecting it, all major appointments, were made from Madrid. However, after the initial decades of repression, the regime’s line softened slightly as it became forced to discontinue its policy of autarky and began to slowly integrate itself into the world economy. Nonetheless, all political opposition still had to be clandestine, and the hispanicisation of the city remained a fundamental part of Francoism. Gradually, however, an opposition gathered among groups in society which made unusual bedfellows. In the Eixample and Sant Gervasi, the enlightened sections of the bourgeoisie sought to nurture and re-assert Catalan culture. In the factories that dotted the blue collar neighbourhoods of the city, from Sants and Sant Andreu to the peripheral estates and satellite towns of the 1950s and 1960s, a disciplined working class organisation emerged, dominated by the mighty presence of one of the jewels of the regime’s industrial policy, the SEAT car plant at the Zona Franca. The most organised clandestine nationalist movement fused catholic morality and Catalan identity. 1954 saw the foundation of Cristians Catalans, a group which sought to provide moral leadership and national reconstruction, whose initial aim was to ‘fer Església’, literally ‘making the Church’, a refoundation of Catalan Catholicism. Prominent in this was a young Jordi Pujol, who would become the de facto leader of the Catalan nationalist opposition. Two events of note stand out in this early period which show the beginnings of nationalist opposition to the dictatorship. One was the campaign against the editor of the city’s daily La

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Vanguardia, arch-Francoist Luis de Galinsoga, who had openly protested against church services being delivered in Catalan by stating that ‘Todos los Catalanes son una mierda’ (All Catalans are shit), an outburst which would ultimately lead to de Galinsoga’s replacement.17 The other was els fets del Palau, the events which took place in 1960 in the city’s Palau de la Música Catalana on the Via Laietana. At a special concert commemorating the work of Joan Maragall, attended by some of Franco’s ministers, a group of nationalists stood up and began singing the banned Catalan hymn El Cant de la Senyera. The repercussions were severe: Pujol—despite being absent on the night—was arrested, tortured, and sent into internal exile in the northern Catalan city of Girona. While initially the aim of the group had been to restore church services in Catalan, the acquiescence of the church establishment in the rest of Spain to the police brutality radicalised them, and from ‘fer Església’ (making the church) grew ‘fer país’ (making the nation).18 Aside from this vanguard, the giant football club, el Barça, provided a more popular focus of national pride in the nation without a state, concentrating opposition to the regime in matches against Real Madrid. Their old football ground in Les Corts had long been the site of a passionately expressed nationalism, closed at one point for having booed a royal procession. In the Camp Nou, inaugurated in 1957, all sections of Catalan society came to worship: many of the immigrants from other parts of Spain drew new identities not from learning the Catalan language, but through following the exploits of the blaugrana. In the expensive seats sat the Catalan middle class enjoying the frisson of emotion that victory over regime-team Real Madrid would bring. When Franco led the uprising of 1936, the president of Barça, Sunyol, having the misfortune to be in Castile at the time, was arrested and executed. As Vázquez Montalbán has put it, ‘When Franco’s occupying troops entered the city, fourth on the list of organizations to be purged, after the Communists, the Anarchists and the Separatists, was Barcelona football club’.19 And so anti-centralist sentiment became enshrined in the club (as with Athletic Bilbao in the Basque case). On-field controversy became mixed with suspicion of the regime’s murky influence in the Spanish football federation, stirred up in a whole catalogue of incidents: the Madrid side’s poaching of the great Alfredo di Stéfano from under the noses of Barça, amidst claims of regime manipulation; suspicions as to the allegiance of many of the league referees; the undeniable links between senior Real Madrid representatives and the state; and, more recently, the fascistic leanings of the Madrid side’s hard-core hooligan element, the ultrasur.20 This rivalry seemed to be shared in the Spanish capital. After Barça’s Evaristo dived to head the winning goal in the 1960–1 European Cup quarter-final against Real, a Madrid newspaper seethed that ‘Barcelona has eliminated Spain from the European Cup’.21 ‘Més que un club’, ‘more than a club’, they say of Barça: elections to the club presidency still retain a strong degree of politicisation. What really threatened the regime, however, was the fact that Barcelona was also one of the most militant centres of working class activity in Spain, its industrial complex being a crucial contributor to the Spanish economy. Franco had made reference to ‘the huge and dangerous industrial concentrations of Barcelona and

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Vizcaya’ in a speech in 1945, and his unwillingness and inability to assimilate these cities into a less centralised, less essentialised vision of Spain can be seen as a major contributing factor to the ultimate failure of his project. Barcelona had been the scene of the first organised protests against the new regime when, in 1951, the attempt to raise tram fares led first to a boycott and then to a full-scale general strike. The economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s and the arrival of waves of immigrants from other parts of Spain created a huge and potentially volatile working class. The trade union movement began to re-organise in the city, to such an extent that many local employers negotiated covertly (and illegally) to settle the vast amount of pay disputes which accompanied the final days of the dictatorship. It was the industrial action taken by many of these workers, such as the violently repressed protests of the early 1970s at the SEAT car plant, which exposed the fatal contradiction of late Francoist economic liberalisation and a conservative wages policy. In Barcelona’s industrial districts, and in the ‘red belt’ of towns which surrounded the city, it was the largely immigrant manual working class which provided a major focus of hostility to the dictatorship.22 The idea of a ‘red belt’ was common to many European countries between the 1950s and 1970s, the social response to the de-industrialisation of the historic core. With factories being located in greenfield sites to cut costs, and serviced by a pool of ex-agrarian labour, the likes of Milan, Paris and Barcelona all witnessed the growth of communist parties and trade unions, protesting against the often poor standard of housing, and adverse working conditions. Around Barcelona, towns such as Cerdanyola and Sabadell in the Vallés Oriental (eastern valleys), or the Cornellà/ Esplugues/Sant Joan conurbation in the Baix Llobregat river valley, were the location of the industrial boom of the años de desarrollismo of the 1950s and 1960s. The huge population movements throughout Spain from the rural south to the industrial north completely transformed the fabric of many of these settlements: in the Baix Llobregat the population rose from 96,000 in 1950 to 351,000 in 1970, as labour flocked to the new engineering and chemical plants set up by both multinational and indigenous capital. Clustered together in densely built estates, facing the rigours of Francoist labour laws, workers were quickly radicalised. And in Barcelona itself, factories such as Olivetti (in Glories), La Maquinista in Sant Andreu, and SEAT in Zona Franca were a constant and threatening source of social unrest and economic turmoil.23 The SEAT case provides an insight into the contradictions of Francoism as ideology. Established in 1950, la Sociedad Española de Automóviles de Turismo was an early example of the regime’s growing economic liberalisation after an initial period of autarky. SEAT was a classic fascist industry: it served a captive market, it had a poorly paid workforce, it was managed by the military. But, crucially, it had been set up with parts and technology contributed by Fiat, who insisted that the factory had to be located close to the European market and with easy access to a port. Against the regime’s better political judgement, the first factory was established in the capital of the anti-España, in Zona Franca, and from 1953 would come to play a major part in the city’s industrial life. When the first reliable, affordable

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Figure 3 Map of Barcelona’s red belt.

model began to be mass-produced—the legendary SEAT 600, ‘Franco’s Beetle’— from 1957, the horizons of Spanish society were transformed. By the mid-1960s Zona Franca had a workforce of 10,000 and was producing 300 cars a day: the tiny 600 model had been adopted by a whole generation, including the designer socialist gauche divine.24 The 600 meant mobility and modernity, and its popularity contributed to the growth of the Spanish economy. By the early 1970s the contradictions of a booming consumer society with the rigidity of the regime’s labour policy were becoming obvious. Comissions Obreres by now had considerable strength throughout Catalonia’s heavy industry, and strikes were becoming widespread. In 1971, Zona Franca ground to a halt in protest at the sacking of dozens of workers over a refusal to undertake compulsory overtime, some 8000 workers occupying the plant. In the subsequent 13-hour battle police used CS gas, horseback charges and live ammunition, injuring several workers and fatally wounding one, Antonio Ruiz Villalba, who died in hospital 12 days later. While work restarted, the regime was forced to make various concessions,

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appointing a civilian management. Primarily, however, the outcome was symbolic, showing the potential of unified industrial struggle and radicalising the public.25 The city was simultaneously a focus of less visible political networks. These operated clandestinely, but their cumulative effect was enormous. Initially, the most militant opposition had been in the University of Barcelona in the late 1960s, but the suppression of this led to protest emerging elsewhere. In 1969 the Archbishop of Barcelona set up a secret fund to look after the families of detained workers, and to lobby for their release.26 As I discuss in chapter 5, the 1970s saw the consolidation of previously isolated neighbourhood groups which challenged the abuses, negligence and impact of unregulated property development. And across the city an array of political groups—most of all the communist PSUC— operated covertly to organise against the regime. All of these forces—the unions, political parties and networks, the Church, neighbourhood associations—came together to form a coalition, the Assemblea de Catalunya, founded in November 1971 at a time of renewed repression. Based on a simple four-point programme (amnesty for political prisoners, freedom of expression, the re-establishment of the institutions of the Republic, including the Generalitat and Catalonia’s Statute of Autonomy, and the co-ordination of an antiFrancoist opposition), it achieved a unity unseen in the rest of Spain. Its truly significant characteristic was its width of membership and commitment to Catalan autonomy. Comprising socialists, communists, nationalists and trade unionists, it also had strong representation from catholic church groups, womens’ groups, professional organisations and, crucially, Catalan industrial and banking capital. After the death of Franco in November 1975, it moved quickly and organised two key demonstrations: on the 1st and 8th of February 1976, up to 40,000 protestors took to the streets of Barcelona to face the batons of the police, and showed their desire for the re-establishment of democracy.27 By the time that the referendum on constitutional reform was approved in December 1976, the Assemblea’s role had been fulfilled and Spain was about to become a multi-party democracy. It is at this point that the political identities visible in contemporary Barcelona begin to emerge. On the night of the 15th June, 1977, as the votes were counted in the first democratic general elections since the Civil War, it became clear that the Left in Catalonia had won a significant victory. Despite the overall victory of the Francoist reformers of the UCD in Spain, the socialists took first place in Catalonia, with the PSUC second. In all, 75% of the vote went to parties which favoured the re-establishment of the Statute of Autonomy, Catalonia’s right to a degree of selfgovernment. Things began to move very quickly from here. On 11th September, Catalonia’s National Day, over a million people demonstrated in the centre of Barcelona for the re-establishment of the Generalitat, a direct challenge to the government’s more limited proposals for autonomy. Prime minister Adolfo Suárez, in an attempt to counteract the threat of a radical Left opposition in Catalonia, negotiated the return from exile of the moderate nationalist ex-president of the Generalitat, Josep Tarradellas. And on 23rd October, Tarradellas would emerge on

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Plate 2 Throughout Barcelona and its metropolitan region, the early 1970s was a period of industrial unrest and protest against the dictatorship’s labour policy. At factories such as Olivetti at Plaça de Glories, street demonstrations were a common sight. (Source: Arxiu Fotogràfic de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona; Pérez de Rozas)

the balcony in Plaça Sant Jaume to lead a provisional Generalitat, in an explicit boost to the Catalan nationalist cause.28

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However, the confidence of the Left remained high, and their political strength in Catalonia was confirmed at the 1979 local elections, when the combined votes of the PSC and the communists added up to 45%. Perhaps this bred complacency, for when the elections to the Generalitat came around the following year, the polls registered a shock victory for CiU. The PSC vote collapsed: it trailed in behind CiU by 150,000 votes, having polled double the nationalist vote in the general election of 1979. The reasons were numerous: a high level of abstention was detected among the Hispanic working class voters of the industrial belt, attributed to an apathy to a ‘Catalan’ political institution.29 However, there was also a strong anti-socialist campaign led by the Fomento del Trabajo, an employers’ organisation: one large employer in the Baix Llobregat ran a full-page newspaper advert warning of its lack of confidence in creating jobs in areas with Marxist electorates and councils.30 The CiU was able to govern in coalition with the Left nationalists of Esquerra Republicana, with Pujol fulfilling his dream of becoming president of Catalonia. This success in the Generalitat would not be repeated in Barcelona’s municipal elections, however. Subsequent polls saw Catalan voting behaviour develop into a strange pattern of bi-party support. In Maragall’s first election at the head of the party list in 1983 his party, the PSC, were again victorious, as would be the case in 1987, 1991 and 1995. In the Generalitat elections of 1984, 1988, 1992 and 1995, however, CiU dominated, winning absolute majorities in parliament in all but the last case. The stage was set for a lengthy period of cohabitation: both sides knew that Barcelona was an enormous prize, as both the historic capital of the Catalan nation and the nerve centre of its attempts to compete in the New Europe. And both developed strategies in which the city was either all-encompassing (Maragall), or noticeable by its absence (Pujol). Pujol, Maragall and the National Question: two visions It is important to emphasise that Maragall and Pujol both see themselves as being defenders and, indeed, promoters of Catalanism. However, they identify with Catalonia in strikingly different ways. In part, this reflects the important generational differences between the two. Pujol, born in 1930, was part of a ‘forgotten’ generation which grew up during the fiercest period of political and cultural repression, lived the dictatorship almost entirely in adulthood, acceding to the democracy in their fifties. Those born in the 1940s, Maragall’s generation, had no experience of the Civil War. They were culturally and politically rebellious, heavily influenced by May ‘68, able to enjoy the growing material standard of living and gradual internationalisation of Spain, often secular and Marxist in outlook.31 This is reflected in the biographies and political visions of the two men. Pujol has his own place within the annals of the opposition to Francoism. We know that as a result of els fets del Palau he had already established himself as a leader of renascent Catalan nationalism. Politically, he was able to derive a power base from two important social forces: Catalan banking capital and Catalan catholicism. The two are not unrelated. His departure from the pressure group Crist i Catalunya/

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Cristians Catalans with a small group of followers with the objective of ‘fer país’ was based on an analysis which argued that without cultural institutions and nationalist capital there would be no basis upon which to build a genuine nation. This was first developed through the founding of a bank, Banca Catalana, established in 1959. ‘Without a bank’, he wrote, ‘a country has no possibility of creating large businesses. It will always be in danger of seeing its strongest industries and companies fall into foreign hands. It will always be in danger of colonisation’.32 This was accompanied through time by activities in the cultural field, such as the establishment of publishing companies or the campaigns to get a Catalanist elected as president of Barça. And at the end of 1974, as the clandestine opposition to the dictatorship was at its peak, Pujol was instrumental in the founding of Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), a centre-left party with an important social democratic strand headed by Miquel Roca. In September 1978, CDC pacted with the Christian democrat Unió Democràtica de Catalunya (UDC) to form the CiU coalition. So the make-up of the coalition can be seen to emerge from strongly nationalist, conservative and religious social groupings, and this has had clear ideological dimensions. While CDC initially saw itself as being social democratic in vocation, Pujol frequently stressing the attractions of Sweden as a model for Catalan society, once in power the CiU coalition under Pujol’s leadership pursued a more conservative set of policies: Although the activity of the Generalitat is complex and, in many sectors, oriented towards modernisation and economic competitiveness, the ideological discourse of Jordi Pujol and a good part of his political strategy is based on a historicist, essentialist, ruralist and anti-metropolitan script that looks for and uses confrontation with Barcelona and the central government to confirm and reinforce the autonomy and competences of the Generalitat.33 So how does this relate to Barcelona? In Pujol’s rhetoric the city is conspicuous by its absence. The president’s repertoire could be said to revolve around four main strands: history and timelessness; economic competitiveness and European integration; linguistic difference; and low-intensity confrontation with Spain. His speeches on Catalan National Day (which commemorates the 1714 defeat of Catalonia at the hands of the future Bourbon monarch of Spain, Philip V, and its absorption within the Spanish state) reveal some of the tropes used by Pujol to build a Catalan identity. He draws succour, ironically, from defeat, noting the Catalan willingness to channel their efforts to positive end, picking up the pieces the day after the fall of Barcelona in 1714. This stresses the well-known Catalan stereotype of pragmatism, mobilised as a foundational myth of the nation. It also taps into pairalisme, ‘homesteading’, or the ruralism of excursionisme, the group activities of hillwalking and mountain-climbing in the Pyrenees. Such an emphasis is intended to differentiate Catalan history from that of the rest of Spain, stressing its membership of Carolingian Europe as a contrast to Moorish Spain. He highlights the openness

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of Catalans to values of modernity such as industrialisation, hard work and commerce, again mobilised as a sign of difference from the rest of Spain.34 The second strand is an explicit emphasis on high technology, economic competitiveness, and European integration where he has attempted to combine the two tropes of historical awareness and international progress. An excerpt from his speech on the Diada (National Day) of 1995 demonstrates this: …it’s the moment to make Catalunya, on the basis of our timeless identity, of our identity as a nation, on the basis of our desire to innovate and work that has guided us since the 18th century, on the basis of the great progress made since the recovery of our autonomy, on the base of the efforts of all, without exception; on these bases it is the moment to make Catalunya the leading country that we couldn’t do in 1714. A modern country, with good economic growth, with wide and well-distributed social welfare, with balanced territorial development, with well-trained people, a country of people with a desire for taking the initiative. A country that can be a motor in Spain and in Europe, and in the heart of the Western Mediterranean.35 While the combination of tradition and modernity is hardly unique in nationalist rhetoric, it is interesting that Pujol makes the link in the same breath. The Generalitat has opened commercial offices around the world, most notably in Brussels and Japan, and has participated enthusiastically in forging regional alliances across borders (with the French regions of Languedoc-Roussillon and MidiPyrénées) and with technologically advanced regions in the Four Motors alliance (with Lombardy, Rhône-Alpes, Baden-Württemberg and, later, Wales). Pujol has been very active in visiting state leaders—including Israel and the US presidency — and in the evolving Committee of the Regions in the European Union.36 The third strand is that of establishing the Catalan language as the principal means of communication in Catalonia. This was not easy given the degree of linguistic repression under the dictatorship, and the huge numbers of Castilianspeaking immigrants that arrived in the 1950s and 1960s. In the late 1970s, it was estimated that Catalan could be spoken by two-thirds of the region’s population, and understood by 80%. However, it could be written by only around 10%, as Castilian was the official language of education. Pujol’s intention was to normalise the use of Catalan in education and administration, and to this end a law was passed in 1983 in the Catalan parliament with all-party support. This was to be consolidated by the Generalitat’s intervention in the media, most notably through the establishment of Catalan language television channels. In 1983, TV3 began functioning, followed by a second channel, Canal 33, five years later.37 Crucially Pujol gained early support by stressing a relatively radical appeal that would consider a Catalan to be someone who spoke the Catalan language, regardless of their origin, arguing that ‘Catalonia cannot be fully restored without the contribution of the working class’.38 Latterly, he has moved to a more conservative rhetoric favouring assimilation above multiple identities, which explains the

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reticence of large parts of Hispanic-origin working class Barcelona to vote for the CiU.39 Fourth, and most controversially, Pujol has always had a troubled relationship with Spain, playing a complex game of give and take with the central government. While swearing loyalty to the Crown and participating in the unfolding of the young Spanish democratic settlement, he was nonetheless involved in confrontation with the PSOE government throughout its term in office. These conflicts were often bitter. In 1981, in the tense aftermath of the failed army coup, the PSOE and the Francoist reformers of the UCD sought to stall the autonomy process in Spain through the Ley Orgánica de Armonización del Proceso Autonómico (LOAPA). This failed, and gave the CiU ammunition to claim that the PSC was a mere branch party (sucursal) of the PSOE. In 1984, shortly after the CiU’s outstanding electoral success in the regional elections, the PSOE government unsuccessfully sought to prosecute Pujol for alleged financial malpractice while a director of Banca Catalana. This celebrated case was used by the nationalists to argue that Pujol was being victimised, and that this was in turn an insult to Catalan identity.40 While the autonomy process slowed down in the 1980s, the CiU continued to consolidate the powers of the Generalitat. The general election results of 1993 and 1996 gave the CiU—along with some of the other conservative nationalist parties from elsewhere in Spain—the balance of power in central government, leading them to work with both the PSOE and, from 1996, the Spanish nationalist Partido Popular. They have used this to negotiate a greater degree of financial autonomy from central government, demanding the retention of first 15% (under the PSOE) and then 30% (under the PP) of the share of income tax raised in Catalonia.41 This fusion of historical myth, economic competitiveness, European integration and technological modernity, linguistic nationalism and the speeding up of the autonomisation process forms a key to understanding Pujol’s nation-building project. Being aware of the potential criticisms of a mythicised rurality, which may imply a desire to wallow in nostalgia, he has emphasised the importance of playing the role of an advanced technological power in Europe. However, he stresses that Catalonia is not a region, but a nation, existing within the Spanish state. Crucially, this is a vision that for reasons of political expediency denies the primacy of Barcelona in Catalan territory. This has been highly strategic: in the 1970s Pujol was making very strident statements as to the centrality of the city to Catalan culture.42 But that was before the arrival of Pasqual Maragall and the PSC to power in the mayor’s office of the Ajuntament. Maragall’s approach is distinct for a number of reasons. Born in 1941, he comes from a ‘clan’ of the city’s liberal, secular intelligentsia. He arrived too late to ever know his grandfather, Joan Maragall, who had died already canonised as Catalonia’s national poet, noted particularly for his Oda a Espanya, an impassioned tirade against the dominance of Hispanic culture in Catalonia and an implicit call to refocus Catalan identity towards Europe. Joan Maragall’s work links the family name irrevocably with a liberal, cosmopolitan nationalism. For the young Pasqual, his grandfather’s fame gave material advantage, the family residing among the leafy

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villas of Sant Gervasi. But he was soon drawn into the growing struggle against the regime, becoming a Marxist militant at university, forging links with blue collar activists in the city’s factories. He married another activist, Diane Garrigosa, during the years of clandestine opposition, and he makes no secret of the pride he takes in his grandfather’s reputation.43 And so, by the time of the restoration of democracy, he had for many years been involved in the city’s affairs. An economist in the city council under the dictatorship, he had a thorough grooming in the details of municipal policy, something he would pursue academically, both at the New School for Social Research and at Johns Hopkins University during the 1970s. His doctoral thesis was an exploration of urban land prices in Barcelona. These formative years would have an undeniable influence on his political doctrine once he became mayor. Plotting in cafés, an enthusiastic supporter of FC Barcelona, studying and teaching at the city’s universities, it is little surprise that in his acceptance speech as mayor he described himself as a ‘devoted and painfully smitten son’ of the city.44 While Maragall’s immediate concerns may have always been to consolidate his political power base in Barcelona, his broader strategies have been directed towards developing a federal Spain. He has strong personal and intellectual reasons for this, drawing on the tradition both of his grandfather and of the internationalist ideology inherited from Spanish republicanism. Above all, he has inherited a nuanced view of Catalonia as being defined in part by outside forces, Europe and Spain. Making explicit reference to his grandfather’s most powerful work, Oda a Espanya, a lament over the long and tortured relationship of Catalonia to Spain, he argues that the poet’s final line ‘Adéu Espanya’ (goodbye Spain) should now be re-assessed. He speaks of a ‘Catalunya oberta’ (open Catalonia) as opposed to a ‘Catalunya tancada’ (closed Catalonia) of ‘classic’ nationalism. He states that he is a Catalanist, not a nationalist. This has several implications for his political project.45 First, one of his favourite aphorisms is that ‘Catalonia is a reality Spain is a project’.46 Unlike CiU’s ambivalent attitude to Spain—striving for as much autonomy as it can get within the Spanish state—Maragall stresses the potential contributions that Catalonia can give to Spain. He begins from the conviction— legitimate when one views its turbulent history—that Spain has never been a completed project, a unified nation. The only way to achieve completion is to recognise the plurality of identities which exist within its territory This is where Catalonia can make a contribution. The modernisation of the Spanish state which occurred from the end of the dictatorship—perhaps most significantly through the de-politicisation of the army—has also demanded a modernisation of Catalan nationalism. ‘[F]rom the moment when the phantom of a totalitarian and oppressive Spain disappears, it is possible and necessary to think about Catalan participation in the Spanish politics of building this unfinished reality’.47 This demands a responsible, non-confrontational role for Catalonia, a move ‘beyond nationalism’, and Maragall suggests that a ‘mature’ Catalan identity is able to cast off its defensive, exclusive sense. ‘I think that we will hear more and more of Catalanism and not of nationalism’, in the sense of a cultural identity based on a

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Catalunya oberta.48 He speaks of the importance of a strictly federal Spain, as opposed to the rather more Darwinian autonomisation process favoured by Pujol. Second, moving beyond the nation still requires an alternative territorial power base, and it is here that he envisages cities as being crucial. Barcelona should be the capital of Catalonia, a capital in Spain (he is here questioning the need for nationstates to have single capitals), and a major player in a ‘Europe of the cities’. These roles, he argues, are all inter-related. As capital of Catalonia, the city can contribute to the development of a cosmopolitan, non-essentialist Catalanism. As a reflection of the city’s influence within Spain, and undoubtedly as a piece of political entrepreneurialism as well, Maragall has suggested that the city should be the site of the second house of the Spanish parliament, the senate. This ‘bicapitality’ would reflect the plurality which exists in Spain (though needless to say this idea has been received coolly by his socialist colleagues in Andalusia and Madrid, and has little chance of being realised). But it is his role as a leading member of a putative system of European cities that has been one of the distinguishing features of Maragall’s political strategy. While this has a powerful economic rationale (see chapter 4), it is also consonant with his belief in a greater political and cultural role for cities in the emerging map of a New Europe. His protagonism in this area has been recognised by his municipal colleagues throughout Europe: he was elected joint president of the European Union’s Committee of the Regions, having cut his teeth on the lobby groups of European municipalities, the Council of European Municipalities and Regions and the Eurocities network. This combination of arguments in part reflects his desire to expand his urban power base, to create for himself a wider political space. But it is also consistent with his argument for cities in general to have a greater input into the political life of nation-states, something which the expanding European Union could allow.49 Third, and related, to realise a Catalunya oberta requires a greater emphasis on the role of cities within society. Rather than adopting the ruralist, conservative tropes of Pujol, he stresses the richness of urban culture. He argues that cities are the fora in which tolerance and plurality can exist most easily, tapping into traditions of civic humanism. He celebrates cities as the fusion of different cultures, in contrast to Pujol’s obsession with normalising Catalan. He downplays the role of language in the formation of nations: ‘It’s very important, but look, the language of a country is not just its tongue. It’s the way of life, gastronomy, landscapes, industries. So it’s not just its tongue. To try to normalise all that is impossible’.50 He goes on to contrast the case of Catalonia with the separatist claims of the likes of the Alto Adigio and Brittany, arguing that the latter examples lack major cities. Catalonia has Barcelona, and it is this—he asserts—which makes Catalonia a nation. To this end, his vision of Catalonia is undeniably one shaped by metropolitan consciousness. The fruits of this can be seen throughout Barcelona: a commitment to avant-garde art and architecture; the projection of the city internationally through the Olympics; a stress on activating citizenship through the provision of public spaces, festivals and cultural institutions. In many ways it is this celebration of urban

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life, the city as a plural space, which marks his outlook. ‘I believe that Barcelona’s richness comes precisely through its human density, and its major problem comes, also, from this human density’.51 To solve such problems—pollution, unemployment, congestion—the city should be given greater fiscal and political autonomy. Thus the city forms the basic unit of his political vision. Concretely, Barcelona’s hegemony in Catalonia prevents a slip into a Catalunya tancada. Taken together, these rhetorical and strategic approaches to Catalonia can provide us with an understanding of how Barcelona relates to the wider political projects of Maragall and Pujol. As evidence, I now look at the two major conflicts between the men which strained relations for much of the 1980s and 1990s, the first over the territorial distribution of power between Barcelona city council and the Generalitat, the second over control of the 1992 Olympics. Battle I: Barcelona vs. Catalonia? Under the Francoist mayor Porcioles, Barcelona had always dominated its surrounding area, and had an enormous weight within Catalonia as a whole. Barcelona, as defined by its municipal boundary, had been gradually reaching saturation point in terms of population, and in 1980 its population numbered 1, 752,627 people out of 5,958,208 in Catalonia as a whole. In the early years of the new democracy, the area under the strategic jurisdiction of the Corporació Metropolitana de Barcelona (CMB) had a population of 3,096,748 (1981), accounting for 52% of the Catalan population. The Barcelona municipality itself is at the heart of Catalonia’s employment, in the mid-1990s containing 42.2% of its service jobs and 26.7% of those in manufacturing.52 Established in 1974 ostensibly as a means of regulating the metropolitan region, the CMB was always seen as a formalisation of Barcelona city council’s domination over the surrounding municipalities, dwarfing the other 26 councils represented in the corporation. The body’s competences were largely strategic, overseeing issues such as transport, water provision and treatment, sanitation and pollution. However, the imbalance between Barcelona and its smaller neighbours, the enthusiasm of Porcioles for siting cemeteries and rubbish dumps on the land of the smaller councils, and the CMB’s role in the uncontrolled speculation of property developers made it a target of the Left for abolition. By the late 1970s, with the PSC and PSUC dominating the local elections, it appeared that its days were numbered.53 The surprise success of the CiU and Pujol in the 1980 Generalitat elections changed all that. Deprived of the power which they had assumed would be theirs, the PSC had to re-assess their position vis-à-vis the issue of political control of Catalan territory. The substantial weight of the CMB relative to Catalonia meant that control of Barcelona city council would give its mayor considerable power to rival the hegemony of the Generalitat, despite the fact that it covers only 1.5% of Catalonia’s territorial area.54 And in the towns of the red belt, such as Cornellà,

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Badalona, L’Hospitalet de Llobregat, or Sant Adrià de Besós, there was an in-built communist/socialist vote.55 But even before the PSC’s 1980 electoral debacle, Maragall was stressing the need for a co-ordinated position which rebalanced the relationship between the central city and its surrounding towns, outlining his strategy in a series of three articles published in La Vanguardia. He began with a summary of the city’s urban geography, arguing that in contrast to the suburbanisation of the rich in the US and many European cities, in Barcelona the rich remain clustered in the centre. As a result, he continues, the core is maintained and the suburbs are degraded, with a few exceptions such as Castelldefels and Sant Cugat. To address this, Maragall argued that there had to be a redistribution of services throughout the metropolitan area. Furthermore, he asserted that the nature of the metropolitan region was such that many people lived in one municipality, worked in another, and went out in a third, leading to gross imbalances in resource distribution. His solution was for a personal income tax levied at the metropolitan level which could then be redistributed allowing for an equilibrium in service provision.56 As a highly active president of the CMB, Maragall began to expand the body’s powers and prestige through projects such as the Vallés technology park, or the assumption of new powers such as those of public transport, along with a growing institutional recognition: the metropolitan region’s mayors being received by the King, central government awarding it a special funding regime, and the corporation reaching the zenith of its powers by hosting a United Nations conference. As the 1980s wore on Pujol continued with his plans to consolidate the power of the Generalitat and linguistic ‘normalisation’, developing two Catalan language television channels and achieving an overall electoral majority in the 1984 Generalitat elections. This was an uneasy cohabitation: there was a growing feeling in the Generalitat that their powers were beginning to be directly challenged by the CMB in some key areas. And within the CMB’s administration there was a fear that they were overstepping the mark: the frenetic removal of the corporation’s banner shortly before a visit from Pujol, a man who pays considerable attention to the importance of flags as symbols, showed the climate of tension which existed in the mid-1980s.57 With the Olympic nomination looming—which would give Maragall an unprecedented raise in profile—Pujol realised that it was time to act. Having a range of options at his disposal—reducing the competences of the corporation, for example, while leaving it to control certain functional areas where a strategic overview was important—Pujol decided on the maximalist course of action. In April 1987 the nationalist-controlled Catalan parliament voted for the outright abolition of the CMB, this despite the pleas of high-profile businessmen and a strong press and publicity campaign mounted by the corporation against the move. The obvious parallel with the Conservative response to the Greater London Council’s political counterweight—rumbling on at the same time—was not lost locally. And the lack of a co-ordinated replacement suggested that, as in the case of the GLC, there had been little consideration as to how best the competences should be shared out.58

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The solution chosen by Pujol reflects many of the territorial preferences of the Catalan nationalists. The CMB’s competences were distributed to new bodies, principally the consells comarcals, which were seen as being an adequate level to consolidate many of Catalonia’s tiny municipalities. The Generalitat retained the power of strategic planning. But the creation of the 41 comarcas—medium-sized territorial units akin to counties—led some commentators to pose a dichotomy: on one hand, the ruralist, eternal Catalonia based on the new administrative divisions (which in turn corresponded to the pre-Francoist situation); on the other, the cosmopolitanism of the Olympic city-state. Under Pujol’s system, Barcelona was but one comarca among many.59 This comarcalisme had led one enthusiastic nationalist mayor of the pre-Pyrenean, rural centre of Vic to exclaim that ‘Catalonia begins in Vic’, this belying the town’s relative insignificance against the urban giant of Barcelona (Vic is more famous for its cathedral and sausage factories than anything else). Such an attitude has been detected in many of the Generalitat’s publications, as if there is a general reluctance to even accept the existence of the metropolitan area. The Generalitat’s spending per capita is lowest in the comarcas of the metropolitan region, and they have been very slow in formulating a regional planning framework despite an unbroken spell in power since 1980.60 The scuffle over the metropolitan region represents a clear conflict in hegemonic strategies for Catalonia. The failure of the PSC in the Generalitat elections of 1980 and 1984 allowed the nationalists to consolidate their control. Yet the urban power base of the socialists increased the stakes in the municipal elections, putting control of the city council at a premium for the future political strategies of the socialists and the nationalists. And this gave rise to the second major battle for Barcelona, that of the Olympics. Battle II: The Olympics That the Olympics were to be held in 1992 was a source of some controversy for political and cultural commentators both in Spain and abroad. The portent of the year itself sent shivers through most Catalans, whether left or right wing; it marked 500 years since the putative discovery of America by Columbus (who returned from his journey to Barcelona), which provided a founding myth for the Spanish empire which was sustained under Francoism. The same year also marked the ‘reconquest’ of Spain by the Catholic monarchs, accompanied by the expulsion of Jews and Muslims. This provided a founding myth of Spanish racial purity and religious orthodoxy. The UCD government of Francoist reformers which ruled until 1982 had proposed a World Expo, to be held in Seville, for 1992, established with the purpose of celebrating the quincentenary of the ‘discovery’. This had to be ideologically recast somewhat by the PSOE, the leadership of which were nonetheless delighted to indulge in some easy clientelism in one of its most important power bases. With the Olympics going to Barcelona, this left Madrid with the European City of Culture award for 1992. Taken together, the triumvirate

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of events served to call world media attention to the emergence of a new, economically buoyant Spain. The spectres raised were not lost on the Catalans, who feared that the Games would be used as part of a cultural and political Hispanicisation, a breaking of the process of developing autonomous communities. The events were both cultural and symbolic: They were explicitly intended to celebrate Spain’s coming of age as a modern, democratic European nation-state, marking the end of a period of political transition (and uncertainty)… But these popular celebrations of Spain’s new status tended to neglect the past and glorify the present. Indeed this seemed to be part of an official attempt to represent Spain’s new, ‘modern’, democratic national identity as if it were built on a tabula rasa, thus avoiding confrontation with the cultural, social, regional and political tensions that plagued Spain since its emergence as a nation-state.61 For the PSOE, the Olympics, as with the Expo in Seville, provided opportunities to market both Barcelona and Spain as an expanding market and an investment opportunity. The Games were also a chance to show that Spain was able to participate fully in the international community after decades of isolation, an active foreign policy being an essential component of the government’s strategy of internationalisation and modernisation. This would also be accompanied by a cult of technology, exemplified by the emphasis placed on developing Spain’s communications infrastructure. This was focused on Seville, with the high-speed train, the AVE, having its first branch between Seville and Madrid, and the city receiving a massive airport expansion. Barcelona would also see its airport extended, along with improved communications facilities and highway construction. 1992, and the years leading up to it, would thus be a shop-window for a government anxious to attract foreign investment, a means of rapidly modernising the country.62 But the Games were initiated in a very different political and economic climate. As I described in the previous chapter, the city leadership’s stated reasons for bidding for the Olympics were to give Barcelona’s populace a psychological boost, and to provide a global project to focus the administration’s activities. However, there was also a subtext of deep political significance. The plot to stage the Games which took place between ostensibly polarised sides—between the ex-Francoist Samaranch and the socialist mayor Narcís Serra—was not the only piece of political conspiracy to be taking place in Spain at the time. The progress towards democracy had provoked extreme responses from a range of political groupings. The Francoist ‘bunker’, the diehard supporters of the dictatorship concentrated mainly in the army, some sections of the nobility and ultra-political cells, had long sought to halt the reform process. Bloody and provocative Basque terrorism and the fears that the autonomy process was leading to the break-up of Spain had in turn inspired bloody and provocative police and army repression, and had led to a series of plots to

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overthrow the democracy and re-impose dictatorship. The coup on 23rd February, 1981—the 23-F—was, therefore, not unexpected.63 In this context, the agreement between Samaranch and Serra made perfect sense. It was apparent that to stage the Games successfully would require a lot of cooperation between the old and new orders. The mayor knew that the successful establishment of Spain as a constitutional democracy required the Left to moderate their demands and work diplomatically with the so-called poderes fácticos, the powers-that-be such as the army, monarchy and capital. Choosing the hugely symbolic Armed Forces Day as the occasion to inform the King of his plans, Serra effectively sought to establish Barcelona not as the capital of a separatist nation, but rather as a city loyal to Spain, and to the consolidation of democracy. He made such a favourable impression on the armed forces that he was made Minister of Defence in the first PSOE government.64 Maragall’s subsequent accession to the post of mayor in late 1982 ensured a continuity of this policy. This was bad news for the Catalan nationalists, for whom control of Barcelona would have been priceless. Instead, as the conflict over the LOAPA and Banca Catalana would prove, the 1980s were to be a period of socialistnationalist struggle, with Barcelona a key strategic command point in the hegemonic strategies of both sides. Worse still, Maragall and the PSC could not easily be set up as enemies of Catalonia, although Pujol would use the LOAPA as an indication of the true, Hispanicist vocation of the PSOE. The PSC had been ardently opposed to the proposed law, and was largely composed of activists who had militated in favour of Catalan autonomy under the dictatorship. They were in a position to unite both the city’s recently arrived Hispanic working classes and a substantial proportion of the Catalan middle classes. And Maragall’s exploitation of the post of mayor would provide a significant challenge as a figurehead to Pujol’s presidency of Catalonia. This occurred in three main areas. First, Maragall would use the Olympic success as a means of establishing himself as a popular, moderate mayor. His rhetoric was always oriented more strongly to civic, rather than class, identity. The victory in Lausanne in 1986, which was beamed around the globe, showed the moustachioed mayor centre-stage, wildly embracing colleagues and supporters. His appearance before cheering crowds in Plaça de Catalunya on the night of the announcement would associate him clearly as the man who had brought the Olympics to the city, Pujol hovering nervously behind him, conscious of being the spectre at the feast. Maragall’s influence was decisively increased by the Olympic statute’s assertion that the Games were, indeed, a civic event, with the mayor of the host city being the political figurehead. In opinion polls throughout the 1980s Maragall would rank as one of the most popular political figures in the whole of Spain, aided by a genuinely disarming media persona. He tirelessly lobbied his socialist colleagues in central government for more funding, increasing the tension between himself and González in the process. Thus his occupancy of the mayor’s office would be characterised by his attempts to identify himself with Barcelona rather more than with a political party.65

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Plate 3 October 1986: Pasqual Maragall takes the acclaim of the crowds in Plaça de Catalunya having returned from Lausanne with the prize of the 1992 Olympics. Narcís Serra is to his left; Jordi Pujol claps over-enthusiastically on his right. (Source: Arxiu Fotogràfic de l’Ajuntament de Barcelona; Pérez de Rozas)

Second, under his leadership Barcelona would change enormously in terms of physical infrastructure. As subsequent chapters will show, the city strengthened its economic base and was endowed with vastly improved communications infrastructure, arts facilities and environmental quality. Much of the funding for this came to the city specifically for the Games. Thus in a period of intense porkbarrel politics, the nationalists were almost entirely unable to gain any political capital. Third, Maragall tirelessly sought to maximise the opportunity of Olympic leadership with a proactive foreign policy. His Europeanist vocation I have described above. But he also looked further afield. In 1986, he had a quasidiplomatic meeting with the then US vice-president George Bush, with the secretary-general of the United Nations, with the Soviet ambassador to the White House, and with the mayors of Boston, Chicago and New York, falling out with Ed Koch over Spain’s favourable contacts with Cuba. He was then able to make a top-grade photo opportunity jogging across Central Park with his two daughters in a ‘Barcelona ‘92’ running top.66 During the Games themselves, he was fully occupied receiving highranking official visitors from throughout the world. With Barcelona a keystone in the building of the PSOE’s New Spain, and with Maragall forming an effective alternative vision of Catalanism, Pujol saw the need to lead a counter-attack which could rein in Maragall’s Olympic ambitions. This had two strands: he used the financial and regulatory powers of the Generalitat to hinder

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the council’s project in various ways, and he mounted an alternative campaign which increased the profile of the Generalitat and Catalonia. As a hindrance, the CiU was able to use its overall majority in the Catalan parliament to slow the infrastructural improvements which the socialists hoped to gain from the Olympics. The spending breakdown of public sector investments shows that the Generalitat’s contribution was only 22% of the total, this largely focused on the ring-roads, the financing of sports infrastructure and the development of the sub-sites outside the city.67 This was despite the fact that the regional level of government has a far greater distribution of funding from the centre than do the municipalities. The council wanted to extend the metro system to Montjuïc, the principal site of the Games, with the intention of continuing it to the peripheral housing estates of the Zona Franca, lying behind the hill. And it argued for a large expansion in the city’s luxury hotel sector, pointing to Barcelona’s relative lack of high-class hotel accommodation for the expected tourist invasion, particularly that of the prestigious ‘Olympic family’ of high-ranking sports officials. The first was refused funding, the second went ahead only after a considerable delay as the Generalitat refused to approve changes of use.68 The second line of attack had a far more visible, even dramatic, effect. It was quickly realised that the publicity opportunities offered by the Games were unprecedented. The Generalitat had to take advantage of them in presenting Catalonia’s position as a separate nation within the Spanish state. This took two forms: orthodox publicity campaigns combined with some carefully designed political agitation. The most notable publicity campaign took place in July 1992, as the Games were about to begin. Digging deep in the Generalitat’s budget, Pujol undertook an extremely ambitious piece of place marketing, running a two-page advert worldwide, in Europe, Japan, Australia and North America. It appeared in, among others, the Financial Times, New York Times, International Herald Tribune, The Times, Le Monde, La Repubblica, Newsweek, Time, Fortune, The Economist, L’Express, Der Spiegel and Stern. Running on two odd-numbered consecutive pages, the first page showed a blank square with a dot labelled ‘Barcelona’. Nothing else in the square. Underneath, the caption ‘In which country would you place this point?’. On the following page, the square has been filled with a map of Western Europe in relief, the territory of Catalonia filled in with black. Underneath, the caption ‘In Catalonia, of course’. Below, in smaller writing, ran a short description of Catalonia’s significance, its cultural identity, and so on. And in slightly larger letters, the logo and name of the Generalitat.69 The agitation was equally high profile. There already existed a variety of groups in Catalonia which sought to press both republican and separatist claims. A small terrorist movement, Terra Lliure, had been operating for some years in Catalonia. More publicly, the radical pressure group, La Crida a la Solidaritat, had revived as the perceived Hispanicisation of the Olympics proceeded. It had first appeared, born on 18th March, 1981, in response to the ‘Manifiesto de los 2300’, a petition which claimed that the Castilian language was in danger of survival in Catalonia. This came

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at a sensitive time, less than a month after the 23-F, which hinted at a likely stalling of the process of autonomisation. La Crida had managed to draw together 1300 groups in a demonstration at the Camp Nou in June of 1981, and followed this up with a demonstration the following year against the LOAPA. But it had failed to resolve a basic problem of being a civic movement with a direct link to the nationalists and an antagonism towards the socialists.70 Pujol was anxious to marginalise the radical separatist groups, who he saw as being counter-productive extremists, and to this end funded his party’s own youth movements on several occasions to provide an on-street presence based around the media-friendly English language slogan ‘Freedom for Catalonia’. This strategy was to backfire. On the 8th of September, 1989, Barcelona was to open its Olympic stadium as it hosted the 5th Athletics World Cup. Crucially, this was to be attended by the royal family, the constitutional heads of the Spanish state, flanked by Maragall and leading dignitaries of the PSC. Pujol had provided members of his own party’s youth movement with 500 free tickets and Catalan flags in order to counteract the powerfully symbolic ceremonial presence of the Spanish monarchy. With 2000 police—many brought in from outside Catalonia—surpervising an event attended by 20,000 spectators, the climate of hostility and mistrust was sharpened by frisking and the confiscation of nationalist flags at the entrances. In pouring rain which inundated a stadium with a defective drainage system, and with the crowd’s irritability increased by the late arrival of the royal family, the latter’s entrance into the stadium was met with boos from the 2000 or so members of the nationalist groups inside. The Spanish national anthem was then whistled by a substantial proportion of the crowd. During the ceremony, unbeknown to much of the audience who mistook them for fireworks, members of Terra Lliure launched rocket flares over the stadium in a defiant—if feeble—show of resistance, before escaping into the graveyard which backs onto the stadium. In short, the whole day—crucial to the council’s attempts to launch the Olympic campaign successfully —was an allround fiasco, to Pujol’s jubilation. His joy would be short-lived. His son Oleguer had been captured on film as one of the protagonists in the jeering of the monarchy: the royal palace demanded, and received, a restatement of Pujol’s loyalty to the Crown.71 The second prominent piece of agitation occurred on the eve of the Games, and marked the arrival of the Olympic flame on Catalan soil. Television cameras could not fail to capture the Freedom for Catalonia signs placed at strategic points along the way, nor were the media slow to pick up on the fact that 6 out of 7 of Pujol’s children ran with the Freedom banner on one of the stages: Oleguer Pujol’s face featured heavily in the following day’s newspapers. Despite their failure to draw mass support for the cause—only 1000 turning up at the torch’s arrival at the hearth of Catalan nationalism, the monastery of Montserrat—they had attracted considerable media attention. Again, the agitation had been funded by the Generalitat, the CDC and the municipalities controlled by the CiU under the legal heading of the Acció Olímpica pressure group.72

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The realisation that the Olympics could fail, to the detriment of all concerned, had already been enough to encourage co-operation. A pact was agreed shortly before the Games began. On the 12th of June, 1992, Maragall and Pujol presented a joint statement stressing the need for unity and the congruence of a pride in Catalonia and friendship with visitors from other parts of Spain and the world. Catalan was to be one of the four official languages of the Games (along with English, French and Castilian), and was to be used equally with the other three. At the opening and closing ceremonies, both the Catalan (Els Segadors) and Spanish anthems would be played. When the King entered the stadium, the flags of Spain, Catalonia and Barcelona would all be displayed on the pitch.73 A day later came the Freedom torch stunt by the Pujol juniors: the subsequent fury of the socialists at the nationalist ‘betrayal’ nearly threatened the truce. Despite the nationalist flags and paraphernalia which so impressed the foreign press, during the event itself it would be Maragall and Serra who were pictured at the side of the royal family as they attended the events. Support from the participating Catalan athletes themselves for the nationalist cause was muted: few followed the example of Barça player Pep Guardiola in openly stating his distinct Catalan identity. And for many the abiding memory of the Games came in the final of the football tournament when Spain defeated Poland to win gold in front of a capacity crowd in the Camp Nou. The sight of Catalan and Spanish flags being waved together may have troubled the nationalists (Spanish flags being waved in the Camp Nou!), but for many they marked the successful conclusion of a potentially troubled Games.74 What the battle for political control demonstrated was the symbolic importance which an event as large as the Olympics would have on the Catalan and Spanish political process. Given that they were focused on the city, this unavoidably gave credence to Maragall’s version of a city-state at the forefront of Catalan development. While Pujol could claim that ‘[s]trictly speaking, these are the Games of Barcelona. But spiritually, politically, and sentimentally, they are also the Games of Catalonia’,75 there was little he could do to counter the boost that Maragall had received from the Games. Despite a Spain-wide swing against the socialists, he was re-elected as mayor of Barcelona in 1995, and the nationalists were left, yet again, shut out of the Catalan capital. ✤✤✤ Barcelona has often acted as a pivot for competing Catalan identities. The city has an influence that far outstrips its population or territorial size. As a focus of political repression, it developed forms of political mobilisation and identity which still inform today’s politics. As an electoral battleground it remains one of the biggest prizes in Spanish municipal politics. As a conduit of economic flows it contributes enormously to Catalonia’s high international profile. And it has important symbolic dimensions in the way that both city and nation (Catalonia and Spain) are constructed. The imagination and discourse of the major players— Maragall and Pujol —are both spatial and historical, in that both mobilise and are mobilised by particular interpretations of place through time, their own life experiences being

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inextricable from the political strategies they have for harnessing both resources and particular identities in Barcelona, Catalonia and beyond, Separatism or devolutionary demands have often been refuted as a form of ‘special pleading’ by detractors, often those on the Left who seek to use a nationally coordinated macro-economic strategy to stimulate growth and redistribute income to disadvantaged regions. However, recent events suggest that the regional level may be growing in importance, something which the Left would be ill-advised to ignore. What is distinctive about Maragall’s approach is not only that he is alive to questions of cultural identity, but also that he tries to fuse this with a redefined European social democracy which is constructed using the city as a lens. This programme— which combines pragmatic realism with the ideal of cities as spaces of difference—is the subject of the next chapter. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23

24 25 26 27 28

Cited in Ladrón de Guevara et al. (1995). Harvie (1994). Martin Kettle, ‘Regional Europe: a god set to fail’, Guardian 25 April 1992. Nairn (1992). See, for example, Cooke et al. (1997). Meegan (1994). Harvie (1994), p. 5. Jenkins and Sofos (1996). Harvie (1994). Amin and Thrift (1995). Bianchini and Schwengel (1991); Jäggi et al. (1977); Looseley (1995). Hughes (1991). Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 164. Richards (1995). Ucelay Da Cal (1995). Ucelay Da Cal (1995), p. 146. Balcells (1996), p. 140. Lorés (1985), pp. 13–14. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 109. Crolley (1997). Cited in El Gran Album del Barça, supplement to La Vanguardia (1996), p. 70. Cited in Balfour (1989), quotation from p. 9. This account is drawn from Balfour (1989), pp. 124–36, who offers a taut account of the varying traditions of industrial militancy in the towns of greater Barcelona under the dictatorship. See ‘SEAT: 40 años de Cataluña’, La Vanguardia Magazine, 12 December 1993. Balfour (1989), pp. 173–7. Balfour (1989), p. 198. Francese Arroyo and Francese Valls (1997), ‘Una transición peculiar’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 17–25. Balcells (1996).

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28 See Candel (1985). 30 Sebastián Serrano (1997), ‘La victoria por sorpresa de Pujol’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 129–37, quotation from p. 133. 31 Febrés and Rivière (1991), p. 148. 32 Cited in Jordi Busquets (1997), ‘La refundación del nacionalismo’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 97–104, quotation from p. 100. 33 Subirós (c. 1993), p. 48. 34 Guibernau (1997), p. 102. This is a useful discussion of the various tropes used by Pujol in the construction of his vision of Catalonia. 35 Jordi Pujol, ‘Cataluña, motor en España y Europa’, El País 11 September 1995. 36 Antich (1994); Walter Oppenheimer (1997), ‘La proyección exterior de Catalunya’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 241–8. 37 Antich (1994); Keating (1996), pp. 134–45. 38 Pujol (1991), p. 137, cited in Guibernau (1997), p. 104. 39 Guibernau (1997) provides a useful analysis of Pujol’s nation-building rhetoric, making reference to how it has changed over the years. 40 Preston (1986). 41 Guibernau (1997). 42 Antich (1994). 43 Febrés and Rivière (1991). 44 Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), pp. 340–65; Capmany and Maragall (1983), quotation from p. 23. 45 Febrés and Rivière (1991); Maragall (1987), p. 120. 46 Maragall (1987), p. 211. 47 Maragall (1987), p. 135. 48 Maragall (1987), p. 120. 49 Set out explicitly in ‘Les ciutats i Europa’, in Maragall (1987), pp. 151–61. 50 Interview with Tomàs Delclós (1997), Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, p. 236. 51 Maragall (1987), pp. 75–6. 52 Mancomunitat de Municipis (1995), p. 319. 53 See Fabre and Huertas (1985). 54 Figures from Cabré and Pujades (1985). 55 Riera (1993); Balfour (1989), especially chapter 2. 56 Pasqual Maragall, ‘Area Metropolitana: una ocasión histórica’, La Vanguardia 18 August 1979; ‘Area Metropolitana: una ocasión histórica II’, 19 August 1979; ‘Area Metropolitana: una ocasión histórica III’, 21 August 1979, each partially reproduced in Subirós (c. 1993), pp. 33, 72–3. 57 Lluís Unía (1997), ‘La batalla por el territorio’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 225–33, quotation from p. 227. 58 Lluís Uría (1997), ‘La batalla por el territorio’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 225–33. 59 Moreno, in Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), p. 83. 60 Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991). 61 Graham and Sánchez (1995), p. 406. 62 Graham and Sánchez (1995); Harvey (1996); Hooper (1995), chapter 5. 63 Preston (1986). 64 Subirós (c. 1993).

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65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72 73 74 75

Febrés and Rivière (1991). In Febrés and Rivière (1991), pp. 62–3. Brunet (1995), pp. 213–14. Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991). Walter Oppenheimer (1997), ‘La proyección exterior de Catalunya’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 241–8. ‘La “Crida”, moviment civic o politic’, Catalunya 1973–1983/L’Avenç., pp. 78– 9. Antich (1994). Antich (1994). Subirós (c. 1993), pp. 66–7. Rosa Regàs (1997), ‘Patria y fútbol’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, p. 256. Cited in Subirós (c. 1993), p. 93.

4 The gospel according to Pasqual: mayor Maragall’s new urban realism

On the 9th of October, 1995, Barcelona’s citizens awoke to find that their city had reached sixth place in the rankings of the most attractive European city in which to do business. The annual Healey & Baker survey of executives of the 500 top European companies—based on criteria such as quality of life and cost and availability of office space—put Barcelona above the likes of Zurich, Milan and Munich. Time was when the only rankings valued locally as an indicator of civic strength were those of the Spanish football league. But by the mid-1990s the insularity bred by dictatorship had begun to evaporate and, anyway, Madrid was three places behind in the business poll.1 The high ranking was no accident. The city council had launched itself wholeheartedly into partnership with the private sector and, in particular, real estate as a means of modernising the city’s economy and repositioning it within European space. In 1994, this was vividly illustrated in the Barcelona New Projects exhibition, a lavish display of the city’s major redevelopment projects. Held in the Gothic Tinell hall behind the cathedral, the council’s marketing department had set out to impress foreign visitors. Carpeted with an aerial photograph of the city, flanked by a booming bank of television screens promoting Barcelona’s charms, the hall was dotted with little white models of the forthcoming office, leisure, retail and infrastructural projects scheduled for construction. Here were the shiny Texan towers of Carrer Tarragona, there the plans for the controversial extension of the Diagonal to the sea. Plaça de Catalunya with its new commercial centre, the old port with its World Trade Center, and the Illa shopping, office and hotel strip on the Diagonal. As Joan Clos, at that time deputy mayor, put it, ‘[t]his exhibition shows that we are counting on the support, the enthusiasm, and the initiative of magnificent businessmen’.2 Such a warm embrace of the suits would appear surprising given the local hostility to property developers under the dictatorship. By the end of the 1980s, however, social democrats across Europe were warming to the private sector, and Barcelona was no exception. Under the 15 years of Pasqual Maragall’s leadership, the city council moved towards a strategy designed to engage proactively with the restructuring international economy, a social democrat new realism blending a discourse of internationalism with a thorough knowledge of the demands of the single European market. Maragall talks up the market at the same time as he tries to

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throttle out planning gains throughout the city. He promotes the public realm and values of citizenship and civility, all the while juggling them with the account book. And he discusses all this in terms which reveal an acute understanding of the pressures facing urban leaders in Barcelona, in Spain, and the New Europe. Here I look at Maragallisme as a ‘new urban realism’, a specifically city-based social democratic strategy which accepts capitalism as given, and seeks new ways to extract some kind of public good from it. While chapter 3 set out Maragall’s particular vision of the city vis-à-vis Catalonia, my focus here is on the city as a fiefdom of the Left. It is clear that if nation-states are being buffeted by economic globalisation, cities are even more vulnerable: squeezed by global flows on one hand and by central government policy on the other. I begin, therefore, by situating Barcelona within the wider Spanish economic and political space, particularly the formative years of the 1980s, la decada socialista. Second, I look at how Maragall has located his version of Catalanist social democracy within this, and draw attention to his grasp of the strategic issues facing the European Left as a whole. Third, I set out his understanding of globalisation and European restructuring, and describe how this has affected the city’s urban policy. Fourth and fifth, I outline his attempts to reshape the Left as a progressive political force at a time when socialism is facing a crisis of legitimacy, describing how Maragallisme prioritises a public sector-led ‘art of leverage’ and an internationalist conception of citizenship, respectively. Barcelona in la decada socialista and beyond On 28th October, 1982, Spain entered a decisive stage in its history by voting in a social democratic government. Despite the fresh psychological marks of the attempted coup of 1981, the PSOE achieved a staggering 48.4% of the vote, gaining the support of over 10 million citizens. The result had an immediate impact on Barcelona’s political scene. Narcís Serra, who had presided over the city’s emergence from the transition, was immediately called to serve as Minister of Defence in the new government. And so, only days after Spain’s dramatic turn to the Left, Pasqual Maragall would, as deputy, step up to the top of the PSC’s party list and assume the post of mayor. Yet while the Left rejoiced, few were under any illusions that the triumph would represent a turn to radicalism. In the cold light of day, it was apparent that Felipe González’s government was not about to reverse the wrongs of 45 years of rightwing rule. Following defeat in the first two general elections of the post-Franco period—in June 1977 and March 1979—splits had emerged within the PSOE over the party’s continued self-definition as a Marxist party. Centrists such as González argued that such a commitment was alienating the crucial centre-ground of Spanish politics. At the 28th party conference, in the immediate aftermath of the 1979 election defeat, González and his Felipista followers argued for the need to jettison Marxism and pursue a more moderate, modernising direction. His proposal defeated, González resigned as leader. Without an obvious successor, however, the grassroots opposition had no alternative but to comply with Felipe’s call for a

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Spanish Bad Godesberg, and voted away its commitment to Marxist principles. González was re-instated as leader. The way became clear for the PSOE to present its strategy for modernisation, which had as a core policy full membership of the European Community and NATO (the latter a remarkable U-turn by González).3 Once in power, González had been expected to follow the path of the Mitterrand government in France, nationalising most major industries and services (including banks), and attempting a Keynesian reflation of the economy. However, at the moment of the PSOE’s greatest popularity the French experiment was running into crisis. Mitterrand’s attempts to reflate the domestic economy had failed as the newly wealthy consumer had used their extra spending power on buying imports, which did little to boost the uncompetitive French private sector. Furthermore, the French socialists were faced with the unwelcome truth that international investors had the ability to switch capital elsewhere, thus precipitating a rise in unemployment.4 The PSOE government took this as evidence that counter-cyclical reflation was not an available option, both in terms of macro-economic efficiency and in maintaining cordial relations with the private sector. They thus set about pursuing a policy of austerity and rationalisation, arguing that social democratic goals could only be pursued at a co-ordinated European level (and they stressed the importance of being in line with other social democratic parties in Europe).5 PSOE strategists argued that Left policies could only be pursued in the long term, through full and active participation in European integration, with their ‘ideological objectives projected forward in time to the year 2000 and beyond, and in space to a united Europe’.6 Such teleology had a certain logic, and the first half of the 1980s saw a general agreement between sections of the labour movement, the government and the employers’ federation. Towards the end of the decade, however, relationships between the government and the unions deteriorated to such an extent that the country was paralysed by a series of general strikes. By the signing of the Maastricht Treaty in 1991, the government was fully committed to an austerity programme which would allow the country to meet the convergence criteria required for membership of the single currency. But the costs of being such enthusiastic Europeans were going to be great, and the PSOE found themselves in a dilemma: …in order to eventually give impetus to the European project of democratic Socialism, Spain has first to catch up with the most developed member states; but the restructuring needed to obtain economic convergence tends to strengthen all those social and political forces which are less concerned with ideology and more with instituting market reforms.7 Such modernisation was achieved through wholesale privatisation of state industries and cuts in public spending, and despite an initial expansion of the welfare state, the PCE and the PSOE’s dispossessed Left were soon muttering about how the

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government had shifted into the terrain of the neo-liberal Right, a Spanish Thatcherism, as many were led to remark.8 The pursuit of neo-liberal policy measures was one thing. More worrying for those pursuing a socialist agenda was the realisation that the upper echelons of the PSOE were effectively embedding themselves within a new elite, government and party distinctions becoming increasingly confused, and linking in with Spain’s high society and ‘jet-set’. PSOE politicians were regularly pictured in !Hola! magazine with the rich and famous (los beautiful people, as they were known). For one commentator, ‘the Socialist party was the vehicle for the coming to power of a new class of upwardly mobile professionals whose only recourse to rapid ascent was politics’.9 In addition, the government was particularly associated with Spanish banking capital, seen as being the key sector where Spain could most successfully integrate itself into the European market. The Spanish economy boomed through the 1980s, and the PSOE won further electoral victories in 1986 and 1989, albeit with reduced support. Between 1986 and 1991 Spain was growing faster than any other country in the EC, and between 1980 and 1992 it had grown 40% richer in terms of GDP.10 By contrast, the dismantling of the dictatorship’s corporatist labour policy had far-reaching effects on the job market. Unemployment, only 2.3% of the active population in 1973, soon sky-rocketed as state industries were privatised. While the PSOE had inherited a crisis in 1982 (16.8% unemployment), by 1994 this had reached 24.7%, young people being particularly hard-hit.11 Whatever the rights and wrongs of the PSOE policies, the effect on Spanish cities would be profound. The government’s ‘hot money’ policy—where few restrictions were placed on currency speculation on the peseta in return for a rapid increase in foreign investment—meant that in the late 1980s the country would undergo a property boom, both in luxury residential and tourist accommodation and, in the cities, in a rapid growth in office and retail development and speculation. The full trappings of a global consumer society were now on tap; the colour supplement Spain of 1992 was a glitzy affair of fast cars, smart suits, Almodóvar chic and new suburban apartments. As Spain was gearing up for its 1992 fiesta—Expo, Olympics and Single Market membership—the legitimacy of the PSOE was fast being eroded. Most seriously for the government, it became associated with a spate of corruption scandals, perhaps the inevitable result of such a long stint in power. While many of these related to corruption in the banking sector, the most notorious was very heavy news indeed— covert support to an anti-ETA death squad (los Grupos Anti-Terroristas de Liberación, or GAL). These would finally see the party’s credibility undermined, and as boom turned to bust and the Right pulled itself together as a coherent electoral force, the PSOE lost their absolute majority in 1993, and succumbed to José Maria Aznar’s Partido Popular in the 1996 general election.12 Yet despite this, Maragall and the PSC again emerged victorious in the 1995 municipal elections, bucking a Spain-wide swing away from the socialists. Local newspapers attributed the success to the ‘Maragall factor’, the suggestion being that

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—for a variety of reasons—significant proportions of the electorate were prepared to continue supporting the PSC at a city level.13 Maragallisme as social democratic new realism To recap, Maragall has deep roots in the city’s liberal intelligentsia. His upbringing in Sant Gervasi and Sarrià can be contrasted sharply with that of, say, Vázquez Montalbán. He is a child of la zona alta, and his impeccable liberal credentials pervade his political thought. His fierce personal identification with the city has strongly influenced his political ideology, an ideology which—I think it is fair to say —has the political aggrandisement of Barcelona as its central principle. But it is more than the poetic influence of his grandfather that ties Maragall to the city: events have conspired to draw him in politically, and have endowed him with a power base of votes, contacts and local knowledge which has allowed him to project himself and his city beyond his immediate surroundings. What makes Maragall reasonably distinctive as a European politician is that he is associated less with a party or a nation than with a city, and this is why some commentators see Maragallisme as being the reincarnation of the city-state of renaissance Europe, with Maragall—appropriately enough—earning the nickname of ‘El Príncep’, ‘The Prince’. In common with most Catalan intellectuals of his generation, Maragall’s political career began when he joined the anti-Francoist opposition, and from his student days he became a militant Leftist involved first in university politics and then in the Front Obrer de Catalunya (FOC), a Marxist (though non-Stalinist) party. Such vanguard parties often recruited from the city’s progre middle classes, and would in turn seek to strengthen themselves among the proletarian grassroots. As an activist Maragall would tour the militant, grey districts of the city’s metropolitan area, a period which he still recalls as being deeply formative: For me it was tough discovering a world different to what I had known, a world lacking in so many things… But it also had the attraction of being new, with people with so much drive… It was students, and a good few more workers, who created the conditions for political change, although they didn’t put it into practice until the death of the dictator.14 In his speeches he often invokes this new world—travelling to clandestine meetings in a SEAT 600—as an analogy for his contemporary exploration of Europe as a new political space, of which more below.15 However, it was as a student activist, part of the ‘generation of 1962’, that he cut his political teeth. Maragall—along with present-day PSC colleagues such as Raimon Obiols and Narcís Serra—were among those avoiding the baton charges and imprisonment by the police, as they sought to forge a united Left movement in the city, organising movements and printing leaflets.

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I remember some print-runs as being quite amusing. One was in the Diagonal, at number 469 or 496—it doesn’t come to mind exactly now—in the house of Xavier Rubert de Ventós [a prominent philosopher]. Above everything, up in the attic, there was a printing machine with which we launched the university movement we created and called Moviment Febrer 1962. We made the leaflets in one night. Raimon Obiols, who was very good at drawing, drew a Picasso dove and with a stencil produced them in blue, red and yellow —the three basic colours. At midday the following day we started throwing them from the tower in the law building, then started running. Another printing was in a friend’s house, who had a very big house in the Pasaje de Casablanca, and we set the machine up there…and we put on Bach at full volume, then jazz and later rock or whatever it was, and we kept on shouting as if we were having a party so the neighbours wouldn’t hear the machine.16 This radicalism would become combined with a simultaneous pursuit of a professional career which would effectively ground him in the business of running the city, although he didn’t know it at the time. Graduating from the Universitat de Barcelona in economics and law, in 1965 he secured a job as an economist within the city council. After marrying, he spent six months in Paris, where he studied urban and regional planning (one of his lecturers being Jacques Delors). On his return, however, he found the reformist spirit of the early 1960s had been replaced by the chilly repression of late Francoism, and in 1971 he left Barcelona for two years to study at the New School of Social Research in New York. Another apprenticeship: ‘I learnt everything about the city because New York is The City’.17 His attachment —the wonder of the urbanist let loose in one of the world’s most vivid cities—was such that he once admitted a desire to write a history of the New York of the 1970s, a period of rampant free market capitalism, of the counter-culture, the era of Watergate, Vietnam and Nixon.18 He would return to the US in 1978 to Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore as a visiting lecturer, as well as lecturing at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona in Urban and International Economics, receiving a doctorate in 1979 for a study 011 land prices in Barcelona.19 However, it was during the first visit—that stay from 1971 to 1973—that Maragall became increasingly convinced that capitalism was capable of surviving, and redeveloping, rather than lapsing into crisis.20 This ran contrary to the analysis of many of his radical contemporaries, and would cement his identity as a social democrat. He argued for a fusion of socialism with liberalism, retaining the principles of pluralism and social justice but questioning the instruments of centralised planning. As Spain’s economic prospects began to close in towards the end of the decade, he would shift his attention ever more closely towards the market, and began to look for ways in which both business and public funding could be used to regenerate the city. Elected as number two on the PSC list in the 1979 local elections, he was given particular responsibility for reforming the city’s

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administrative apparatus, and would become acutely aware of the glaring financial limitations on future spending. The departure of Serra in 1982 to the Defence Ministry would push Maragall into the mayor’s office, and to the forefront of the city’s Olympic bid. He saw immediately how the Games could offer the perfect vehicle for his inclusive, liberal vision of how Barcelona could be developed, and set about extracting maximum benefit from the opportunities offered by the bid. The city had celebrated a World’s Fair in 1888 and an Expo in 1929, which offered very obvious precursors to the 1992 project. Maragall was quick to seize on the parallels: …the expositions of ’88 and ’29—just like ’92 now—opened new frontiers for the city. ’88 wasn’t only the Ciutadella, but also the Eixample, and ’29 was Montjuïc. ’92 is more complex: on one hand, there is Poblenou and the waterfront, but on the other there is [the need to] finish or redo what in ’88 and ’29 was done badly. Because in ’88 and ’29 a lot of things were built without firm foundations.21 In other words, the Olympics fitted in with the stitching and clean-up operations already at work in the city, and the bid marked a shift in scale from the localised project based on provision of new spaces and facilities on a patchwork basis, to a ‘global’ vision of the city, the planner’s vision of how growth could be rebalanced or distributed, how the outlying districts could be consolidated, and how communication could be improved.22 In particular, it allowed the extension of the city’s expressway system, the regeneration of Montjuïc, and the cleaning and modernisation of the city’s de-industrialised waterfront, particularly in Poble Nou. The private sector became heavily involved in the development process, coordinated through public-private organisms such as VOSA (Vila Olímpica S.A.; set up to co-ordinate the building of the Olympic Village), with the public sector preparing the site and infrastructure. Yet aside from the building projects, Maragall’s profile would soar as a result of the Games, and he would engage fully in the Olympic spirit. In a survey published La Vanguardia immediately after the Games, he was ranked equal top with King Juan Carlos as having provided the most identifiable contribution in the running of the Games.23 As one commentator put it in 1987, ‘[t]ime was when he was spoken of as the grandson of the poet…[soon] they will start to speak of Joan Maragall as the grandfather of the mayor’.24 The intense global television coverage of the Olympics gave him a media profile far beyond that of many high-ranking members of the Madrid government, and certainly above that of Pujol. His star rose with that of his city. The infrastructure left in the wake of the Games—the new expressways, the Olympic Village, the public art— smoothed over the post-’92 economic recession, and earned him both adulation and grudging respect from across the political spectrum, allowing him to enhance his profile both in Catalonia and in Europe.

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Indeed, the post-’92 period marked a very clear acceptance by Maragall of the neo-revisionism at large throughout the social democratic movement. He would speak more and more of the challenges of globalisation and the single European market. In 1990 he stated that he wanted Barcelona to be ‘the Vienna of the nineties’, the Olympic Village a latter-day Karl Marx Hof of social housing (and his inability to deliver this must go down as his one great failure of the Games).25 By 1994, he was selling the city-commodity as staunchly as any city booster: ‘here you will find an urban portfolio of the best quality in Europe and at the best price’.26 This reconciliation with the market was a feature of urban politics in post-Keynesian Europe, the Olympics laying the foundation for property-led regeneration, place marketing campaigns, and the expansion of the tourism sector. However, this was seen as a means of levering in resources for investment in the public sphere, in services, spaces and culture, as I shall discuss in greater depth below. So it had a quite clear rationale of redistributing surplus throughout the city. Such pragmatism allowed survival in the 1995 municipal elections. As we recall from chapter 1, a glance at the city’s electoral geography reveals that the PSC’s hold on the city is far from secure. Entering the 1995 campaign, opinion polls suggested that Maragall’s period in office was very probably about to end. Even the highly proletarian Nou Barris had shown signs of deserting the socialists in the 1994 European elections, with a 10% drop in the socialist vote as many of its Hispanicorigin residents switched allegiance (not to the Catalan nationalists, but to the Partido Popular).27 In the event, the PSC’s vote did fall (from the very high preOlympic levels of 1991), with the party winning its traditional areas— the working class districts to the north of the city, Nou Barris, Sant Andreu, Sant Martí, HortaGuinardó—as well as Sants-Montjuïc and the Ciutat Vella. CiU would take the predominantly middle class districts of Les Corts, Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, the Eixample and Gràcia, which taken together form the continuous swathe across the hilly western districts of la zona alta. While the PSC won 38.4% of the vote, the CiU nationalist coalition was dangerously close with 30.5%, enough to threaten the PSC hold 011 the mayor’s office. In the event, the PSC was able to form a coalition with the parties to its left, the Left nationalist Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya, and the communist/green Iniciativa per Catalunya/ Els Verds.28 It was generally accepted that the Barcelona result in 1995 was due largely to Maragall’s personal popularity. In Spain as a whole, the PSOE lost a 13-point lead over the PP, the latter emerging with a 5-point victory and control over every major city in Spain save the Catalan capital. It is this personal vote that Maragall has sought to capitalise upon, using Barcelona as a basis for a wider spatial politics. He has done so by closely monitoring the performance of the Left in the rest of Europe. By 1998 he was looking with admiration at the redefinition of European social democracy led by Tony Blair and Lionel Jospin: Question: You have written articles about the French prime minister Lionel Jospin and I’ve heard you speak a lot about the British premier Tony Blair. Who do you feel closer to?

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Maragall: Personally, although my grandmother was English I feel closer to Jospin, because I know him better… Tony Blair I know less… The Labour Party know that the Right were correct about some things…and they took them on board. In Blair’s speech at Malmo, at the European socialist movement’s conference, we had the family and law and order, the values of the Right, and economic liberalism, with less state intervention. The state has to learn to justify itself more and more, and that’s a medicine that we have to swallow…. Question: Blair has used the idea of the ‘radical centre’. Centrism was criticised by the Left but now seems to offer salvation. Is it the death of politics at the hands of electoral marketing? How can the Left adapt? Maragall: …in the manifesto that [Jospin] published in Le Monde he said ‘Il faut mettre l’homme au coeur de l’économie’, and I thought, ‘How naive, this guy will get a right beating, and nobody will vote for him’. But they did vote for him…sometimes, the great truths and principles serve…to win. That said, the discourse of Blair is much more modern and conscious of the lessons the Right has made us learn and in this context I think he has more future… Blair’s approach is the following: either the Left realise that the working class and a good proportion of the middle classes act together to follow a progressive politics, or there is no Left politics. If the middle classes continue to be seduced by multinationals and minimal social intervention, there is no citizenship, there is 110 progress, there is no democracy, there is no Left. Therefore, the Left to be left has to be centrist, has to position itself in the centre and has to capture the people there…statistically, and make their values the values of the people. That is Blair’s insight. And so the people’s values are law and order, for example. I don’t just agree with that, I practice it.29 This assessment of his social democratic peers shows that Maragall is now fully aware of the need to find electoral space through an appeal to market values, and has floated the possibility of creating a new Catalanist party of the centre-left. Drawing on the successful Italian communist-social democrat coalition of L’Oliva as a potential model, this would attempt to fragment the CiU coalition by drawing off support from the social democrats of the CDC.30 This he links to a (perverse?) commitment to a Clintonised electoral politics, as he revealed at the end of 1997: Question: …you speak less of the PSC than of a future American-style democratic party. Maragall: At the same time as the world is being globalised, parties will also have to adopt other dimensions, as have businesses. There will be a few big parties and then other parties specialising in ecology, pro-European referendum parties etc. Question: The North American model contradicts European democratic culture. It’s a party built around a leader that looks for the media vote every four years….

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Maragall: But society is changing and the parties can’t remain outside these changes. We’re now far away from the epoch when parties were the backbone of society. Social democratic organisations at the start of the century in Europe even looked for a flat for their activists. The parties today don’t have to go flat-hunting for anyone, they have to put forward housing policies. Question: The American model appeals to you because the Republicans and Democrats in the US compete in a shared electoral space? Maragall: European parties have to lose their ideological sectarianism. The citizen doesn’t just want politics. They have other interests. The party can’t give him or her what they want, but simply suitable policies from a choice of change or prudence.31 Should such a manoeuvre be successful—and at present he has had only lukewarm support for his idea—it would allow the socialists the possibility of regaining a national political majority in Spain, bearing in mind that it has been the Catalan and Basque nationalists who have supported the last two coalition governments. At the time of writing, he is yet to declare his aims. However, his decision to step down as mayor in 1997 has been widely interpreted as being the first step in a campaign for the Catalan presidency, a reflection of the importance of both Barcelona and Catalonia in the electoral jigsaw puzzle of Spanish social democracy. The turn away from class ideology to a citizen-based pragmatism is thus the essential basis of Maragallisme. It will be interesting to see how the Catalan and Spanish electoral landscape evolves in the coming years, and whether Maragall can carry through this realpolitik at the level of the Generalitat. What is undeniable, however, is that he has made an explicit redefinition of the relationship between the city and social democracy, based 011 place competition, quality of life, and universal citizenship. Globalisation: Barcelona as competitive city The Europeanisation of Spain was, as described above, very clearly manifested in the changing economic profile of its cities. The magic year of 1992 was not only about the Expo and the Olympics: it also denoted the completion of the single European market which Spain had for so long sought to be a part of. Under the PSOE’s policy of market reform Spanish cities found themselves under severe pressure, and Barcelona was no exception. The economic crisis which had engulfed it by the early 1980s would be exacerbated by the government’s macroeconomic policy. The sale of SEAT to Volkswagen had a disastrous impact on manufacturing in Barcelona, the sell-off leading to the closure of the company’s plant in Zona Franca behind Montjuïc with the loss of 9000 jobs, the biggest lay-off in Spain’s industrial history. Other sectors were also affected: the Dutch chemical group Azko, which had acquired the historic Barcelona company La Seda, closed its plant in the city in 1991 because of heavy losses.32 This reflected a historic downturn: between the late

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1960s and 1985, the city lost 42% of its manufacturing jobs and 69% of its construction jobs. New manufacturing sites tended to be set up outside the city, partly as a result of government initiatives, and there was a noticeable tertiarisation of the city itself, in 1990 almost 70% of jobs being in the service sector.33 In 1991 the city could boast an unemployment rate of 9.4%, six points less than in Spain as a whole, and matching almost exactly the European Community average.34 During this period, we can also witness a change in scale in Maragall’s strategy, which has very clear repercussions for his social democrat identity. We can recall that the political strategy of the PSOE was to achieve the rapid modernisation of the national economy, enabling it to play a full part in the process of European integration and hence ‘to counteract at the supra-national, European level the predominant tendency of neo-liberal deregulation and free market integration’.35 This global project of the PSOE, while reflective of the new realism prevalent throughout European socialism, still retains a strategic overview of the structural forces constraining a Left politics. It is the distinctive municipal reading of this made by Maragall which I turn to now. Maragall was quick to accept as inevitable the economic pressures on the city, making clear his interpretation of the reasons behind the SEAT/Volkswagen takeover: We mustn’t lose sight of what the crisis at SEAT means. It is an important symptom of the new relations and balances in industry and in the European labour market, and is a definitive proof of the internationalisation of the economy to which we belong. The change demands an adaptation to the new necessities and a strengthening of new bases.36 These new necessities required a new strategy, and there emerged within the council an explicit and well-publicised awareness of the spatial dynamics of the European market. The effects of deeper European economic integration for cities had been illustrated by a number of studies, the most influential being that produced by the French regional planning agency DATAR. Most of these studies argued that Europe’s urban hierarchy would undergo significant change as national economic boundaries became less and less relevant. New trade and investment patterns, and the increasing importance of business travel through air and high-speed train networks, would require city governments to reposition themselves in this European market.37 The DATAR study had a profound impact on the council’s thinking, and was frequently drawn upon in policy documents as illustration of the city’s new location in European space. Jordi Borja and Manuel de Forn—both prominent advisers to the mayor’s office—produced strategy documents outlining the future architecture of a ‘European system of cities’. Here, the importance of being competitive internationally was stressed:

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Inter-city rankings, in fashion at present, not only show competition between cities, but also what factors are considered to be more significant, like: the presence of multinational companies, higher education centers, research and development centers…; communications infrastructures and services for companies and citizens; quality of life; international relationships—agencies’ head offices, holding congresses and symposiums, cultural interest etc.—and the existence of a wide range of service centers for companies.38 Likewise, de Forn discusses the impact of the Single Market on the Spanish and Barcelona economy, and stresses the need for concentration on the city’s most competitive sectors, for training policies, and for forceful city marketing strategies.39 Initially, the Olympics were seen as an opportunity to modernise the city’s infrastructure while retaining redistributive goals. However, it has been suggested that the council’s development strategies became successively more systematised (and boosterist) as the Games approached. In 1990, this was made concrete when the council unveiled the Barcelona 2000 Economic and Social Strategic Plan. This civic booster’s charter pulled together a who’s who of the city’s elites, among them the city council, chamber of commerce, employer’s federation, Trade Fair, Port Authority, trade unions and various other groups. Its ‘strategic lines’ sought to reposition the city in a European macro-region (based around the northwest Mediterranean), to improve quality of life, and to support industry and advanced business services. It initially sought to include reference to ecological sustainability, but such aims were subsequently dropped as being uncompetitive. In 1994 this was taken further with the approval of a second strategic plan, which demonstrates a harder focus on competitiveness. Major infrastructural goals such as the expansion of the airport and the container port—both of which threatened serious environmental degradation—were prioritised regardless. Focusing on the attraction of business tourism, real estate investment, and expanding flagship cultural facilities, the city council now pursues an aggressive boosterism aimed at becoming a highly competitive player in the new ‘Europe of the cities’ identified in the DATAR study.40 This involved rewriting the city’s position within Europe. The council embarked on elaborate place marketing campaigns, which—as with the likes of Glasgow’s Miles Better programme—were aimed both at residents as well as at foreign investors and tourists. Early projects included the 1985 Barcelona Posa’t Guapa (Barcelona Make Yourself Beautiful) campaign, which focused on public-private co-operation in the cleaning and restoration of many of the city’s architecturally notable facades. Then came the Olympics and Mariscal’s Cobi emblem, and the unique opportunity to take advantage of unprecedented global media coverage. This would be followed up by the Barcelona més que mai (Barcelona more than ever) slogan, and the Barcelona New Projects exhibition, which aimed to fill the post-Olympic gap. (Groups opposed to the boosterist project were quick to subvert these marketing campaigns which, along with the cartoons of Cobi being savaged and beaten up,

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gave us ‘més que mai contra la Barcelona Olímpica’—‘Against Olympic Barcelona more than ever’).41 Back in the council think-tank, however, the Games were seen as a unique opportunity to link Barcelona into the European economy on the ground, as well as on paper. Major infrastructural projects were set up through partnership with other state levels: central government, Generalitat and the city council formed a partnership to expand the port around the delta of the Llobregat river to the west of the city, co-ordinating rail, airport and road connections and consolidating the city’s leadership over the other major Mediterranean ports of Genoa and Marseilles.42 Emphasis was placed on linking into the European high-speed rail network, with connections north to the French system and south to Madrid (and hence Seville). The city’s trade fair, La Fira, was doubled in size in an attempt to promote exports and draw in international business tourism.43 In addition, the council pursued a number of initiatives designed to increase the city’s integration into the newly relevant cross-border regional economy. One such was the C-6 network, linking Barcelona with Palma de Mallorca, Zaragoza, Valencia, Toulouse and Montpellier. This included co-operation in a variety of fields, such as joint projects on university training, sharing experience on tourism and financial management, and improving transportation links between the cities. In other words, the intention was to promote a cultural and functional integration between the territorially propinquitous cities, preparing for the gradual economic integration that would take place as the single European market matured.44 These issues of co-operation had long been on the mind of Maragall. In 1986 the city council had got together with the city councils of Rotterdam, Birmingham, Lyon, Frankfurt and Milan to form the embryo of what would eventually become the Eurocities movement, which attempted to share the cost in practical projects which addressed common urban problems (such as computerised traffic management systems), and aimed at providing a lobbying voice for cities in the European Union.45 While the Olympics were the initial focus of the regeneration strategy, after 1992 the council had to capitalise on the stimulus it gave to the local economy. Its strategy of courting further private investment—particularly in the service sector— could be seen in the New Projects campaign described above. Companies such as Marks and Spencer are now being drawn in, attracted by the fact that only 15% of the Catalan retail market is held by the multiples. New shopping complexes —the Illa, a 56,000-square metre site close to Pedralbes, Sarrià and Sant Gervasi, the city’s richest districts, Glories (serving the northeast of the city), and the ‘golden triangle’ in Plaça de Catalunya (site of the now-demolished Café Zurich) —seem likely to revolutionise the retailing sector, to the detriment of locally based traders and the famed municipal markets. It remains to be seen whether the political weight of these traders—who traditionally support the CiU—is enough to stop the onset of the ‘French’ model of suburban malls.46 And the planning department has continued to intervene in the city’s built environment in what it calls la segona renovació, the ‘second renewal’, facilitating the expansion of university sites, undertaking housing

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improvements in Nou Barris, continuing to redevelop the Ciutat Vella, and— perhaps most significantly—the building of a high-speed train interchange in Sagrera.47 So the logic of globalisation—whether through the arrival of VW or of foreign retail capital—is an essential component of Maragallisme. However, several commentators have argued that this proactive, offensive strategy of making cities more competitive is merely involving them in a process of undercutting each other, ‘hostile brothers’ that overplay their hands in the race for pole position in the new Single Market: …this ‘ritual incantation’ of the need to compete in a ‘globalised’ world has been gradually accepted and even celebrated by the new breed European social democratic movement, this despite the strong evidence which suggests that localisation is undermining, rather than empowering, localities.48 Maragall has several responses to that, however, which help mark out a distinctive stance on neo-liberal ‘new localism’, and which point towards a social democratic version of local boosterism. Beaches, malls and office blocks: the ‘Barcelona model’ In the last few years, effectively, the city has made a qualitative leap. From the ‘Olympic and metropolitan’ city that we demanded in 1982, we have passed to a Barcelona that, once Europe’s internal borders are removed, is the centre of a euroregion of 15 million inhabitants, and that aspires to be the gateway to southern Europe and one of the European cultural capitals.49 I remember reading somewhere that the North Korean communist party once had as a slogan the phrase ‘rice is communism’. Maragall could—if he so desired —equally boast that ‘beaches are municipal social democracy’. Not quite the pith of the Koreans, perhaps, but Barcelona’s sandscapes epitomise the benefits brought to the city by the Olympics. As you lie and bake and feel the salt cake in your throat and try to avoid catching sight of the city’s over-exposed elderly, you may be unaware that all this is a very recent arrival. The planked walkways which bound the beaches, the showers, the litter-bins, the tractors that come at night to hoover the sand (or whatever it is that they do) are all the result of the city council’s generous approach to public space. But before the advent of the Olympics released funds to refurbish the coastline, this beach culture was as alien to the city as it was to the inhabitants of land-locked Madrid. While the city has 12.7 kilometres of coastline, the sea was all but hidden from its citizens by the warehouses and docks of the industrial port. It is a commonplace to read how the city ‘grew with its back to the sea’, its watery

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mysteries only to be visited on the occasional trip around the harbour on the golondrines (pleasure-boats). Instead, you had to pile on a train and head north towards the Maresme and the Costa Brava. But the city’s planners had long seen the possibility of establishing a Catalan Copacabana, creating a beach which could link up with those beyond the city’s northern boundaries. After all, of all European cities only Naples could boast a greater length of beach within its municipal boundaries. The only problem was its condition: effluent, rubbish, shanty-towns and erosion were all obstacles to the creation of this golden paradise. The strategy to clean the coastline was given a boost by the winning of the Olympics, of course. The opportunity afforded by the construction of the Olympic Village would include the removal of polluting industries and the regulation of sewer outflows, Maragall even taking the plunge to prove to his citizens that the water was now, finally, clean. The strip of beaches running from Barceloneta (2.2 kilometres), Somorrostro (0.7 kilometres) and Mar Bella at Poble Nou (2.7 kilometres) would eventually be cleaned, giving the sea back to the city.50 And in 1997 it would even welcome its first nudist beach (at Mar Bella), although on its first, chilly day of functioning there were reputedly more reporters than there were clothesless. From Barceloneta beach you can see where the money came from. North lie the twin high-rises of the MAPFRE tower (which immediately upon completion fell victim to an urban myth which stated that it was, ever so slightly, leaning) and the Hotel Arts, softened by Frank Gehry’s giant copper-coloured fish sculpture. Look south and you see the Port Vell (old port), whose name belies the activities which cluster around it. Dominating the view is Maremagnum, the flipside to Barcelona’s public space programme: a model of development popularised in the ailing seaports of North America and slicking nastily across the murky waters of old European ports. Whether you be in Liverpool, Cardiff or Genoa, the same combination of high-yield office building, car parks, heritage museums and marinas dot the quays of these obsolete ports.51 In Barcelona, industrial activity has slid around Montjuïc. From certain points on the hilltop you can look out over the shimmering, yellowhazed containers and cranes of the city’s working port as it stretches past the Zona Franca and the Llobregat river towards the airport. Back down in the old city, the Port Vell twinkles with its formula restaurants, its cinemas and moored yachts. Maremagnum is reached by a stylish planked boardwalk which crosses the water to join the Moll d’Espanya, the revivified quayside. This promenade—the Rambla del Mar—forms a continuation of the Rambles, an extension of the classic stroll from Plaça de Catalunya past the statue of Columbus, and out over the final, lapping waves of the Mediterranean. Negotiating this can be difficult—Saturday night and Sunday afternoon see pedestrian sovereignty gone mad, tailbacks spilling onto the quay— but once over, the rewards are plentiful. Security guards and pricey squid help deter the rabble. The waterfront is a concrete manifestation of the council’s economic strategy, which is explained with a robust, neo-Marxian logic. For public spaces and services to be provided in a time of macro-economic austerity, the private sector has to be attracted in and part of their surplus skimmed off to serve the common good. This

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Plate 4 The Olympic Village from Barceloneta. The rigorously maintained beaches which stretch from Barceloneta northwards to the municipal boundaries of the city are a pay-off from the arrival of corporate capital in the Olympic Village. To the left is Rebecca Horn’s public art sculpture, and in the distance are Frank Gehry’s Fish and the twin towers of the Village. (Source: Vicky Webb)

approach, dragging in the private sector and different levels of government to pay for infrastructure improvements, has been repeated throughout the city. Conceived before the winning of the Olympic nomination in the mid-1980s, the policy— known as Àrees de Nova Centralitat (New Downtown Areas, as the council translates it)—was intended to relieve the concentration of economic activity in the Eixample, moving it out to 10 newly created sites in the city.52 As well as the sea-front towers, major office developments have appeared at Plaça Cerdà (on the way to the airport), at Diagonal-Sarrià, in Carrer Tarragona (billed as ‘Barcelona’s Wall Street’), which runs past the main railway station at Sants, and in the four Olympic sites. A massive new culture zone has been created at the Glories motorway interchange, featuring Ricard Bofill’s enormous, white neo-classical national theatre. The council has also tried—though to date without success—to develop a major site at Diagonal-Mar, where the Diagonal finally ends its cross-city path as it reaches the sea. These were all valorised by the complete renovation of the city’s motorway infrastructure as a result of the Games. The policy has certainly been successful in attracting investment: one study notes that between 1993 and 1996 a total of 175,000 m2 of new space was scheduled to come on-stream in the ‘new downtown areas’, but that this was combined with an increase in the over-supply of office space from 5% in 1985 to 15% in the mid-1990s.53 Whether investment equals sustainable growth remains to be seen.

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The Olympic Village encapsulates the council’s approach, part of a bid to halt what they have called the ‘Marseillisation’ of Barcelona, where a middle class flight to the suburbs is compounded by a growing pool of unemployment and a shrinking tax base. The city’s population has been falling steadily since the 1980s, and the council identified the need to provide a supply of quality housing to counteract this trend, enticing in high-income earners. Maragall has favourably contrasted the ‘Barcelona model’ with the North American urban experience, the former being ‘the unsegregated city, in which diverse uses cohabit…and which don’t constitute unbreachable barriers that separate rich from poor districts, as happens in the US’.54 However, critics have contested this, and Maragall’s response to the suggestion that Barcelona is too expensive to live in is telling: That’s another issue. We often identify living with sleeping and this confusion is bad. There are a lot of people who don’t sleep in Barcelona, but ‘live’ in it. That makes us think of the city as a wider space. And so we see the importance of the metropolitan areas, that will never be sufficiently well structured if the fiscal regime is limited to paying taxes only in the place where you sleep.55 This interpretation—of the city as a space to be shared by all—is used to justify a fairly orthodox regeneration strategy aimed at maximising revenues. For Maragall and his council, the motivation for the Olympic bid was from the outset a means of gaining access to central funding for infrastructural improvements and public services. The establishment of a joint venture public body, HOLSA, comprising the city council and central government allowed the construction of city ring-roads, sewer networks and sports facilities, as well as attracting investment from other public bodies such as the railway and telecom companies. Around two-thirds of total spending on Olympic-related projects was publicly funded.56 The four main Olympic sites corresponded to the priority ‘new downtown areas’ referred to above, the objective being to decentralise economic activity from the Eixample grid, the traditional business centre. Thus the targeted regeneration of particular urban areas was undertaken through the excuse of the Olympics, but with longer-term benefits seen as an integral part of the project. This is only to be expected, Maragall argues. Not only has he sought to capture funds from the centre, he has also spent a lot of time articulating a rationale, almost an ideology, which serves to justify the spending of public money by city governments. He draws a parallel with the ease with which national governments can legitimate military spending during wartime, or diplomatic crises, and argues that in peacetime these arguments disappear, thus freeing money for the local: …the strength of local government is a barometer of democracy, as well as of efficiency. Of democracy, because a greater part of public resources are spent closer to the citizen. Of efficiency, similarly: no-one really knows if spending

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Plate 5 Carrer Tarragona from Hostafrancs. The high-rise office blocks of Carrer Tarragona are an example of the council’s ‘new downtown areas’ policy, attempting to decongest the Eixample and regenerate various parts of the city. (Source: author)

on embassies is a little or a lot, but everyone knows very well if sanitation has improved, and if it has improved more than the corresponding tax rise.57 Again, the city is a more concrete site of public spending than the more abstract nation-state, and this transparency adds to its potential for strengthening democracy.

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Maragall also has his eyes fixed firmly on the distribution of funding between centre, region and municipality in Spain, suggesting that the Generalitat’s share is too great (although presumably he would alter this argument should he become president of the Generalitat). He has also formed a lobby with the mayors of Spain’s seven largest cities (by the mid 1990s the only socialist representative) to argue that such cities are underfunded given their need to provide services for non-residents, primarily tourists and commuters. In other words, they have to subsidise museums, pay for wear and tear on roads, for added pollution. In the mid-1980s, it was estimated that commuters filled 13% of all jobs in Barcelona (160,000 people making the journey to and from the city every day) but who paid nothing towards the cost of local services. In nearby municipalities such as Sant Cugat or Badalona, as much as 36% of the population worked in Barcelona itself.58 As these people were generally seen to benefit from the lower prices of the metropolitan belt, and formed part of the decline of population in the city proper, Maragall has raised the possibility of introducing taxation—a kind of toll —aimed at regular users of the city who are not contributing to the tax bill.59 While his 1997 proposal quickly disappeared from view, its message is clear: Barcelona is underfunded by the Generalitat, the argument runs, and needs a greater share of public spending within Catalan political space. The battle over the distribution of public funds is given an added twist in Barcelona by the extreme sensitivity attached to gaining political credit for the successful completion of projects. This has always coloured Maragall’s political relationship with prime minister González, which was always—it is rumoured — uneasy, due to the former’s persistence in going to Madrid with cap in hand. As we saw in chapter 3, the Generalitat showed a great reluctance to fund certain projects linked with the Games due to their (justified) fear that Maragall would accrue the credit. And so, in Maragall’s first meeting with José Maria Aznar after the latter’s general election victory in 1996, few promises were forthcoming about funding to the city, with Aznar particularly sensitive to agreeing to anything which would offend Pujol, his principal coalition partner.60 Nonetheless, the Games were so successful in terms of place marketing and releasing public funds that in 1996 the council announced their intention to bid for an Expo in 2004. When it was realised—to some embarrassment among the normally super-efficient council—that the rules governing an Expo prevented one being held in that year, Maragall enlisted the backing of UNESCO and announced that the city would stage, in 2004, an Expo-type event designed to regenerate the northern and eastern reaches of the city, the Mediterranean waterfront east of Poble Nou and to clean up the Besós river and its surrounding districts. Just as Serra had bequeathed him the Games upon his departure in 1982, so Maragall would leave his successor, Joan Clos, with the chance to make his name through a major spectacle.61 In keeping with the party spirit, on the night of 16th October, 1996, the council organised a spectacle commemorating 10 years since the winning of the Olympic nomination. Not of holding the Games, of winning the nomination. Four giant video screens above the Avenida Maria Cristina—the broad boulevard which runs

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from Plaça d’Espanya to the foot of Montjuïc—projected a specially commissioned film showing the Olympic highlights: Samaranch reading the nomination result in 1986, the jubilant Maragall, the major building works, the arrival of the flame, the opening ceremony, the flaming arrow that reputedly lit up the big bunsen burner above the stadium, the Spanish medallists, Cobi and, of course, Freddie Mercury and Montserrat Caballé singing ‘Barcelona’. Judging by the turn-out—a pretty reasonable 180,000 citizens—the party atmosphere is one that the inhabitants like.62 Who knows what surprises await in 2002, let alone 2004. So, Maragallisme could almost be defined as the ‘art of leverage’, as the mayor has spent much of his time tapping possible channels of external funding. For social democratic urban regimes this has been the post-Keynesian challenge: to push, prod and cajole central or regional governments to provide them with more resources to spend on infrastructure or public services, and to lever in private investment. Glasgow used the City of Culture to regenerate its arts infrastructure and remarket itself, Manchester and Birmingham have made bids for the Olympics, Lisbon and Seville have turned to Expos. But what is the relationship of these urban spectacles to social democratic goals? Is there a distinction to be drawn between social democratic big events and those with little public sector control? Deyan Sudjic makes reference to ‘the two extremes of Los Angeles and Barcelona’ in manners of organising the Olympics, the former being staged more as a virtual event geared towards merchandising and global advertising, the latter providing a basis for a fundamental transformation of the city’s physical environment with a clearly defined public strategy.63 It is this latter aspect which gives Maragallisme its redistributionist profile, with the public again being defined as essentially classless users of the city. Europe, solidarity and citizenship Maragall’s 15-year reign in the city council has demonstrated that he is a consummate politician, with an ability to follow through projects of considerable complexity—such as the building of the Olympic Village—as well as to remain a popular figure both in the streets and at the polls. His international reputation was also cemented by the successful staging of the Games, his eloquence and statesmanlike approach evidently bewildering journalists more used to the grunting parochialism of British town halls. As one Financial Times reporter cooed: While the public image of Pasqual Maragall is that of a can-do mayor…the private persona is a deeply reflective scholar. Mr Maragall is something of a philosopher mayor, who likes to discuss Sir Ralf Dahrendorf in the way that a philosopher king such as Frederick of Russia talked about Voltaire.64 His repeated (and often repetitive) forays into the publishing world have ensured that the city’s second-hand bookshops will be kept well stocked with his words of wisdom for years to come. What is notable about his period in office is the

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willingness—expressed in such books as Refent Barcelona (Remaking Barcelona) (1986) and Barcelona, la Ciutat Retrobada (Barcelona, the Rediscovered City) (1991)65 —to commit his thoughts to paper. And what these works demonstrate is the degree to which he has developed a clearly theoretical approach to ruling Barcelona which goes beyond the day-to-day running of the city. What I want to do in this final section is to look at this approach, and to draw out what I see as being a very explicit politics of space which goes beyond the rather more resource-driven or boosterist strategies described above. In particular, Maragall has promoted themes of solidarity and collaboration, and has sought international fora which give cities— rather than the usual nation-states—a voice. The key problem facing social democrats in cities is this: they believe to a certain degree in the redistribution of wealth (if not now in class terms), but are faced with the need to act as managers of growth, fighting with their ‘hostile brothers’, their erstwhile allies, in town halls across Europe.66 The bleakness of this destructive ‘zerosum’ competition (where the victory of one city comes at the expense of another) has been a source of particular anguish to a Left accustomed to thinking in internationalist terms. Of course, this puts them in a double bind: social democrats were once preoccupied with effecting the redistribution of wealth within cities; now their attention is focused on the scope for redistribution between cities. Maragall has used Barcelona as a kind of laboratory on this issue, which has given him a distinctive perspective on the problems facing social democracy as a whole. His thinking is consonant with the likes of Jordi Borja and Manuel Castells who have seen cities as a kind of defence against an increasingly chaotic global capitalism. As Castells has put it: Because European cities have strong civil societies, rooted in an old history and a rich, diversified culture, they could stimulate citizen participation as a fundamental antidote against tribalism and alienation. And because the tradition of European cities as city states leading the pace to the modern age in much of Europe is engraved in the collective memory of their people, the revival of the city state could be the necessary complement to the expansion of a global economy and the creation of a European state.67 Whether or not one agrees with some of the questionable assumptions in this statement, the thrust of the approach is clear. City-states could re-emerge which promote citizenship and solidarity and could organise on a European level, thus helping to account for the waning of the nation-state as a source of identity. As I explore in the next chapter, there is close proximity between the work of Castells and Borja and that of Maragall: here, it is worth recognising the shared analysis of cities as agents, and it is this which gives a more libertarian version of the future social democratic project (contrasting with the authoritarian tones of the Blair government in Britain). I suggest that Maragall’s ‘foreign policy’ is based around four strands.

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First, he has embraced the European Union as an inevitability, and has forcefully suggested that cities should be at the forefront of subsidiarity, the taking of decisions as close to the citizens as possible. Thus, while Maragall has been active in forming lobby groups with Spain’s other major cities, he has focused on Brussels as the appropriate level to deal with the issue. One early example was his argument that the European Community should be subsidising cities, rather than agriculture, a Common Urban Policy instead of a Common Agricultural Policy: ‘Europe has to recover a certain urban militancy. Paying for food surpluses is expensive and has to be done every year. Paying for the cities is also expensive, but cities are already there: they are not produced yearly’.68 Such a militancy is evident in the debate about the gap in credibility and democratic accountability between the European Union and the individual. ‘We have to strengthen the values of the city as collectivity, as an entity, as a governmental unit to strengthen the principle of subsidiarity. Just as the great continental blocks are being formed, so it’s [also] necessary that politics is situated at a level closer to the citizen’.69 His second, fairly radical, proposal relates directly to Barcelona’s subordination to Madrid within Spain. He argues for the redistribution of the resources and duties from capital cities to the second cities in any given nation-state, given the changing spatial logic of a European ‘system of cities’. In this (overplayed?) scenario, capital cities will lose much of their weight as the nation-state is subsumed by European integration (and we can recall the academic weight that the DATAR study offered here). Taken on a tour of London by the Financial Times, he reflects on this: The taxi slows and Maragall joins the tourists watching the changing of the guard. The Royal parks and Buckingham Palace are illuminated by a spring sun… ‘When I see all this, I think, God it’s beautiful. It is the summit of humanity, but I also think, how unfair. Why is it that it is always capital cities that have the wealth of nations to spend on themselves? What will happen to London when it is not the capital of a sovereign state when the real nation is Europe?’70 To achieve this redistribution, Maragall has protagonised in pioneering new political movements where the voices of cities can be heard. As discussed above, Barcelona has been prominent in the Eurocities networking movement, a body which seeks to strengthen the position of cities within a Europe where the nationstate has long been the orthodox centre of political activity. Eurocities has acted both as a forum for developing common political stances as well as allowing for the development of joint projects related to urban policy. Through his protagonism in this network, Maragall was elected joint president of the Committee of the Regions, the body established by the Maastricht Treaty to provide input from sub-national levels of government, a mandate he held for two years. With the European Commission viewing them sympathetically, urban leaders have been active in developing joint lobbying projects.71 The municipalities’ claim for special treatment has been met with their inclusion into the membership of the Committee of the

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Regions, and the establishment of a funding programme—URBAN— dedicated to tackling specific problems facing cities. Third, a strong European system of cities will give greater leverage at the global, or international, level. Maragall’s presidency of the Committee of the Regions allowed him to continue his Olympic role as a kind of diplomat for cities, and he was active in promoting the perspective of big cities in meetings with United Nations president Pérez de Cuellar. The UN-sponsored Habitat II conference, held in Istanbul in 1996, set out possible grounds for that organisation’s intervention in promoting issues such as sustainability and multi-culturalism in cities around the world.72 Maragall has also been quick to point out the willingness of the World Bank and other agencies to embrace the ‘catastrophist discourse’ on uncontrollable urban growth, which sees cities as being uneconomic. In turn, he suggests, their policies are geared towards an (authoritarian?) response of ruralisation. This is entirely reactionary, argues Maragall: ‘The global village will be a world of cities or it shall not be’. He extends this cosmopolitan analysis to attack nationalism, citing the ‘tension between the global and local, which carries a perception of distance as difference, a difference that can be used demagogically…as has happened in the case of Bosnia’.73 Cities are a place where this tension can be resolved. The rhetoric is interesting, and it is clear he is aware of the problems faced on his own doorstep. When one witnesses the sullen cabezas rapadas (skinheads) which litter the city’s streets—both affluent and poor—with their bomber jackets, scooters, and wilful ignorance; when one hears the monkey noises meted out by the crowd at the Camp Nou against visiting black Real Madrid players; when one talks to certain ‘educated’ citizens of middle class Barcelona with their rarely veiled Catalan supremacism; when one reads in La Vanguardia of the regular racist attacks perpetrated against North African immigrants, often in the satellite towns of the metropolitan region far from the civilised urbanity offered by the Rambla, it is apparent that the city has a long way to go in living up to its ‘cosmopolitan’ image. Precisely because of this, Maragall’s political agenda has been the development of a kind of municipal foreign policy which aims to show solidarity with other cities around the world. So, fourth, along with the boosterist place marketing that the city has pursued, Maragall has also followed a kind of diplomatic boosterism, using visits to Sarajevo to set up an ‘embassy for local democracy’ under the auspices of Eurocities, and lobbying the International Olympic Committee for funds to help reconstruct the destroyed residential district of Mojmilo, which had acted as the Olympic Village in the 1984 Winter Games.74 He also looked further afield than Europe. In 1992, Maragall signed a joint declaration with the mayor of Rio to mark the prominence of the two cities in that year (Rio hosting the Earth Summit), part of which stated: ‘[i]t is not positive that resources generated in a rich business centre or a high-income suburb should not go back to the neighbourhoods where most people live and work. This would be the greatest lack of solidarity of all’.75 As well as these, the city is part of various co-operative networks with cities in Latin America and the

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Mediterranean, and has signed friendship treaties with cities as diverse as Havana and Boston.76 Thus international solidarity and the defence of international citizenship is at the heart of Maragall’s vision of the future of social democracy, both as a movement and in terms of ideology. The city acts as a flagship, with the cultural weight of the old city-states, as a means of expressing a culture of citizenship (of responsibility as well as individual rights). Barcelona is today, effectively, a reference point for Europe and the world. That you see when you visit the United States and they’re making a film… called ‘Barcelona’ [Whit Stillman’s 1994 production], and everyone is asking you about your city. Or when the mayor of Asuncion in Paraguay affirms in front of President González that Barcelona is the example to follow. Or when the new mayor of Rome, a ‘green’ who managed to beat his neo-fascist opponent, says that he wants to achieve the same citizen involvement that we have achieved in Barcelona.77 The message here: that Barcelona acts as a laboratory to promote a new European, and global, citizenship. This is socialist internationalism of a deeply committed sort, a doctrine which is aware of the constraints of structural forces, yet which maximises the limited power available to pursue strategies of solidarity. This aspect of Maragallisme is exemplary. ✤✤✤ On 26th September, 1997, Maragall resigned his post as mayor. He returned to his academic life on a year’s lecturing post in Rome, giving courses on ‘the Barcelona model’ and on a ‘Europe of cities and regions’.78 Meanwhile, back home, the city’s political classes pondered over whether he would return from his period of exile to stand as the PSC’s candidate for the forthcoming elections to the Generalitat, a potentially decisive vote for a post-Pujolist Catalonia. There is little doubt he would be wel received: his reputation has grown with that of the city, and Maragallisme as doctrine is man and the city merged into a political package. It is at once a discourse, a strategy, and an ideology. By way of conclusion, I want to discuss each of these in turn. When we look at how Maragall discusses Barcelona—the ‘Barcelona model’, the ‘city is the people’, the Eurocity, the gateway to southern Europe, a capital of Spain —it is worth noting how prevalent the trope of the city is within his speeches, interviews and writings. This is relatively rare: socialist politicians have often been associated with other discourses-class, welfare, services, jobs—as a focus for political strategy and ideology. The city is the lens through which Maragall views the political landscape. This, of course, is due to his reliance on Barcelona as power base: it both informs and is in turn shaped by his political project. In his capacity as mayor, he is undoubtedly the prime shaper of discourse on the city on the international stage. This has a lot in common with identities based on dwelling in a place such as nationalism (see chapter 3), rather than occupation or social class, and his

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pronouncements on these matters take the form of a kind of political place marketing. This has also involved a redefinition of the city over time: Catalanist, not nationalist; social democratic, not socialist; cosmopolitan, not essentialist; European, more than Spanish. So it is crucial to note that the city is a signifier for other distinctive strands of his political approach. This, in turn, is highly strategic. What Maragallisme represents, above all, is the realisation that in cities where old working class areas are being gentrified and where location and quality of life issues are paramount, there is no longer an in-built socialist majority. In the case of Barcelona, the hold of social democrats on the council remains tenuous. And given the importance of the city for the social democratic project in Catalonia and Spain, it would appear that the electoral aspect of ‘new realism’, of appealing to middle class voters, is the only way to retain control of one of its key fiefdoms. The city is thus constructed not as a needy recipient of government funding, but instead as a strategic space to be controlled. By definition, the city is multi-class, a space for citizenship as a basis of identity, rather than being bourgeois or proletarian. This is tied in with the Left’s search for new social constituencies (as in Maragall’s discussion of Jospin and Blair). To talk up the city is also a prelude to controlling it politically, in terms of both attracting votes and levering investment and resources. Finally, this is ideological. The adoption of a new realist/neo-revisionist approach targeted towards achievable goals is constructed as being inevitable and necessary. This fits snugly with the ‘new localist’ literature referred to above: competitive cities seeking a place in the world. Maragall’s trick has been to compete less with the ‘hostile brothers’, and he has sought to make zero-sum gains against, primarily, nation-states, the Generalitat, or the Common Agricultural Policy. His emphasis on citizenship, solidarity and collaboration is an ingenious solution to the shrinking political landscape facing social democrats. The key to success is through combining competitiveness with a strengthened civil society. But this aspect of Maragallisme has its own tensions, as I now explore. Notes 1 Felix Badia, ‘Barcelona desplaza a Zurich y es la sexta ciudad europea preferida para los negocios’, La Vanguardia 9 October 1995, p. 47. 2 Ajuntament de Barcelona (1994b), p. 13. 3 As Holman (1996, p. 101) points out, in 1976 González ‘argued that NATO was nothing but a military superstructure introduced by the US with no other reason than to guarantee the survival of the capitalist system.’ 4 See, for example, Sassoon (1996), chapter 19. 5 The Socialist International—the umbrella group of the European social democratic movement—had seen in Spain the potential for a strong ally, and had provided the funding which allowed the PSOE to emerge from near obsolescence to becoming the strongest challenge to the PCE of the array of Left parties which existed in the mid-1970s. González was the key to this support: Willy Brandt (German chancellor

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6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30

31 32

33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40

and leader of the SPD) had seen in the young Sevillano the future of the Spanish movement (Holman 1996, pp. 84–5). Holman (1996), p. 122. Holman (1996), p. 124. Navarro (1997) suggests that this is not entirely fair, given the limited expansion of the welfare state and the (limited) attention paid to the unions. Petras (1993), p. 95. Hooper (1995), pp. 57 and 62. Figures from Heywood (1995), p. 221. Petras (1993) suggests that the clientelism and corruption was such that the PSOE had more in common with the Mexican ‘socialist’ party, the PRI, than with northern European social democratic parties. In Spanish municipal elections, the mayor is elected by the councillors; however, in the election campaigns it is always clear that the number one in the party list is the ‘presidential’ figurehead. In Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 352. Maragall (1997a), pp. 139–40. In Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 354. In Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 358. Febrés and Rivière (1991), p. 69. Arenós and Saladrigas (1997), p. 363. Febrés and Rivière (1991), pp. 67–9. In HOLSA (c. 1990), p. 285. For an overview see Acebillo (c. 1993). Botella (1995), p. 147. Bastardes (1987), p. 87. Maragall (1991a), p. 146. In Ajuntament de Barcelona (1994b), p. 7. ‘Nou Barris, el objeto del deseo’, La Vanguardia 18 May 1995, pp. 19–20. Figures drawn from La Vanguardia, 29 May 1995, p. 35. In Alvaro (1998), pp. 51–3. It is worth bearing in mind that the PSC is a very young party, and its abolition/ reform would tug fewer heartstrings than the renaming of, say, the Labour Party; on the new party, see ‘Maragall resucita su proyecto de partido socioconvergente del 2000’, La Vanguardia 21 February 1996, p. 13. Pasqual Maragall interviewed by Tomàs Delclós (1997), Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 234–7. Tom Burns, ‘Labour laws weigh heavily’, Financial Times 16 November 1993, supplement p. iv ; ‘VW expects Seat pact today’, Financial Times 15 December 1993, p. 3. Sánchez (1997), pp. 188–95. Ajuntament de Barcelona (1992), p. 71. Holman (1996), p. 207. Maragall (1994), pp. 17–18. See Newman and Thornley (1996), pp. 14–17. Borja (1992), pp. 22–3. de Forn (1992). Marshall (1996).

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41 See Busquet (1992). 42 Marshall (1994) provides an excellent summary of the complex inter-institutional negotiations behind this project. 43 Marshall (1996); Pradas (1998). 44 Morata (1997). 45 Marlow (1992), p. 28. 46 Pradas (1998), pp. 203–7. 47 See Ajuntament de Barcelona (1996). 48 Harvey (1989); Peck and Tickell (1994); quotation from Lovering (1995). 49 Maragall (1995), p. 15. 50 Data from Febrés and Rivière (1991), p. 47. 51 See Jauhiainen (1995). 52 Ajuntament de Barcelona (1991). This was subsequently extended to twelve, adding Montjuïc and Diagonal Olympic sites. 53 Riera and (1995), p. 240.’ 54 Maragall (1995), p. 16. 55 Maragall in ‘Un regalo que Barcelona se ha hecho a sí misma’, round-table discussion with J.A.Benach and M.Rivière, in Ajuntament de Barcelona (1993), p. 13. 56 Brunet (1995). 57 In Bastardes (1987), p. 88. 58 ‘La capitalidad metropolitana de Barcelona se extiende más allá de la Region 1’, El País 7 April 1997, Cataluña, p. 4. 59 For a very critical view, see Agustí Bosch, ‘Una Barcelona de peaje’, El País 20 April 1997, Cataluña, p. 2. 60 Enric Juliana, ‘Aznar recibe a Maragall pero evita cualquier compromiso que pueda soliviantar a Pujol’, La Vanguardia 29 October 1996, p. 29. 61 Formally launched as ‘El Forum Universal de les Cultures 2004’, with the theme ‘Cultures for peace’, and with cross-party support. Lluís Uría, ‘Barcelona recupera el espíritu olímpico y aprueba per unanimidad el Forum 2004’, El País 26 April 1997, Cataluña, p. 1. 62 Marta Ricart, ‘Noche de nostalgia en Montjuïc’, La Vanguardia 17 October 1996, p. 34. 63 Sudjic (1992), p. 260. 64 Tom Burns, ‘Philosopher speaks with the voice of reason’, Financial Times 16 November 1993, p. 7. 65 Maragall (1986) and Maragall (1991b) respectively. 66 Peck and Tickell (1994). 67 Borja and Castells (1997); Castells (1994); p. 32; similarly, Amin and Graham (1997, p. 427) argue that one impact of neo-liberalism on urban debate has been to see cities as ‘an economic liability—pits into which public subsidy and social support must go to prop up ailing and anachronistic urban areas’. This view ‘seriously underestimates the economic costs of unemployment, crime, fear of crime, depressed demand and a declining urban fabric… Ultimately, the state of the entire urban collectivity feeds back into the circuit of economic activity. But our case may be strengthened by the argument that a sense of place and belonging taps into hidden potential and the sources of social confidence that lie at the core of risk-taking entrepreneurial activity’. This new realist socialist stance does not, however, take us much beyond solving the conflicts between exchange and use values which arise in most boosterist strategies.

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68 Cited in Hughes (1992), p. 37. 69 Maragall in ‘Un regalo que Barcelona se ha hecho a sí misma’, round-table discussion with J.A.Benach and M.Rivière, in Ajuntament de Barcelona (1993), p. 15. 70 Jimmy Burns, ‘Man with a plan tries to make sense of London’, Financial Times 5 June 1993, London supplement, p. x. 71 See, for example, McAJcavey and Mitchell (1994). 72 Borja and Castells (1997), chapter 9. 73 Maragall (1997b), pp. 89 and 83. 74 Eugenio Madueño, ‘Barcelona condiciona la ayuda oficial a Sarajevo a que haya elecciones democráticas’, La Vanguardia 14 March 1996, p. 28; Lluís Amiguet, ‘El modelo catalán para los Balcanes’, La Vanguardia 16 December 1996, p. 30. 75 Ajuntament de Barcelona (1994a), p. 44; Borja and Castells (1997). 76 Febrés and Rivière (1991). 77 Maragall (1995), p. 27. 78 Alvaro (1998), p. 6.

5 Manuel Castells in the Eurocity

[M]ajor cities throughout Europe constitute the nervous system of both the economy and political system of the continent. The more national states fade in their role, the more cities emerge as a driving force in the making of the new European society…[and so]…we will be witnessing a constant struggle over the occupation of meaningful space in the main European cities, with business corporations trying to appropriate the beauty and tradition for their noble quarters, and urban countercultures making a stand on the use value of the city…. (Manuel Castells, 1994)1 The intensified restructuring of urban space and the growing importance of citystates for social democracy have been themes that I have already addressed. Here I want to consider the idea of struggle or contestation over urban space, one of the central concerns of Marxist urban theorists and neighbourhood groups. The work of Manuel Castells is particularly relevant, given his prominence in the annals of urban sociology in the last two decades. As I noted in the previous chapters, Maragall’s conception of a city-state as a haven for the centre-left in a period of global neo-liberalism has powerful echoes in Castells’ work. And Castells’ personal intellectual trajectory has close parallels with those of his generation who are now in power in Barcelona’s city council. He came to international attention in the early to mid-1970s at the same time as neighbourhood protest groups were reaching their peak in Spain’s major cities; one of his key theoretical works—The City and the Grassroots (1983), an attempt to formulate a ‘cross-cultural theory of urban social change’—was constructed on the basis of his experience as an activist in Madrid. From the late 1980s, however, he has grown more and more involved in charting the spread of the ‘informational city’,2 the technopole,3 and has most recently argued of the importance for the Left of addressing globalisation wholeheartedly, rather than adopting an ostrich-like stance.4 Similarly, Barcelona’s social democratic leaders have undergone a transition from radical Marxist analysis while in opposition in the 1970s, to a more moderate — even boosterist—stance in the 1980s and 1990s, after the re-establishment of democracy. This has culminated in a political strategy which has sought to

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establish Barcelona as an international business centre, a Eurocity laterally linked to firms and agencies across the continent. These parallels are by no means accidental: Castells retains close personal ties with politicians and advisors in both Barcelona and Madrid, and has acted as an advisor to the Spanish government on issues such as the 1992 Seville Expo.5 In this chapter, then, I want to use Castells as a guide to the changing relationship between urban social movements and socialist political parties in Barcelona over the last 20 or so years. The development of his thought, moving from localist critique to a more synoptic vision of the informational restructuring of the world economy, can be fruitfully contrasted to that of more localised critics of the direction of the Barcelona Left, such as Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, Eduard Moreno, and the Federació d’Associacions de Veïns de Barcelona (FAVB), the federation of neighbourhood-based social movements. So I begin by outlining the development of Castells’ interpretation of urban change, emphasising his attempt to retain his Marxist commitments of the 1960s and 1970s at a time of global neoliberalism. This acts as a frame for a sharper focus on the Barcelona experience: I go on to describe the political regime led by mayor Porcioles which decided the city’s urban policy under Francoism, and which gave rise to widespread grassroots political opposition from the late 1960s; I then discuss the characteristics of this organisation as it grew in size and influence throughout the 1970s, becoming a crucial front against the dictatorship and a cultural cradle for democratic participation; next, I trace the diverging path of the Left in power and the neighbourhood movements following the re-establishment of democracy and the regeneration drive launched by the Olympics; finally, I examine the state of urban protest in the democratic city today, reflecting the continuing contestation of the social democratic ‘Barcelona model’ of the Eurocity. Manuel Castells and the Barcelona Left 1997 saw the publication of Local and Global: the Management of Cities in the Information Age, a collaboration between Castells and Jordi Borja which continued the former’s concern with the relationship between processes of economic globalisation in the contemporary city.6 The book is significant for being arguably the most explicit attempt to show that globalisation and informationalisation are processes that have to be taken seriously by the Left, rather than dismissed out of hand as being negative consequences of neo-liberalism. It makes interesting reading: as I noted in the previous chapter, it spoke of the importance of cities as being crucibles in which global processes could be grounded, in which the increasingly shaky nation-state could be replaced by the city-state as both the active promoter of citizenship and a generator of economic activity. Far-reaching in its attempts to think through ways that cities can get a handle on globalisation —through inter-city networking and the involvement of the United Nations, for example—it draws on the practical work undertaken by the authors in both developed and developing economies (and Barcelona features heavily as a model of good practice). It could

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almost be a handbook of Maragallisme. There must be little that the ex-mayor could disagree with here. This said, its enthusiasm for embracing globalisation will lead some to brand it neo-revisionist, accommodationist and anti-radical. Reading it side-by-side with the work authors were publishing in the 1970s reveals a fascinating set of insights into changes of vocabulary, of horizons and of strategies of addressing capitalism. Castells’ crucial insight was to argue that struggles over collective consumption, over the reproduction of labour power, were often as important as organisation over the means of production (as Marx and Lenin had prescribed). Here, the doings of the property developer become the major target of the political activist, rather than the wages paid by the factory owner. This can be expressed in a conflict over exchange and use value, where the developer seeks to maximise profit on land (exchange value), while the worker/resident seeks to defend the use value, non-monetary attributes such as environmental quality, subsidised housing, public services. The urban social movements that Castells documented—most notably in The City and the Grassroots —thus focused their struggles on the role of the state in mediating between property capital and grassroots demands. This is a long way from Castells’ recent position, which stresses the importance for city councils of working with the private sector. I would argue that we can identify three broad stages in Castells’ political analysis. The first is that of optimism, seeing the neighbourhood-based social movements as the possible vehicle for a Eurocommunist transformation of society. The second is drawn directly from his experience in Spain, where he witnesses the co-optation of these movements into party politics, with a resultant erosion of their social power. Here the 1979 local elections act as a turning point in the Spanish Left, beginning a progressive distancing of the socialist parties from the civil society which had sustained them under the dictatorship, and initiating a clear divide between professional politicians and grassroots demands. The third stage is marked by the acceptance of the need for city councils to act both as mediators of social conflict—with the capital-community relationship still a very prominent subtext— and as generators of wealth, as urban entrepreneurs. This is based upon the conviction that the impact of global neo-liberalism has ended the rationale of urban conflict between capital and consumer, and envisages the large city as being an increasingly prominent political actor (thus worthy of recognition by central governments and supra-national organisations). I want to sketch these stages out in a little bit more detail.7 Castells began his political life as an activist in the Barcelona student movement (which also touched, quite profoundly, the lives of two other figures in this book — Manuel Vázquez Montalbán and Pasqual Maragall). Expelled from Spain in 1962, he settled in France and found a position as an assistant professor at Nanterre University in Paris. He would consequently be found in the middle of the events of 1968, where student protest would directly challenge the stability of the French state. Temporarily expelled from France, he would return to write the book which would make him famous in sociology departments around the world: La Question Urbaine (1973), published in English in 1977 as The Urban Question.8 This found a

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resonance at a time when faith in the industrial working classes as agents of change was waning. The French experience had demonstrated that struggle over production was not necessarily the key to social revolution: the majority of the working class and trade unions had shown considerable distaste for the students’ radicalism. As noted, the significance of Castells’ book was in its elaboration of the idea of struggles over collective consumption, over the role of the state in ensuring the reproduction of the labour force and the latter’s attempts to gain improvements in the field of housing, welfare, the environment and public services. And at the forefront of these struggles were tenants’ associations and locality— rather than workplace—based groups. These groups were seen as being potentially key actors in the class struggle, a complement to industrial militancy. By 1975, however, he had begun to modify his political line, and began to stress the role of neighbourhood movements in building cross-class political alliances.9 As we saw in chapter 2, this was a period of great optimism, certainly in Spain, given the potential strength of Eurocommunism as a parliamentary road to socialism. He had, however, abandoned the idea of the working class acting on its own in bringing about change, and began to consider the role of the petty bourgeoisie in creating a broad front for democratic change. Between 1977 and 1979 Castells was back in Spain as a key figure in the strategy-making of the Madrid citizens’ movement. An account of this experience can be found in The City and the Grassroots, where— along with the likes of the 1871 Paris Commune, the 1915 Glasgow Rent Strike, and the protest movements in the Parisian suburbs of the 1960s and 1970s—the Madrid case study provides the lynch-pin of his theories on the role of urban political protest under capitalism. Castells was quick to stress the social diversity of the movement. He discussed the mobilisation of shanty-town suburbs such as Vallecas and Orcasitas, and the huge working class estates and towns of Madrid’s periphery such as Getafe and Mostoles. But he also identified the revolt of the middle classes against the environmental degradation and anonymity of their newly constructed urban retreats, and the campaign to defend the historic quarters of the central city, such as Malasaña. Ultimately, however, the lessons he drew from the Madrid movement were largely negative. The movement found it too difficult to retain its political independence from the institutionalised political parties. Through a process of co-optation— where activists became councillors—or through the simple absorption of the movement’s concerns into council policy, the oppositional spirit was eroded. In particular, the establishment of democracy in 1977 reduced the need for cooperation, and the movement fragmented. Parties such as the PCE began to siphon off their activists, and when a socialist-communist coalition won power in the municipal elections of April 1979 the contradiction between party politics and grassroots mobilisation became too great. As a result, the movement saw its local associations either disappear or retreat into less political tasks. Castells’ conclusion was telling: the Madrid movement took with it ‘to the deep’ the ‘century-old dream of revolutionary parties as agents simultaneously expressing both social movements and political strategies’.10

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With this failure in mind, and influenced by the simultaneous development of Silicon Valley—‘I really felt that something extraordinarily important was going on, and was diffusing very quickly in the rest of the world’11—Castells increasingly switched his attention to the role of information in society, and the simultaneous disintegration in the social structures of the industrial age. Having moved to Berkeley in the early 1970s, he maintained his interest in urban-based social movements while attempting to theorise the impact of technological change on the spatial development of cities. He was employed by the Spanish government to work as policy analyst for the development of the Cartuja ’93 technology park, the legacy of the 1992 Seville Expo.12 His search for a progressive take on global neoliberalism, and his continuing interest in urban social movements, led him to identify the potential role of increasingly dynamic and entrepreneurial city-states as the possible key to his analysis. He emphasises the importance of such actors in a period in which the nation-state is increasingly unable to control capital flows. Each metropolitan area requires a ‘combination of technological infrastructure, human resources and flexible management systems, for without it they will be subjected to the wild and increasingly destabilizing ups and downs of the global flows of the economy and communications’.13 This in turn requires that capital, or business, has to be integrated within any municipal economic project. Cities such as Barcelona are seen as pioneering a resolution of the demands of the citizens’ movements with the requirements of business. Castells argues that the philosophy of the Barcelona city council is that …participation—so-called citizen participation—should not be understood in the old terms (and I would say almost sectarian terms) that only poor neighbourhoods have the right to participate… I don’t think we are in an era in which the purpose is to eliminate, for instance, business participation. From the left point of view, in which I include myself, the idea is to broaden the participation beyond the usual partnership with business into broader participation of society, but not eliminating at all the business input.14 The acceptance of the importance of business in city life is unsurprising, reflecting a model where the needs of business and citizens are channelled through the local state, where large cities ‘are the multinationals of the twenty-first century’.15 This stress on economic competitiveness is combined with increased interest in the potential for citizen involvement in the state, including arguments for the right to privacy, the decentralisation of public services, and genuinely progressive calls for the rights of immigrants to vote and participate fully in public life. And so to The Local and the Global. The collaboration between Castells and Borja goes back a long way. We remember Borja from the previous chapter: his account of the changing economic geography of Europe has formed a central plank of the strategy of the Maragall councils. What is interesting is that this collaboration reaches back to the late 1960s, when Castells was beginning his rise to prominence within French, and subsequently anglophone, urban sociology. Borja, present in

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Paris at the zenith of the student movements, would take on board much of the Castellsian analysis and apply it to conditions in Barcelona. In the 1970s, he was behind the PSUC’s attempts to politicise the largely spontaneous neighbourhood movements.16 With Castells simultaneously responsible for the strategy of the Madrid movement, there was a close relationship between theory and practice for the two men. Borja would follow a similar research agenda as a geography professor at the University of Barcelona. Local and Global shows some of the results of this. But it also tells us something else: the degree to which both Castells and Borja have shifted from envisioning the urban social movement as a contributor to a Marxian political transition, to seeing the city re-assert itself as a cross-class political agent which must compete (boost itself?) to ensure even a minimum level of social provision. In short, the shift in stance of Castells over two decades tells us a lot about the changing goalposts of the Left in the city, and suggests that the Barcelona Left has adopted much of the Castells analysis (on, for example, globalisation). This is a long way from the Parisian days of 1968. There are good grounds for accepting Castells’ and Borja’s assertion that cities ‘increasingly depend on the forms of articulation with the global economy as regards their standards and modes of living’,17 justifiably pointing to the ability of capital flows to escape democratic control. But this rationalisation of the need for cities to compete sits uneasily with Castells’ continuing interest in the involvement of the social movements that once formed the centrepiece of his theoretical framework. Does the direction of his current work demonstrate a logical conclusion to Marxist urban analysis: that it provides a better means of understanding how to manage, rather than overthrow, capitalism? And what about the demands of the neighbourhood groups in Barcelona who still struggle against the globalisation-obsessed social democratic state long after the death of Franco? These questions I will attempt to address in the remainder of the chapter. Porciolismo 1957–76: the developers’ city It was on the 18th March, 1957, that Josep Maria Porcioles was appointed to the post of mayor of Barcelona, a post he was to hold until 11th May, 1973. In this time, this 16-year period in office, the city was to change beyond all recognition, for it was the 1950s to the 1970s that saw—even in Franco’s Spain—the golden age of post-war European capitalism shed some of its dust on Barcelona. It was during this period that the early autarky of the dictatorship gave way to a greater engagement with the international economy, and the country began to be modernised. The spread of mass car ownership, given its distinctive shape in the locally produced SEAT 600, would transform land use as the existing urban fabric became unsuitable for hugely increased numbers of private cars. And as the economy grew, so thousands of landless agricultural workers and their families streamed into the big cities and towns—to Madrid, to Bilbao, to Barcelona. During his spell in office Porcioles had to contend with an increase of 300,000 in the city’s population, this

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in one of the most physically constrained cities in the world, hemmed in by the sea and the mountains. All these changes were bound to affect the mayor’s urban policy: cars needed new roads, immigrants needed housing. This period, which I extend to 1976 to encompass the short reigns of his successors Masó and Viola, left a deep imprint on the city’s history. Porciolismo, as it became known to a generation of urban radicals, was a creed with three defining characteristics. First, it gave spatial form to the archetypal model of anarchic capitalism, as the city became a site of sprawl and destruction, high-rise housing and expressways which snaked around and over any attempts to submit it to rational planning criteria. Second, the city’s elites would be swollen by an array of property developers, all becoming rich through a simple formula of land purchase and highdensity building. This was licensed by a city council completely removed from any democratic supervision, the rotting underbelly of Franco’s morality crusade. Third, it would be remembered for its voracious appetite, as the city’s elites looked out beyond the Collserola hills and sought to create ‘la Gran Barcelona’, a metropolitan giant full of opportunities to build and build and build. A large amount of money was to be made from housing the waves of immigrants that descended on Barcelona—along with the other major cities in Spain—to escape from the poverty of the countryside. For them, the possibility of scraping together enough money for a deposit on a new home created a demand for cheap housing gratefully satisfied by the developers. And so the 1950s and 1960s saw the rapid growth of whole new areas of the city: the high-rise estates created by the partial plans, modifications to the Pla Comarcal of 1953.18 The poorest groups of immigrants who couldn’t afford even the cheapest of the new flats settled in shantytowns (barraques) scattered throughout the city. Montjuïc was a popular site, as was the beach. These were faced with official hostility and those sited on the beach, such as Somorrostro, were subject to regular flooding with resultant health problems. In 1972, there remained around 3500 of these huts, and the attempts to house the shanty dwellers in newly built flats in districts such as La Mina and Vallbona have failed to solve the problem of poverty.19 The building boom was a general phenomenon in the Spain of the 1950s and 1960s. With a captive housing market, there were gains to be made both in providing housing for the incoming working classes in peripheral estates, and in securing land in desirable areas to house middle and upper-middle class families. Today, it is still wondersome to travel along the Travessera de Dalt or Ronda de General Mitre and view the high-rent, low-aesthetic landscape of Les Corts and Sant Gervasi, grey, luxurious residential towers. The current president of Barça, Josep Lluís Núñez, became renowned for his vast blocks on the left side of the Eixample ‘satisfying…the petty bourgeois bad taste of his clients (the terrace running the full length of the facade, the parquet in the hall…the lacquered lift doors…)’, according to the chic Marxists of the anti-Francoist vanguard.20 By purchasing land in these areas, and then maximising the number of flats on them — often exceeding the density dictated in the plan—developers could amass hefty profits. On the periphery of the city, the shanty dwellers were either moved to social

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housing under the Patronato Municipal de la Vivienda, or forced to put down deposits to live in privately constructed flats. These were inevitably built without any public services—no roads, lighting, minimal standards of sanitation, very little running water, no public transport. The new estates were expected to rely on existing schools and health facilities, which were often both remote and oversubscribed. And the flats didn’t come cheap, as Castells describes: Families paid, on average, 30 per cent of their income over 15 years to buy a poorly constructed 70 to 100 square metre flat with no basic facilities. Many of them had to purchase their flats one or two years before construction was completed, based solely on sight of a model flat. Needless to say, the whole development was riddled with abuses, massive defaults, and bankruptcies, and caused a great deal of misery and hardship.21 For all sectors of society, save the very rich, the post-war environment of Barcelona was characterised by poor environmental quality, the transformation of longestablished neighbourhoods, and—above all—an extremely high level of density, making the city one of the most congested in Europe. This was compounded by the lack of democratic accountability in the planning process, reflected by accusations of nepotism and corruption in the council offices as expressed in the rhyming ditty of the 1960s: Si quieres edificar hoy, pregúntale a Bordoy, Si quieres edificar sobre las aceras, pregúntale a Soteras, Si quieres edificar sobre los viales, pregúntale a, Briales. Which, translated into a less poetic English, runs as follows: If you want to build today, ask Bordoy, If you want to build on the pavement, ask Soteras, If you want to build on the street, ask Briales.22 Bordoy and Soteras were chief architects in the city council planning office. Briales was a member of a construction company involved in motorway and tunnel construction whose office happened to be underneath the municipal roads department office. In addition, he was the son-in-law of Porcioles. The mayor’s other son-in-law, Miquel Vall, was the president of one of the city’s major property developers. Porcioles himself was a notary, a job he failed to relinquish while he served as mayor, with the result that a visit to his office was seen as being a good way for a constructor to get his development project approved. It was this tight circle of power, which included two banks (Condal and Madrid, the latter an interest of a certain Juan Antonio Samaranch), which many cite as the distinguishing feature of Porciolismo, a movement characterised by constant accusations of nepotism and

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corruption in the running of the city’s planning regime. By the time Porcioles left office, he was reputed to be the tenth richest man in Spain.23 These conflicts of interest and collusions reflected the complete lack of democratic safeguards against abuses of the planning process. In Spain, as Castells notes, the whole development cycle was driven by the state: ‘it bought the land, lent the capital, paid for the construction, channelled the demand, granted fiscal exemptions, and “forgot” to control the standards and legal requirements of the urban infrastructure’.24 And so in Barcelona. The planning regime inherited by Porcioles was contained in the Pla Comarcal of 1953, which laid down land use requirements, and the Llei del Sòl of 1956. As these often restricted the use of land for residential or industrial purposes, pressure was exerted to find a way around the legal framework they contained. The answer was found in the Plans Parcials, 41 of which were drawn up between 1956 and 1970, and which legalised alterations to the Pla Comarcal. In addition, single blocks and buildings could be exempted, allowing the growth of high-rise offices in the city centre. Changes of use from open space to residential development were common, and allowed the emergence of cunning property developers such as Josep Maria Figueras who were able to seize upon the laxity of the planning regime. When FC Barcelona decided to move to the Camp Nou, it vacated its nearby ground, which would eventually be sold—not for sporting purposes, but for intensive residential and commercial use—to Figueras’ Habitat group. This change of use would ultimately substantially finance the building of the Camp Nou, but was premised on the continuing erosion of the city’s open spaces.25 The third defining feature of Porciolismo was expressed in the mayor’s attempt to expand the city’s influence into the surrounding towns and municipalities. By the early 1960s, the pressures caused by the waves of immigration pushed Porcioles to seek solutions outside the city’s boundaries. Granted a special set of powers in La Carta Municipal he lifted his eyes beyond the Collserola hills and set about imposing the will of his urban giant on adjacent municipalities, moving the municipal rubbish dumps, creating a new cemetery, and propagating even more peripheral estates to house the immigrants in the likes of Bellvitge or Sant Ildefons.26 He was also set on propelling forward the city towards the valleys by proposing three tunnels through the Collserola hills which envelop the city, although by the time of his departure these were still to be realised. And to cement this image of a greater Barcelona, he sought to organise major events which would project the city internationally, such as the Olympics—in a bid which was sabotaged by Madrid—and an Expo, destined for 1982, which would also fail to see the light of day.28 By the time Porcioles left office in 1973, Franco had a bare two years to live, and the heat of the transition was beginning to be stoked. His successors as mayor, Enric Masó and Joaquim Viola, were left with an ever-increasing list of demands as the protest movement grew. The approval of the Pla General Metropolità in 1976, also known as the Pla Comarcal, took place in a rarified climate of insatiable developers and increasingly confident neighbourhood associations. Masó’s undistinguished

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period in office had been characterised by attempts by developers to influence the zoning provisions of the Pla Comarcal. Confidence was hardly raised when he was succeeded by Viola, another member of the council of the Banc de Madrid. It was in this period, when the shouts on the streets were of ‘Viola a la cassola’ (Viola to the cooking pot), and given added vigour by Franco’s death in November 1975, that the protests really got going.28 The city from the grassroots The social mobilization around urban issues that occurred in the neighbourhoods of most Spanish cities throughout the 1970s was, to our knowledge, the largest and most significant urban movement in Europe since 1945. (Manuel Castells, 1983)29 In Castells’ account of the emergence of the Madrid movement, he provides a categorisation of their demands: more and better public housing and repairs to existing stock; better schooling; improvement in public health services and sanitation; increased and improved public transport and traffic safety; more open space; the preservation of the historic city; improvement of neighbourhood social life, including the provision of festivals and the promotion of local associations; political demands, primarily concerned with freedom to meet and organise, and amnesty for political prisoners. Once democracy was established there were also demands that the associations participate directly in the new councils, and even that they be given recognition in the new Spanish constitution of 1978. Both requests were refused.30 If the Madrid experience formed the archetype of an urban social movement for Castells, in Barcelona the levels of mobilisation were perhaps even more astonishing. A broad alliance of working and middle class neighbourhood activists, urban professionals and party functionaries ensured that the movement had a high profile, a strategy of short and long-term goals, and a powerful presence on the street. This funnelling of protest was due, according to Vázquez Montalbán, to the fact that municipal politics, along with football, were the safety valves of later stages of Francoism. He suggests that the tolerance allowed in the field of urbanism was far greater by a regime which allowed very little dissent, thus pushing many in the opposition towards urban critique.31 In Barcelona a similar width of problems were addressed, and the movement grew organically out of sporadic and initially fragmented protests, arising in response to specific local issues. Thus in the hilltop neighbourhood of Carmel, locals were radicalised by the cracks appearing in their houses as a result of the building of the Rovira tunnel. In some of the poorest districts of the city, next to the Besòs river, parents were outraged that their demands for school places for their children were met by the provision of disused tram carriages as classrooms, these, in turn, being placed

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under high-voltage electricity pylons. In Sants, protestors scored an early victory in turning the shambolic car park of Plaça de Sants into play areas and public space. But the most radical noises were coming from the cluster of hastily, cheaply built housing estates in Nou Barris in the northeastern reaches of the city, the destination for many of the Castilian-speaking immigrants who arrived in Barcelona from throughout Spain in the 1950s and 1960s. Here, in the likes of Vallbona, Canyelles, Vilapiscina and Prosperitat, were the hurriedly constructed estates of desarrollismo, the boom years, serried slabs of high-rise system-builds with minimal servicing and landscaping. The council’s attempt to slash and build in the area was most monstrously apparent in the 1972 Torre Baró-Vallbona-Trinitat plan to demolish 4370 existing houses and replaced them with an ever-denser high-rise estate. Locals were quickly radicalised: when the council ignored their petition of opposition, activists teamed up with the anti-tunnellers of Carmel and occupied the council chamber, municipal functionaries avoiding their protests by clambering up into the tiny public gallery. The impact was far-reaching: the following day the plan was withdrawn and Porcioles dismissed from his post.32 But one of the most celebrated struggles would take place in Poble Nou, beginning in 1965 when the idea was first mooted to build a huge (225 hectare) residential development which took in much of the area’s sea-front. The proximity to the sea endowed the area with a great deal of potential profit: its principal promoters were the proprietors of resident industries such as Catalana de Gas and Renfe who saw a means of profiting from selling their land for housing, and the whole thing—known as the Pla de la Ribera—was promoted as ‘una ciutat que no pot seguir vivint de l’esquena al mar’, ‘a city which can’t keep living with its back to the sea’.33 The response was substantial: the proposals threatened up to 30,000 people, taking account of local businesses, small industries and some 15,000 residents. The opposition to the plan, rapidly modified and redrawn as the Pla del Sector Marítimo Oriental (1972), grew into one of the most celebrated of the city’s many protest campaigns, activists collecting up to 9000 signatures of opposition. Ultimately, the plan was rejected by the statutory inspectorate, the Commissió d’Urbanisme, primarily because of doubts that there would be sufficient financial backing to ensure the scheme’s completion. It would remain dead until the 1980s, as we shall see.34 Other protests were based on the impact of Spain’s arrival in the automobile age, with the city’s planners—in line with their colleagues in the liberal democracies — attempting to slice urban beltways through long-established communities. The biggest casualties were in Sants, where the plans for the Primer Cinturó (1st beltway —today the Ronda del Mig), which linked the airport to Sant Gervasi and the Nou Barris, led to expropriations and a controversial increment in development values for the owners of the land through which it passed. The interchange with the Travessera de Dalt at Plaça Lesseps ruined one of the most rustic corners of the city: the pedestrian walking up Gran de Gràcia to reach Parc Güell will be confronted by the fruits of Enric Masó’s wisdom: ‘a type of scalextric’ where the city roars past half underground, half overground.35 The works of the Segon Cinturó (2nd beltway,

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today the Ronda de Dalt) were no less destructive, and attempts to expropriate 32 families from their homes in return for meagre compensation led to delays. But elsewhere the protestors were successful. In Gràcia, which today retains arguably the most peaceful ambience of any of the city’s barris, the planned ‘Via O’ link from the city centre to the valleys—by way of a tunnel through Tibidabo—was scheduled to carve its way straight through the heart of the area. In April and May 1976 the district’s balconies were draped with banners—‘!Noi a la Via O’—and a demonstration of 2000 people persuaded the council to drop the scheme.36 Whatever the reasons, the protestors developed a wide range of tactics ranging from the mundane to the spectacular to the witty. The most common were the collecting of signatures, exhibitions to highlight specific problems, and demonstrations in front of the city council building in Plaça Sant Jaume. But occasionally more unexpected or unusual action was taken. On several occasions, the long-ignored demands for the extension of bus routes to the peripheral housing estates such as Canyelles in Nou Barris were given a higher profile when groups of residents high-jacked the relevant bus, and diverted it onto its rightful route. On the polluted beach of Mar Bella, near the current site of the Olympic Village, a competition was held to see who could find the most bizarre object among the rubbish-strewn sands. They even used football: to protest against the polluting Fertrat company in Poble Nou the 11 players of a local team each wore strips with a letter of ‘FORA FERTRAT’ (Fertrat Out) emblazoned on the front. In Prosperitat in Nou Barris, while the city was playing host to Socrates, Paolo Rossi et al. in the 1982 World Cup, locals threw down their coats in the middle of a major thoroughfare, dug out a football, and went on to defeat a non-existent council team 25–0 to highlight their opposition to controversial roads proposals.37 Communication of these events was made possible through trusty hand-cranked duplicators, churning out leaflets of a quality ranging from the purely functional to amusing and ingenious cartoon agit-prop. There was also an extremely dynamic neighbourhood press, providing up-to-date bulletins on the latest urban issues, and comics such as Butifarra!, which attempted to use humour as a political weapon, and publicised some of the struggles over land taking place in the city.38 The localised protests of the early 1970s became co-ordinated with the formation of the FAVB, the Federació d’Associacions de Veins de Barcelona, which evolved into the vanguard of the citizens’ movements. FAVB had initially been formed by the apolitical street associations, the so-called bombillaires (light-bulbers), who were responsible for decorating the streets at Christmas and for festivals. Yet amidst the reinforced repression of the latter days of Francoism, and incited by the tragic explosion at Carrer Ladrilleros in Sants in 1972 which killed 14 people, the nascent neighbourhood associations decided that unity was an essential prerequisite for strength, and after the first few meetings of the semi-clandestine Coordinadora de Sant Antoni the decision was taken in 1975 to enter the FAVB. (The Sants explosion was one of many as the city became acquainted with the dangers of natural gas: the black humour of the time—‘Don’t fly with Iberia, natural gas is quicker’— expressed the grim realities of life in 1970s Barcelona).39

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The FAVB went on to play a crucial role in the clandestine Assemblea de Catalunya, their most notable single success comingon the 1st of February, 1976. Only 70 days after the death of Franco and with Spain gripped by tension, the federation used their privileged position as one of the few organisations who could protest without fear of serious repression and initiated what—in retrospect —can be seen as one of the most important post-war public protests against European totalitarianism until the events in Prague and Leipzig in 1989, drawing onto the streets many of the activists of the Assemblea. The demands for

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Figure 4 Butifarra!: One of the most prominent of the comics that circulated during the transition, this strip from 1976 satirises with some vigour the urban policies of the city council

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would be heard chanted in the streets. Despite a fierce police response of baton charges and tear gas, the demonstration was a symbolic resistance to state power, and was repeated to great effect a week later.40 The FAVB had successfully shown that the street could be reclaimed for democratic protest. This period from the replacement of Viola by Socías Humbert in December 1976 represented the zenith of the movement’s powers. The political uncertainty created by the death of Franco left many owners of unused industrial land anxious about the future. Socías Humbert, emptying the council coffers, took advantage to endow the city with 93 hectares of land which would be transformed into parks and squares from 1979. The economic crisis of 1973, and the general decline in the textile sector, had left many of Barcelona’s major factories empty. At the likes of La Sedeta, on the edge of Gràcia, and La España Industrial in Sants, attempts by the proprietors to build flats on the derelict sites were opposed after long campaigns by local groups backed up by sympathetic journalists. The sites would be bought up by the city council from employers keener to take the money and run than await the potentially radical outcome of the transition. The old railway sites of RenfeMeridiana, Clot and the Estació del Nord had also arrived in public hands, and the latter two would become public parks.41 One of the most significant successes came in Sants. The closure of the textile factory of La España Industrial42 had left its owners with a prime development site, adjacent to the city’s principal railway station. However, the nearby districts — Sants itself, Hostafrancs, La Bordeta, all classic proletarian barris—had been built to a very high density with negligible provision of green space. When dubiously zoned for residential development in the controversial plan of 1976— the owner was a prominent municipal politician—the Sants neighbourhood associations campaigned vigorously for the redesignation of the land as public space. In an attempt to force the issue, meanwhile, the proprietors built two blocks of flats on one corner of the site. However, there was a huge level of mobilisation—demonstrations, exhibitions, public meetings and a petition with 12,000 signatures. The protestors operated in a climate of police watchfulness: while a lot of their claims were tolerated, they were by no means free to demonstrate openly. Forbidden from marching, they were forced to design ingenious ways around police restrictions. On one notable occasion, they organised two children’s basketball matches, one at a court near the proposed starting point of the march, in La Bordeta, the other adjacent to the old factory next to Sants station. The second game was scheduled to begin a short while after the condusion of the first. This gave the protestors, many of whom were parents of the players, a legitimate reason for moving en masse down Carrer Olzinelles, furled banners in hand, to the location of the second game. While this did not dissuade the police from lining up around the site, the protestors were able to stake their claim to the site and make a very visible statement of their determination. Finally, their actions persuaded the owners to abandon their plans for developing the site, and the authorities to re-zone it as parkland. The city council would buy the site and dedicate it to a range of public activities.43

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Plate 6 Parc de l’Espanya Industrial. Adjacent to Sants station, the park on the site of old textile factory is one of the most tangible reminders of the srrength and cunning of the city’s neighbourhood movements. Source: Vicky Webb)

However, while mass mobilisation would be an important feature of the movement, it should be emphasised that the cutting edge was provided by highly motivated professionals. Radical planners, architects and lawyers contributed their expertise in analysing land and planning law. The magazine CAU issued by one of the city’s architecture colleges, became renowned for its trenchant critiques of the city’s urban policies, most notably in three special issues. In 1971 it published La Gran Barcelona, an account of the assault on the equilibrium of the metropolitan region by unplanned development, in 1973 La Barcelona de Porcioles, an extremely detailed A–Z of the city’s urban politics44, and in 1975 La Lucha en los Barrios (The Struggle the the Neighbourhoods), which catalogued the successes and failures of the protest movement in specific planning conflicts. It is La Barcelona de Porcioles which is far far the most detailed, a 300-page encyclopaedia of the city’s property developers, districts, plans, key sites, infrastructures and buildings, an intensively researched some of urban minutiae, at once quirky and technically detailed. Concurrently there appeared informed journalism about the city, the newspapers such as Correo El Correo Catalán and El Noticiero Universal.45 But perhaps the most enduring artefact was Martí and Moreno’s ¿Barcelona, A Dónde Vas? (Barcelona, where are you going?). Its ominous jet-black cover and white typewriter titling still conveys a sense of journalistic urgency and conviction, an impassioned critique of Porciolismo and dedicated particularly to ‘those Barceloneses who live, generally, in the peripheral districts of the city… They have been accused of being apathetic,

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disinterested and lacking enthusiasm for the idea of the public good. They have often and tendentiously been described as sedentary beings of football, television and consumption… believe firmly that this is not the case…’.46 Its 190 pages document in depth the efforts made by speculators and the council to redevelop land for quick profits, without any concern for the negative environmental effects or quality of life issues, or of the cumulative effect of so much sprawl. It is above all a socialist document in the noblest sense: dedicated to the conservation of public space and calling into question the whole notion that development is benign. The activities of this intelligentsia crossed over into the clandestine party politics of the 1970s. And this primarily meant the PSUC. The best organised of the opposition parties, the Catalan communists—along with their sister party the PCE —had significant power in the workplace through control of the trade union Comissions Obreres. It is here that Castells’ influence swings into the tale once again, with his emphasis on the importance of collective consumption, of struggle over the social wage of housing, education and health services. Acquaintances of Castells, such as Jordi Borja, would communicate this strategy to PSUC militants who, along with other parties such as the soon to be subsumed Bandera Roja (Red Flag), had strong representation in the neighbourhood committees. One survey of the movement in Barcelona—made towards the late 1970s—recorded that the PSUC had a presence in 70% of the associations, the PSC in 35%, with other small, now defunct, parties also represented.47 In the case of Sants, one of the strongest of the neighbourhood movements, both the PSUC and Bandera Roja had considerable influence. A possible social profile of those active at the beginning of the 1970s would be as follows: They were aged between 25 and 35, most had been to university and had stable jobs. Practically all of them came from Sants, lived in the district, were Catalan speakers, had a stable relationship, in some cases had children…they had a Christian background, although they weren’t practising, and they had all been affected, in many cases subconsciously, by May ‘68 and almost all by the modernising ideas of the Second Vatican Council.48 It would be these activists who would attempt to take the movement beyond its initial preoccupation with concrete issues such as the lack of public space or the threat posed by road-building, to the more pressing demands for freedom and resistance to the dictatorship of the middle of the decade, evidenced in their protagonism in the Assemblea de Catalunya. On the eve of the 1979 municipal elections, the FAVB were poised as one of the city’s key political groups, able to mobilise activists from across the neighbourhoods. The nascent political parties regarded them jealously, and the PSC and PSUC jostled for control. Initially, the PSUC representative Jordi Borja would assert the need for the grassroots to retain its autonomy from political parties.

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For example, something which I find detestable which was introduced by certain organisations of the PSOE in one Spanish city, is their announcing, ‘Citizen, if you have a problem, come along to our offices and we’ll solve it for you!’49 At this point, Borja and the PSUC were fully committed to involving the neighbourhood groups in municipal democracy. Pasqual Maragall, speaking for the PSC, was more cagey: the neighbourhood movements had a crucial role to play, he conceded, but argued that ‘the urban movements have incorporated a lot of political demands which now the parties are in a position not only of taking on, but of developing and carrying much further’.50 ‘The Prince’ was prescient: within a few years the movement would be in crisis, as we shall now see. ‘Porciolismo with an Olympic shirt on’ The municipal elections of the 3rd April, 1979, were of huge symbolic importance. Coming a month after a general election in which the Francoist reformists of the UCD retained control of the Cortes, the Spanish parliament, the Left swept to municipal power across Spain (albeit on a vastly reduced turn-out, abstention reaching 46% in Barcelona). The result was of resounding importance: the first local elections staged since those of April 1931 which heralded the overthrow of the monarch and the establishment of the Second Republic; the first defeat of the Francoist reformers and a sign that the transition was nearing its climax; and the substantial victory of the Left, a mere three years after their legalisation. The Barcelona poll results gave the PSC 33.9% of the vote, with the PSUC polling 18. 8% in second place, the CiU just behind with 18.5%. The outcome was similar throughout Catalonia, with victory going to the PSC in the vast majority of large towns and cities.51 The result augured well for the FAVB. Throughout the Socías Humbert transition period they had enjoyed an enormous degree of influence in running the politically marooned councils, even travelling to Madrid with the mayor to lobby directly the Ministries responsible for housing and roads. The protests of the 1970s had sharpened the terms of debate to such an extent that the FAVB were able to issue a manifesto on the eve of the elections setting out their demands. They highlighted the lack of school and health facilities within many of the city neighbourhoods, the lack of public space, the lack of social facilities, and the need for greater consultation with the citizenry.52 Yet as the 1980s wore on, this optimism declined. Much of the blame was directed towards the first elected mayor of the new democracy, Narcís Serra. As lawyer Eduard Moreno—one of a small group of urban professionals still committed to the defence of democratic planning—recalled, ‘[a]lmost everyone expected a new form and a new style of governance…but what happens in 1979? What happens is that a mayor is chosen—by the councillors—who by one of those ironies of history had been one of the promoters of the Pla de la Ribera…’.53 Instead of

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going down the expected route pioneered by the Eurocommunist-run cities of Italy such as Bologna, the PSC veered down the middle. Narcís Serra, who had become the city’s first socialist mayor, set the pattern of moderation and public-private partnership between the Ajuntament and private capital that would lead Barcelona into a new round of property development and civic boosterism. As Carles Prieto, the president of the FAVB at the time, recalls, Serra was in no mood to incorporate the grassroots in council decision-making: ‘It’s us socialists who have won the elections’, he boomed. The weakening of the movement was compounded by the PSUC’s decision to distance itself from the neighbourhood groups as the elections approached. By 1982, Prieto—who had refused a prominent placing on the PSUC’s municipal election slate because of the party’s dismissal of urban protest55—was complaining that ‘the major political parties have abandoned the neighbourhood associations’.56 By the end of the 1980s, most commentators within the movement would admit a crisis point had been reached: a lack of ‘new blood’, and a city council little concerned with the demands of the neighbourhoods. And while there has been a stabilisation of the decline, the neighbourhood associations remain far from the potential foreseen in the height of the transition. How did this happen? As Vázquez Montalbán put it: Could it not be that, under the pretext of the Olympics, a city council with minimal economic resources, controlled by a left that was paralysed by the challenge, has handed over management of this immense surge of urban growth to private initiative? Has it not turned what might have been a model of democratic urban expansion into a speculative frenzy…?57 The decision to stage the 1992 Olympics set alarm bells ringing throughout the neighbourhood associations and critical intellectuals who felt they had defeated the speculator when the Left won the 1979 local elections. The significance of the Olympics—the golden apple of civic boosterism—being pursued by a socialist council had uneasy echoes of Porciolismo. In fact, it was under Porcioles that the idea of staging the Olympics was first mooted, and it was also the Francoist mayor’s dream of holding an Expo in Montjuïc and Tibidabo in 1982, a means of continuing the steamroller of urbanisation which would keep the developers’ coffers replenished. While this never materialised, the lure of the major exposition or event as a means of levering in revenues was too much for the council to resist. So it was that by 1992, grassroots critics were aware of the improvements in public spaces and transport, but they were also conscious of the irony that their influence was greater during the transition than after 13 years of socialist municipal control. Maragall was increasingly portrayed as being the heir to, rather than avenger of, Porcioles, continuing his projects under the mandate of democratic accountability. On the latter’s death in 1993, the rehabilitation of one of the local Left’s erstwhile hate figures began, his obituaries carrying more than the respectful faint praise accorded to the dead. Narcís Serra said of Porcioles that he was ‘a great person…a man who felt a great passion for Barcelona and a great imagination to

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look for and find solutions for the city’; Maragall was slightly less sanguine, yet acknowledged the continuity of his project with that of Porcioles.58 The critics were less than impressed: ‘the Barcelona of 1992’ wrote one ‘is the Barcelona of Porcioles with an Olympic shirt on’.59 So rather than a rupture with Francoist town planning, as had been hoped in the late 1970s, it made sense to talk of the continuities encapsulated in the Olympic project. The characteristics of Francoist urban development—the social dominance of finance capital, the resuscitation of celebrated land use cases defeated in the 1970s, the prevalence of zoning changes of dubious legality, and the continued dominance of road-building schemes—still pertained to a certain degree throughout the 1980s and 1990s. Most notable was the case of the Olympic Village. Critics pointed to the degree to which the massive infrastructural projects undertaken by HOLSA (Barcelona Holding Olímpic S.A.), a public body constituted by central and municipal government, served to valorise the investments of the private speculator. Without the involvement of the state—which was responsible for financing the bulk of the development of the Olympic Village, the rondes (expressways), and the Olympic ring —there would have been little possibility of attracting private sector developers to build the Village: The challenge, in theory, consisted of constructing enough accomodation to house 15,000 athletes for 3 weeks between July and August 1992. In practice, it was about replacing an obsolete industrial district with a residential one and, at the same time, regenerating the city’s waterfront; that is to say, expropriate more than 5000,000 square metres, dismantle a historic railway line and sink a new one (to Glories), construct expressways, renovate the main sewer collector network, protect the coastline, rehabilitate 4 kilometres of beaches, construct a hew harbour and, finally, build and lay out the aforementioned residential district for the Olympic athletes. All this while convincing the unions to postpone pay claims; establishing a rigorous security system in an area where, some days, up to four thousand people were working; and putting up with a bomb scare which, fortunately, came to nothing.60 Unsurprisingly, this was the city’s biggest project of the 20th century, and used up a quarter of the total direct and indirect investment in Catalonia for the Games. The FAVB were incensed, however, when it emerged that plans to include affordable housing in the scheme had been dropped. Private sector reticence (or cunning?) in questioning the viability of the project coaxed the public sector into underwriting a considerable amount of the land preparation and, into the bargain, selling the land at rock-bottom prices.61 The private developers who had been the target of such vehement opposition in the 1970s would still be found at the forefront of many of the city’s major developments in the 1980s and 1990s. Josep Maria Figueras, who built 10,000 units in the peripheral district of Sant Ildefons, and was involved in the dubious

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changes of use of Barça’s former home in Les Corts, had a 10% share in the company which promoted the Olympic Village, NISA. Josep Lluís Núñez remains president of Barça, and his company Núñez y Navarro continues to exert its grip on redevelopment in the Eixample. Roman Sanahuja, whose companies built a significant proportion of the flats in the Nou Barris districts, has a sizeable interest in l’Illa de Winthertur site on the Diagonal, the so-called ‘golden island’. Add to this the profile of Juan Antonio Samaranch, the builder of Ciutat Meridiana, during the Olympics and it is clear that the core of the Francoist property elite remains very much a part of the city’s power structure. As Vázquez Montalbán put it, ‘the speculators worried whether democracy would make them pay for their past sins… They soon realised that the primary concern of most socialist mayors was not to appear so radical as to inhibit capitalist development, however speculative’.62 But the concerns of the critics may be misplaced, because a substantial part of the new building boom has been followed by foreign property capital. Against the backdrop of the council’s enthusiasm for Europeanisation, and central government’s sponsoring of a hot money policy, overseas investors were quick to realise the profitability of the Spanish market, with Barcelona a primary target. This led to considerable instability. Ware Travelstead, of London Docklands infamy, breezed in saying Barcelona was going to be the key to his company’s activity in Europe, undertaking the construction of the Hotel Arts at the Olympic Port. But by October 1992—only three months after the closure of the Olympics—he had breezed out rather more quietly, as the project went bankrupt. In October 1995, the much-vaunted anchor of the Diagonal-Mar project sunk into the Med as the American-headed Kepro pulled out of its commitment to a massive new office complex. The most striking example of a Porcioles-Maragall continuum was demonstrated by the similarity between the infrastructural projects pursued by the two men. Most of the major development projects carried out under the auspices of the Olympics had already been floated at some point in the 1970s. The most striking case was, of course, the resuscitation of the Pla de la Ribera in the guise of the Olympic Village.63 While the latter covered only the western part of the original plan, the fact that it was a socialist council that was promoting a project of high-cost housing sold at market rents was not lost 011 the neighbourhood associations. The Expo ’82 plans envisaged boring tunnels under the hill of Tibidabo (which forms part of the boundary of the northern side of the city): the inauguration of the Vallvidrera tunnel on the 16th of April, 1990, marked a major step forward for the property developers seeking to open up the Vallés for residential development. The Expo plans also involved turning Carrer Tarragona into a link road between Montjuïc and Tibidabo; under the democratic council Tarragona has been transformed into ‘Barcelona’s Wall Street’, a high-rise strip of new office blocks.64 Similarly, the completion of the city’s three expressways—the rondes—were the pride and joy of the council, but had been a major focus of neighbourhood protest in the 1970s. The extension of the project was fiercely disputed by those—usually poor— neighbourhoods most affected by the negative environmental impact of the

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roadways. Finally, the desire of both mayors to make the city an international business centre has seen modifications to the land use plan to allow the building of hotels on public land. While there are few who would equate the corruption of Porciolismo with the current municipal regime, there have been accusations of serious breaches of planning guidelines by the council. Ironically, the council’s democratic mandate has allowed it to get away with urban policies which would have been unthinkable under the dictatorship, given the degree of citizen mobilisation at that time. In the Vall d’Hebron the council mishandled the purchase of land which then fell into private hands. On the site of the electrical company FECSA on the Paral·lel, the council allowed an illegal re-zoning which involved the building of an office block in return for the provision of a public park.65 The main issue concerns changes of use, a fear that the cherished green space requirements in a densely occupied city will be violated by lupine developers. On the edges of Sarrià and Les Corts, there lies the concrete bowl of the city’s indebted second football club, RCD Espanyol. The owners, the Lara family, had been attempting to sell off their prime location ground for apartments to bail out the club’s ailing finances. At the end of 1995 they presented a plan to build 700 flats in an already densely populated area. Even though the site is zoned for sports, the council allowed a change of use to go ahead after the plan was revised. With Espanyol moving to the white elephant of the Olympic stadium, a neat solution to the problem was found. Yet the FAVB was outraged that the initial reason for the redevelopment proposals—the indebtedness of a private company—should be taken as a consideration for rezoning. A precedent had been set in the late 1980s with the decision to allow a public sports complex, Piscines i Esports, to fall into private hands. And some of the major figures in the critical movement of the 1970s—such as Josep M.Alibés —were among the council apparatchiks working on the plan.66 Furthermore, a kind of cult of modernity can be detected in the council’s publicity operations. At the time of the Olympics, HOLSA produced a promotional video which contained time-delay images to show the changing Barcelona cityscape. But what images! Seemingly oblivious to the impact of the green movement in northern Europe, the video was like early Bolshevik documentary newsreel. Cranes swing, tower-blocks soar into the sky, roads are tarmacked, bridges built. In the most memorable scene of grotesque humour, the camera pans in on a farmer surrounded by his green fields on the city suburbs, before he is cinematically engulfed by a sea of concrete, congealing to form one of the city’s beltways. Further evidence of crazed technocrats at play could be found in 1996, when the city hosted the International Architects’ Congress. In an exhibition designed to coincide with the event, Barcelona Contemporània 1856– 1999, the city planning department told it as it was. With a token piece of social commentary, showing photographs and footage of the immigration to the city of the 1940s and 1950s, and the street battles of the 1960s and 1970s, Barcelona of the 1980s and 1990s was dealt with in an execrable display of urban bravado. The city’s history was presented as a linear, if bumpy, ride through successive waves of modernisation and expansion. The

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planners, one suspects, see themselves as the heroes of the piece. In a masterpiece of technical hocus-pocus, maximum space was given to the bizarre pseudo-scientific charts of growth and sprawl, orange snaking lines indicating major cross-town highways. The top piece of juxtaposition: a display relating to the citizen struggle against—among other things—the first wave of road proposals. A battered duplicator rests next to some of the crude leaflets of the time, exhorting citizens to protest against the developments. Next room. Monitors flash out speeded-up trips through the urban beltways of the Olympic city, seemingly oblivious to any sense of irony. Perhaps they should be commended for their honesty. Contesting the Eurocity Two events of catastrophic dimensions marked the city in the first half of the 1990s. On 11th November, 1990, a system-built apartment block in the peripheral estate of Turó de la Peira in Nou Barris collapsed, killing one resident. The cause, it would become clear, was aluminosis, a weakness in concrete caused by cost-cutting in the proportions of sand mixed with the concrete and the humidity of Barcelona’s climate. The tragedy provoked outrage throughout the city’s working class barris, as subsequent research revealed that 87,000 flats in Catalunya (most built in the desarrollismo years) were affected. The 1st of February, 1994, La Rambla, slap bang in the centre of the old city. Another disaster. A spark from a workman’s welding iron ignites the curtain of the city’s opera house, the Liceu. Within minutes the building is engulfed in flames, and all but the facade of the 150-year-old building is lost. By the next day, campaigns had been launched and Maragall and Pujol were promising an imminent reconstruction and re-opening. The neighbourhood movement used the two events to contrast the priorities of urban politics in democratic Barcelona. The court case over the collapse in Turó de la Peira ended with the exoneration of all the accused parties: the cement company, Molins, somehow escaped prosecution on the grounds that they had placed the correct directions on the outside of the packet, the constructors, Roman Sanahuja, because they were unaware of the effect of heat and humidity on the cement, the council because there was no precedent and hence no grounds for negligence.67 Supporters of the neighbourhood movements were stunned: ‘Sanahuja has been lucky. If his diseased cement beams had broken a few years before, when the political transition was still under negotiation, he would have taken on the unenviable role of scapegoat’.68 Sanahuja escaped, however, as noted above, going on to participate in the development of one of the prime real estate sites in the city, l’Illa on the Diagonal. And while the rebuilding of the opera house was treated as a top priority by both the council and the Generalitat, the plan of reform for Turó de la Peira was not approved by the council until March 1996. This was only the most obvious example of the FAVB’s dissatisfaction with the post-Olympic city. They continue to put pressure on all parties to attend to the urban problems throughout the city’s neighbourhoods. In their Metro als barris (Metro to the neighbourhoods) campaign launched in December 1996 they set out

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a formidable list of broken promises from the previous year’s local election manifestos. Their primary target is the Generalitat—sharing responsibility for the metro with central government—and they reproduce a CiU leaflet from 1995 promising the ‘metro to Nou Barris, Zona Franca, and Bon Pastor’. The excuse that the money from central government is not forthcoming goes down badly coming from a party which has held both the PSOE and the PP to electoral ransom for four years. Along with demands for increased provision of social housing (asking that 10, 000 subsidised flats be made available in the short term), environmental protest against a proposed incinerator in the Zona Franca, and a vigilance against school closures, the FAVB continues to remind a complacent city that urban problems remain beneath the bright Mediterranean hues of the Eurocity.69 Barcelona retains an informed critical consciousness and overview of urban issues which many other European cities lack. The FAVB produces a free bimonthly newspaper, La, Veu del Carrer (Word from the Street), which provides an admirable alternative commentary on urban planning, politics and culture. Their 1991 gazetteer/manifesto La Barcelona dels Barris (The Barcelona of the Neighbourhoods) gives a statistical breakdown of the city by neighbourhood association, highlighting concentrations of unemployment or the specific needs of areas with above-average clusters of old people, and cataloguing the outstanding demands of the neighbourhood groups. In a special issue of La Veu del Carrer a few months after the Olympics, La Barcelona de Maragall, they provide an A-Z of the contemporary city’s semi-submerged landscapes of power, a conscious throwback to the 1970s critique of Porciolismo.70 While I have addressed the writing of Vázquez Montalbán in some detail in chapter 2, there should be no disguising his direct engagement with the property development industry. In a dialogue with the lawyer Eduardo Moreno, published shortly after the 1991 municipal elections, the two men returned to the themes of the 1970s, questioning whether Maragall’s urban policy is so different in property development terms from the period in office of Porcioles.71 The most violent challenge to the gloss of the Eurocity came in the form of the squatters’ movement, the okupes, who had a small but visible presence in the city, in 1996 occupying around 50 empty houses. Sporting the usual accoutrements of dropout punkdom—dogs on bits of string, studied shabbiness—they have drawn attention to the huge demand for housing from young people, the lack of sufficient subsidies available for those wishing to leave the family home, and a massive shortage of affordable housing in the city. By squatting, they were able to both fulfil a desire for a lifestyle independent from their families, and convey a very visible message of political non-conformity. In 1996 they established themselves in a longabandoned cinema at the foot of the Via Laietana, a short distance from the bars and restaurants of the Moll de la Fusta and Maremagnum. Identifiable by the graffitied messages on the facades, the cinema—the Princesa— was now home to an ‘alternative centre’ of meetings and film shows on Chiapas and animal rights. While local residents in the surrounding apartments were split in attitudes over the centre, the president of the local neighbourhood association pointed out that it was ‘the first time in twenty years that some use [had been] found for the derelict space’. The

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Princesa came to national attention in the early hours of Monday, 28th October, 1996. Having received a court order to vacate the premises, the okupes had begun preparing themselves for the expected police eviction. Television pictures would later show how in the murk of the Laietana night the police threw ladders against the bricked-up front and sides of the building, illuminated by the searchlights of a circling helicopter. While the squatters attempted to resist with a variety of improvised street-fighting tactics, including rockets, Molotov cocktails, and a burning sofa, the police used rubber bullets and forcibly evacuated the building, precariously shouldering dazed bodies down the narrow ladders, both sides covered in fine layers of dust as if all that had taken place had been an exchange of flour bombs. Forty-eight squatters were detained. Dawn would bring the complaints of local residents, ordered to remain in their houses by police regardless of work or school. The following evening saw the Laietana again closed off as a pitched battle between police and demonstrators ended in ragged chases down the surrounding warren of medieval streets. There were 14 injuries, shared between the two sides.72 While much of the immediate criticism was directed at the police, who acted ‘as if faced by a fully-armed ETA comando’, according to one local politician, the following days saw debate over the lack of political will in addressing the shortages of affordable housing for young people. A high-ranking official of the Generalitat admitted that the city had 40,000 empty houses. While the regional government had given subsidies to purchasers of 14,000 flats in Catalonia (1300 in Barcelona) these remain outwith the reach of young people suffering from unemployment or low wages, leaving them unable to get any foothold on the housing ladder.73 Barcelona heads towards the year 2000 with its modern financial services districts, its gleaming high-culture set-pieces in place and its position in a New Europe seemingly secure. Yet beneath these glinting symbols of a long-awaited modernity remains a sense of unease. The council seems unable to stop, however, unable to call a halt to controversial developments in a competitive Europe where the stakes keep changing. The property-led drive for the ever-new Barcelona will continue, despite what the neighbours say. ✤✤✤ The story of the second coming of desarrollismo in Barcelona is one which has parallels in cities throughout the rest of Europe. Whether it be the dramatic and extensive redevelopment that global cities such as London and Paris have experienced, or the less ambitious restructuring of smaller regional or national capitals such as Lille and Stockholm, the revalorisation of the city as a site of exchange value is one of the characteristics of a New Europe. As my brief political biography of Manuel Castells has sought to show, there are important reasons why the Left has gone down the path of encouraging property development. But what is fascinating is the starkness of the city’s transformation from possessing a Marxistoriented, explicitly anti-rentier intelligentsia to being a leading player in or inspiration behind the model of the Eurocity which other (often Left-controlled) urban regimes have followed. This is thrown into relief when one sees how the sites of planning conflict and popular protest in the 1970s have often re-emerged in the

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1980s and 1990s. Furthermore, it is worth remembering that some of the jewels of the city’s public space programme—such as l’Espanya Industrial—would have been irretrievably lost to residential development had illegal action not been taken by grassroots groups. The city council has been less than active in sustaining a culture of urban protest, surely an essential part of any vision of the democratic city. What lessons does this hold for the Left? It is notable that Castells still retains in his work the now-unfashionable dichotomy of use value vs. exchange value. This has often appeared in other guises in the vocabulary of the green movement, whether in the peaceful anti-airport protests in Manchester, or the quasi-violent squatters’ movement in Berlin (and now Barcelona). This seems to confirm that the dominant political identity of the Left in the first half of the 20th century— anti-capitalism— now resides with groups far less willing to carry the baggage of Marxism. Such groups are now rarely organised along class or occupation lines, and are far less willing to accept the teleology of much of what has passed for socialist political strategy. The implicit message of today’s social democrats still retains this teleology —put up with the negative effects of growth today, and it will trickle down to you tomorrow. It is the continued existence and strengthening of these opposition groups—be they based around neighbourhood associations or lifestyle groups— which holds the greatest promise of the defence of the ‘humane city’ once so beloved of socialists across Europe. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20

Castells (1994), pp. 23–5. Castells (1989). Castells and Hall (1994). See his recent work on the ‘network society’, in Castells (1996, 1997). Catterall (1997). Borja and Castells (1997). This is to simplify what has been a complex process of individual intellectual development. See Lowe (1986) for a detailed account of early shifts in Castells’ thought, and Catterall (1997) for a more recent statement from the horse’s mouth. Castells (1973, 1977). Lowe (1986), p. 18. Castells (1983), p. 275. Catterall (1997), p. 149. The results of this experience can be found in Castells and Hall (1994). Borja and Castells (1997), p. 14. Catterall (1997), p. 143. Borja and Castells (1997), p. 123. Borja (1977). Borja and Castells (1997), p. 14. Fabre and Huertas (1989). Alibés et al. (1975); Huertas and Andreu (1996). Quotation from Alibés et al. (1975), p. 201.

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21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38

39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53

54 55 56 57 58 59 60

Castells (1983), p. 220. Cited in Fabre and Huertas (1989), p. 253. Alibés et al. (1975); Fabre and Huertas (1989), pp. 253–7. Castells (1983), p. 219. Alibés et al. (1975), pp. 53–6. Fabre and Huertas (1989, pp. 258–9). Martí’ and Moreno (1974). Huertas and Andreu (1996). Castells (1983), p. 215. Castells (1983, pp. 224–5). Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), p. 41. Huertas and Andreu (1996). Martí and Moreno (1974), p. 58. Alibés et al. (1975), pp. 217–19; Martí and Moreno (1974), pp. 55–68; Huertas and Andreu (1996), p. 58. Huertas and Andreu (1996), p. 76. Huertas and Andreu (1996). Huertas and Andreu (1996). Huertas and Andreu (1996) list 18 different tactical approaches used; on the comics, see Alfons López, ‘Butifarra!: la lluita com a diversió’, La Veu del Carrer September 1994, p. 13. Francese Candel, ‘Gas Natural. Un matí de diumenge a Sants’, Oriflama January 1973, p. 46, cited in Fabre and Huertas (1989), p. 306. Huertas and Andreu (1996, p. 24). Fabre and Huertas (1989), pp. 321–24. This would subsequently be Catalanised to ‘l’Espanya Industrial’. Gómez and Marcè i Fort (1996). Later published in paperback as Alibés et al. (1975). Alibés et al. (1975), p. 45. Martí and Moreno (1974), quotation from p. 6. Cited in Huertas and Andreu (1996), p. 22, from Anna Alabart (no bibliographic details cited). Gómez and Marcè i Fort (1996) , p. 15. Borja (1978), interviewed in February 1978, p. 76. Maragall (1978), interviewed in November 1977, p. 91. Lluís Unía (1997), ‘La conquista de los ayuntamientos’, Memoria de Catalunya, supplement to El País, pp. 113–21. Subirós (c. 1993). Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), p. 61. It should be noted that mayors are chosen by the councillors, usually taken from the head of the list of the party with the largest number of seats. Gómez and Marcè i Fort (1996), p. 30. Gómez and Marcè i Fort (1996), p. 28. Cited in Huertas and Andreu (1996), p. 31. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 7. ‘Epitafios para el alcalde Porcioles’, La Veu del Carrer November 1993, p. 4. Andrés Naya, ‘Porciolitis’, La Veu del Carrer November 1993, p. 4. Moix (1994), p. 119.

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61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71 72

73

FAVB (1991), pp. 146–8. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 9. ‘Urbanisme: cine paral·lelismes’, La Veu del Carrer September 1994, p. 18. La Veu del Carrer November-December 1992, p. 29. Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991), p. 115. Manel Calpe, ‘Salvem l’Espanyol o salvem els Lara?’, p. 3 and ‘Qui és qui?’ pp. 4–5, La Veu del Carrer January-February 1996. ‘Carpetazo judicial a la aluminosis del Turó de la Peira’, El País 8 October 1993, p. 24. Arcadi Espada, Años de cemento’, El País 8 October 1993, p. 25. ‘Les primeres mesures que els barri exigin’, La Veu del Carrer April-May 1995, pp. 16– 17. La Veu del Carrer November-December 1992, pp. 10–11. Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991). Accounts drawn from ‘Asalto a la fortaleza okupa’, La Vanguardia 29 October 1996, Revista, pp. 1–3; ‘La policía “desokupa” el Princessa’, and ‘La violenta manifestación de la noche supera la batalla campal de la mañana’, La Vanguardia 29 October 1996, pp. 23–4. Marc Andreu, ‘Els “okupes” reclamen el dret a l’habitatge’, La Veu del Carrer November-December 1996, p. 4.

6 Designer socialism: the politics of architecture and public space

‘A good morning in Barcelona in 1966,’ writes Robert Hughes, ‘was a joint 011 the serpentine encrusted bench of the Güell Park, and then a descent to the city to groove on the facade of the Sagrada Familia’.1 Latter-day groovers have flocked to the city since the 1980s to examine the city’s extraordinary range of new buildings, public spaces and artworks. Already enjoying an enviable reputation through its well-preserved medieval core and the surviving buildings of the modernista architects —headed, of course, by the redoubtable Gaudí—the city has become established in the international architectural press as a capital of contemporary architecture. Since the first post-dictatorship municipal elections in 1979, the city council has pursued a high-profile policy of architecture and urban design-led urban renewal: in the words of Robert Hughes, ‘the most ambitious project of its kind that any government of a 20th century city has tried’.2 The commissioning of new public artworks which would take their place among the city’s existing statues and monuments had endowed its streets, squares and parks with over 500 sculptures by the mid-1990s. Through renovation and selective demolition the council comprehensively upgraded the quality of its urban environment. And the public sector building boom which accompanied the staging of the Olympics brought a string of commissions for both local and foreign architects, giving the city a broad portfolio of new landmark buildings. That this all took place under the tutelage of a social democratic council raises some interesting issues. Can architecture be harnessed, can space be designed, in a way that is specifically left wing? There is always a danger in such suggestions that ideology is unproblematically ‘read off’ from the built environment. Paul Knox has noted that the idea of architecture as zeitgeist has appeared in the works of prominent urban sociologists such as Lewis Mumford, Ray Pahl and Ruth Glass, each seeing in the built environment all sorts of manifestations of power relations.3 However, as David Ley has pointed out, direct relationships are difficult to sustain: ‘landscape style is intimately related to the historic swirl of culture, politics, economics and personality in a particular place at a particular time’. Politics cannot be simply read off from landscape.4 So here, I want to provide a contextualised reading of how Serra, Maragall and a team of municipal architects and planners have conceived of Barcelona in aesthetic and design terms. My intention is not to provide a definitive statement of the city council’s architectural and design policy,

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but rather to explore how the local state’s intervention in the built environment fits with some of the themes and local discourses already discussed. I begin by introducing how the key figures in Barcelona’s aesthetic renaissance—primarily Maragall, Serra and Oriol Bohigas—have envisioned its remaking. This is often couched in terms of the city being a kind of meeting point of civil society and the state. I then explore some of the implications of this in practice: the idea of an inclusive city based around a politics of public space; the council’s utilisation of public art and the architectural monument as a means of re-establishing placeidentity in the post-Francoist city; and a willingness to use both the internationally renowned ‘trophy’ architect and controversial urban design strategies in projecting an image of the city beyond its immediate boundaries, leading some to criticise the ‘enlightened despotism’ of the socialists in power. The city of architects Some cities are capitals of power. An obvious example is Paris; we never speak of the Paris of this or that architect, but of Mitterrand or the revolutionaries. Other cities, with more civil society and less state, are in certain cases defined by their architects, their planners. Such is the case of the Vicenza of Palladio, and that of the Barcelona of Gaudí; and, why not?, that of the Barcelona that we architects have been constructing over the last few years. (Ricard Bofill)5 Does Barcelona have more civil society and less state? As we saw in chapter 3 Maragall has argued the need for a plural, democratic city. Architecture and design is seen less as an instrument of power, and more as a means of endowing the city with collective, civic identity. Bofill’s comparison of Barcelona with Paris is insightful: both are cities which have headlined in architectural journals since the 1980s, yet the prominence of the latter has been characterised by Mitterrand’s dominance in the design and commissioning of what have been very presidential grands projets. By contrast, Barcelona has been commended for its smaller-scale projects, which seek to provide its neighbourhoods with distinct identity. In his book Civic Realism, Peter Rowe describes a number of cities—Siena, Llubljana, Barcelona itself—whose built environments embody the following creative tension: …it is along the politico-cultural divide between civil society and the state that the urban architecture of the public realm is made best, especially when the reach of both spheres extends simultaneously up to a civilization’s loftier aims and down to the needs and aspirations of its marginalized populations.6

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Such a conjuncture does not occur very often. One is reminded of David Ley’s account of late 1960s redevelopment in Montreal under the TEAM movement, a middle class strategy of ‘careful place-making’ counterposed to massified modernism.7 It is apparent that, on occasion, a popular Left in alliance with powerful neighbourhood groups and sympathetic architects, can seek to achieve what Rowe labels ‘civic realism’. So what was the context for Barcelona’s aesthetic renaissance, who were the main agents? As I mentioned in the last chapter, architects were in the vanguard of the local Left’s opposition to Francoism, though their collars were more likely to be wide and silk than blue and denim. These soixante-huitards had their own meeting places, such as the infamous Bocaccio dance-hall, which attracted …progressive celebrities who included models, singers, film directors, architects and designers. Its owner even sent a lorryload of smoked salmon sandwiches to sustain those democrats who occupied Montserrat monastery in protest at the Burgos ETA trials. This was Barcelona’s gauche divine, the fashionable left which in some way softened the impact of the gauche satanique’s, bombs and strikes, helping the bourgeoisie to understand that democracy was inevitable.8 As we have seen in the preceding pages, the opposition to Franco in Barcelona was diverse, a broad coalition drawn from most strands of society. Come the transition and the jockeying for position and influence in the democratic society, this social bloc began to dissolve and reform. And so—as Vázquez Montalbán reminds us—this ‘fashionable Left’ was well placed to ease its way into power at the head of the PSC and PSUC party lists, with a very clear idea of how culture had to be utilised and redefined as a means of building the democracy. As in the rest of metropolitan Spain where the PSOE would—after 1982—embark upon an ambitious programme of spending in the arts and cultural infrastructure9, so in Barcelona issues of culture and aesthetics, and their relationship to the new democratic society, were at the forefront of the new council’s concerns. With Narcís Serra and Pasqual Maragall holding the mayor’s office between 1979 and 1997, for almost two decades the city council was led by highly educated, cosmopolitan members of the local ‘enlightened’ bourgeoisie. Serra had all the hallmarks of the renaissance man, an architecturally literate, piano-playing economist, a devotee of Mozart and Viennese modernism (Hoffman, Loos) who went off to paint the Mallorcan landscape in the summer.10 Educated at the London School of Economics, Serra had set up a legal practice with the lawyer and Catalan social democrat Miquel Roca in the 1970s, and was well respected within the Catalan bourgeoisie. One of his first tasks as mayor, however, was to satisfy the demands of the city’s neighbourhood movements, to undertake a generalised mending of a city which had been torn apart by the speculation of the Porcioles years. When looking for a figure who could carry through such a vast operation, he knew where to turn: Oriol Bohigas.

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Plate 7 Calatrava’s tower from Sants. One of two communications towers built at the time of the Olympics, the tower is another example of the city’s bold architectural approach. (Source: Vicky Webb)

Bohigas had a long history within the gauche divine. As Llàtzer Moix, who has chronicled the development of the ‘city of architects’, has noted, Bohigas’s influence on the Barcelona architectural ‘family’ has been enormous. He had been influential in pursuing a theoretical agenda formulated by the Grup R, the Catalan modernist architectural movement which sought to contextualise and regionalise the modern movement with a closer attention to vernacular traditions. This would provide a basis which would influence many of the young architects of the ‘Barcelona School’ clustered in the city’s principal architectural college (which Bohigas directed between 1977 and 1980). He headed protests against the wilful destruction of notable historic buildings under the Francoist council, and his political leanings led to his expulsion from the college for several years in the late 1960s. Prone to making outrageous statements on cultural policy, renowned for his bullish temperament and self-assurance, he was the obvious choice to head the regeneration effort.11 Encouraged that the council’s planning policy was open and undefined, and with Serra’s counsel that Samaranch seemed confident that the city could win the Games, Bohigas realised that he was being offered an unprecedented opportunity to undo the philistinism of Francoist urban policy, and to put his own distinctive philosophy into practice. He accepted the post of head of Urban Services, making him, in effect, the city’s chief planner. His distinctive approach he explains as follows:

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My idea was that there was a chance in Barcelona of developing a realist vision of planning; a vision more interested in the volumetric construction of the city than its street lay-out. That is, an architect’s vision rather than that of a planner… What we wanted was to transform Barcelona intervening through small concrete projects. We didn’t want to demoralise ourselves, like other inexperienced democratic councils, in revisions of general plans.12 As I describe below, Bohigas initiated a number of remarkable schemes, frequently clashing with road engineers over his unorthodox plans, opening up gems of urban parks, and civilising the city’s expressways. Maragall’s arrival in office in 1982 extended this phase of small, architect-led projects, but brought the hard-headed reckoning of the urban economist into the fray. He was less sanguine than most about the role of architects in the urban renewal process: Barcelona has been transformed thanks, in part, to the architects. But they are not the only ones responsible for the change. The change has been possible thanks to the collaboration between architects, engineers, and economists. It’s a mistake to define it as a city of architects….13 With an inclination to pursue a ‘greater Barcelona’ which extended beyond the administrative boundaries of the city, Maragall saw a need to move beyond the architect-defined small project, with a more global vision encompassing transport and strategic planning. Without great support in the PSC, and with the reputed pressure of his colleagues in his own architectural practice, Bohigas left the post in 1984 to be replaced by Josep Acebillo. Acebillo had been in the planning team from the outset, but had largely been in the shadow of Bohigas. He began to realise the importance of negotiation and pacts with other key departments in the council, along with the well-organised neighbourhood groups. And this was timely: Maragall came to the post with a distrust of one professional group dominating things, and found Acebillo ‘a bulldozer’ defined by his ‘drive, his hardness as a negotiator and his capacity to dialogue and defend his position against engineers, the roads department or the neighbourhood associations’. Along with Joan Busquets, who concentrated on planning policy, Acebillo was responsible for co-ordinating most of the major infrastructural works which characterised the city’s Olympic drive: major road projects such as the building of the Ronda de Dalt and Ronda Litoral, which involved sensitive negotiation between the mayor, the neighbourhood groups, the engineers and the planning department. As technical director of IMPUSA, the limited company set up to channel resources into the building of Olympic-related projects, he would be behind the planning of various major projects such as the Olympic sites at Vall d’Hebron and the Diagonal, and the complex motorway interchange at Glories. He was also singularly responsible for choosing many of the artists who would contribute sculptures to the city’s public spaces. Meanwhile,

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Bohigas would remain close to the decision-making process, his own practice protagonising in the planning of the Olympic Village. So, we can see Acebillo as Maragall’s chief operative in the complex process of readying the city for the Olympics, carrying through a strategic overview in contrast to Bohigas’s earlier bottom-up approach.14 It is Maragall who has become identified in the international press as having an ambitious and practical vision of the contemporary European city, with a rare combination of political cunning, a deep understanding of urban economics, an appreciation of the sometimes arcane language of architecture and urban design, and above all the political support and popularity to carry off some of the council’s more audacious projects. And he would soon become a favourite in international architectural circles, commissioning Pritzker Prize-winner Richard Meier to design the city’s new modern art gallery, on good terms with the likes of Norman Foster and Richard Rogers, and with the added advantage of the powers of patronage offered by the Olympics. Invited to tour London in 1993 by the Financial Times, he would reveal some of his personal preferences: 11.30am There are no traffic jams on the M4 as we drive into London from Heathrow… The western outskirts of London unfold. No Mediterranean sun or coastline here, no Olympian village. Just a landscape of cricket fields, warehouses, office blocks, and terraced houses. Maragall looks bored. ‘I have to agree with the Prince of Wales, there is a sound basis to dislike much of what has been built in London. Look at all this. I am unable to understand what is going on about me. For a citizen of a city, that is the most damaging of sensations. Being lost in a landscape you cannot understand. There doesn’t seem to be a cohesive urban development plan’. 1.00pm To the FT for lunch [with various London politicians and boosterists] …The dialogue shifts to culture and design. Maragall says: ‘If Barcelona has one asset it is the gift of design. You cannot show a design which is not the best otherwise you lose your trademark. Barcelona wanted to be capital and never was…it is always trying to go beyond itself and we had a lot to catch up after 40 years of dictatorship…’ The gathered Anglo-Saxons look bemused.15 Two points emerge from this. First, as we have seen, for Maragall the city is central to political and cultural identity. As such, the local state (city-state) should design the city with the citizen, not the subject, in mind. The citizen—as part of his or her social contract with the state—is entitled to be able to ‘read’ the city, rather than being ‘lost in a landscape you cannot understand’. In other words, a responsibility of the state is to provide legibility: an implicit critique of the lack of context of modernist urban planning. For Maragall, ‘the city is the place of experimentation. The meeting place between creators and consumers of that creation. I feel responsible for this creation being expressed…therefore we put the walls on the libraries, the museums, the theatres. This is what the local state should do’.16 The idea

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of the state as an animateur of creativity is a motif of recent urban commentary, but such rhetoric may overlap with very determined aesthetic choices made by government.17 Second, more specifically, ‘we had a lot to catch up after 40 years of dictatorship’. For Maragall (and the whole architectural establishment), Francoism was not only about loss of democratic freedom, but also an assault on Barcelona’s prominence as an international cultural citadel. The death of the Republic also hampered the work of the GATCPAC group of Catalan rationalist architects— influenced by Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier and the Bauhaus—who had ‘travelled abroad arguing for the young Republic’s new urban philosophy at architecture conferences, whether in Athens or in Paris, and won the respect of those who were in flight from Nazism and Fascism and saw Barcelona as the democratic capital of southern Europe’.18 What had to be re-asserted after the hiatus of the dictatorship was this role as a citadel and promoter of democratic values, so important to Maragall’s vision of how the city fitted into Catalonia, Spain and Europe. Part and parcel of the reestablishment of the democratic state was a return to quality in architecture and design. Hence the symbolic importance of the decision to reconstruct Mies van der Rohe’s German Pavilion from the 1929 Expo, and the search for high-profile architects to undertake the major commissions of the 1990s. The Left has long held a cultural baggage associated with the embrace of modernity. Part of the Republican dream which died—thankfully—with the defeat in the Civil War was the plan to reconstruct Barcelona through a ‘rational’ plan part-produced by Le Corbusier, which would have involved the levelling of much of the old city. The International Style remained dear to the hearts of many of the city’s architecture professionals, evidenced in the municipal project—driven by Bohigas—to reconstruct the Mies Pavilion. Re-opened in 1986, it served notice of the council’s intentions to rediscover this modernity and to celebrate its heritage. Few of the structures built in the city since the 1980s were influenced by the postmodern craze sweeping much of the West, save Frank Gehry’s playful—and gigantic—Fish sculpture, which sits beneath the corporate towers of the Olympic Village.19 Maragall’s speech at the opening ceremony of the Mies Pavilion serves as a crystallisation of these philosophies: Today…we are…settling a debt. A debt Barcelona owed to Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Photographs, drawings, and references to the Pavilion have been a constant in books and journals on architecture, art, and in all manner of encyclopaedias, Barcelona’s name has been known round the world since 1929 thanks to Mies van der Rohe. Also, Barcelona has received an enormous amount of publicity in the best of the world’s press since work began on the reconstruction of the Pavilion… For the people of Barcelona it also represents the recovery of a part of our history. The 1929 Exhibition signalled the most important renovating impulse that Barcelona has experienced in this century. The subway, the development of Montjuïc, Plaça d’Espanya, were all made

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possible thanks to the exhibition. The Pavilion reminds us of all that. But the reconstruction of the Pavilion is also a symbol of what Barcelona City Hall does…In the past six years, Barcelona city planning has had as its theme the reconstruction of a deteriorated city, the recovery of the marks of its identity, and the use of monuments as an instrument for giving dignity to the urban environment… Tours of the new public areas have already become a regular part of the itinerary of visitors to Barcelona. And this ties in with Barcelona’s renewed desire to be a part of the international scene. The Pavilion brings all this together: an architectural milestone, Barcelona’s history, an international presence… It will be an emblem of the cultured, cosmopolitan, open Barcelona that all of us are reconstructing.20 Maragall’s address contains a number of themes and motifs which indicate the importance of the built environment to his political project, and I want to pick out three of these for closer examination. First, there is the reference to the role of the ‘City Hall’ (the state) as mediator in the production of the built environment, and the Left’s approach to reconstructing Barcelona’s through an extensive programme of public spaces. Second, the pavilion functioned as an architectural monument employed to add dignity to the urban arena, also pursued through an extensive public art programme. Third, the specific mention of the pavilion as symbol of the 1929 Expo echoes the aim of using the 1992 Games as catalyst for both modernisation and ‘cosmopolitanism’, the ‘desire to be a part of the international scene’. Here, an internationally recognised architectural aesthetic was utilised to boost the city’s image around the world. The Left, space and its public Barcelona is, as many people see it, a patchwork of districts each with their own identities and histories. When the democratic council first sat down to look at its urban policy, the in-tray was overflowing with a list of demands for new parks, squares and services neglected under the dictatorship and the transition council. The FAVB’s manifesto—published on the eve of the 1979 elections—had made clear just what the demands of each barri were, and just what was to be prioritised. Gradually, over the years, these projects would be addressed. The set of projects to be tackled were listed in the council’s catalogue Plans i Projectes per a Barcelona, 1981–1982, in which is included Bohigas’s keynote essay, Una Altra Urbanitat (which translates a bit awkwardly as A Different Urbanism). The essence of Bohigas’s theory was that the city had to be seen from the viewpoint of the individual district, with the smaller project taking precedence over the rational, abstract plan (which the city had been pursuing up to that point). His philosophy could be summarised under three main criteria. First, although strategic planning was important, it was necessary to make regeneration a positive experience through tangible and numerous projects that restored quality of life to the barri; second, the all-important issue of the road network was to be addressed by integrating the city

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expressways into the existing physical environment, rather than imposing them destructively upon it; third, on a city-wide level the intention was to regenerate the urban core through esponjament, the opening up of areas of the densely built old city through selective (rather than wholesale) demolition (hence the metaphor of the sponge, with small air-holes providing ventilation), combined with a ‘monumentalisation of the periphery’, the decentralisation of economic activity throughout the city and the creation of a sense of place in the chaotic districts of the post-war period. The emphasis was on stitching rather than bulldozing, the small architect-designed project rather than the global overview of the planner.21 Accompanied by a small and dedicated team, Bohigas started work on the 1st of November, 1980, appointing Acebillo to control the projects. Owing to the parlous state of the council’s finances, and the huge volume of demands from the neighbourhoods, the team was augmented by 13 of the most promising architectural students from the city’s main architectural school, ‘golden pencils’ prepared to work for a minimum of money. Every Friday, the planning heads would sit down and look at the reams of outstanding demands, and would ask themselves if they had the money, the land, and the planning tools to proceed with the project in question.22 In many cases, the answer was affirmative. As we saw in the previous chapter, the transition mayor Socías Humbert had brought a number of old industrial sites and railway properties into public ownership. The result was a spate of fascinating public spaces scattered throughout the city with a remarkable degree of diversity in aesthetic styles. Some, such as the Plaça dels Països Catalans, were architectural set-pieces, combining monumentality with functionality. Others, such as the parks at Clot in Sant Andreu, l’Espanya Industrial in Sants or l’Escorxador in the left Eixample, were designed as a direct response to the wishes of the neighbourhood associations. Many were ‘hard spaces’, squares or parks with little planting and, hence, with low maintenance costs. I think we can meaningfully identify three aspects of the city’s regeneration policy: the ‘airing’ of the old town through the process of esponjament, the redefinition and revival of the city’s traditional districts; and the ‘monumentalisation of the periphery’, the process by which many of the cheaply built mass-produced housing on the outskirts of the city were given definition through design and the provision of new public spaces. ‘Esponjament’ in the old city The Ciutat Vella is—as we know from the works of Vázquez Montalbán—one of the most atmospheric parts of Barcelona. Stretching over 431 hectares, and with a population of around 100,000, the district runs alongside the sea as far as the Ciutadella on one side and Montjuïc on the other, hemmed in on two sides by the location of the (now almost disappeared) medieval walls, and swamped by the Eixample’s grid pattern on all sides.23 The old city is divided into four major blocks. To the east lies the Case Antic, comprising the districts of Sant Pere and Santa Caterina, a warren of decrepit housing, today sealed in by the roaring Via Laietana

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which, at the start of the century, was carved, Haussman-like, through the old district. On the other side of the Laietana is the Barri Gòtic, centred around the government buildings of Plaça Sant Jaume, upmarket shopping streets such as Portaferrissa and Portal de l’Angel towards Plaça de Catalunya, but containing the lumpen seaward barri of La Mercè around the colonnaded Plaça Reial and Carrer Escudellers. Across the Rambla is the Raval, the setting for the Carvalho novels, the home of the Liceu opera house, containing the sub-district of the once-notorious Barrio Chino. Finally, jutting out into the sea is Barceloneta, the traditional maritime heart of the city, home to much of its fishing and maritime industries (and employees), its gridded streets today concealed behind the generous frontage of Passeig Joan de Borbó, with its strip of fish restaurants. The problems facing the council in the old city were clear. In the mid-1980s, unemployment was running at 30% (twice that of areas such as Les Corts or Sant Gervasi, and higher even than the peripheral estates of Non Barris). Demographically, almost a quarter (23.6%) of its population were over 65, compared with 6% in Nou Barris (and this is even more pronounced in the Barri Gòtic). The narrow streets, poor access, dilapidated housing, lack of social facilities, and problems of drug addiction and crime all exacerbated the problems faced by its residents.24 The situation demanded urgent attention. Within the decaying streets lay much of the city’s administration (the Ajuntament and Generalitat), many of its cultural institutions (museums, archives, theatres and concert halls), and a hefty proportion of its nightlife, the narrow streets dotted with bars, clubs and restaurants. Thus, the reform of the Ciutat Vella was given a high priority, with the establishment of specific funding regimes (including support from the EU’s Cohesion Fund) and social housing programmes (funded primarily by the Generalitat), along with strategies for encouraging mixed uses into the area to valorise the redevelopment. The city council began with its programme of esponjament, opening little airholes across the area, rather than pursuing comprehensive slum clearance. In the early 1980s, small projects were chosen, little squares such as Emili Vendrell in the heart of the Raval, or that facing the church of La Mercè tucked in between the waterfront and Plaça Reial. Projects such as these would involve the demolition of certain blocks—that of La Mercè would require the removal of a housing block including a flat once occupied by Picasso during his stay in Barcelona, a decision angering certain local heritage groups. Nonetheless, the council pressed on, and soon identified several key areas for rehabilitation. In the north of the Raval, the refurbishment of the early 19th century Casa de la Caritat and the demolition of adjacent apartment blocks allowed the construction of a new university and cultural centre, housing Richard Meier’s MACBA modern art gallery, the city’s contemporary culture centre, and university faculty buildings. The new Pompeu Fabra university opened a large complex in La Mercè, and undertook a striking refurbishment of an old red brick pumping-station in Carrer Wellington (adjacent to the Ciutadella) as a location for its library.

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More striking still has been the regeneration of the most central piece of waterfront, the Moll de la Fusta, which runs from the foot of the Rambla to the foot of the Via Laietana. It is difficult today to imagine what this looked like at the beginning of the 1980s, the calm, paved streetscape of the Passeig de Colom, dedicated only to buses and pedestrians; the scrubbed 19th century facades; and the Moll de la Fusta itself, a strip of alfresco clubs and restaurants sheltered by palm trees, which gives onto a cobbled quayside and marina. Here is Mariscal’s prawn sculpture, sitting atop one of the restaurants. There are generous cycle lanes, bluetiled benches, footbridges and, on summer nights, alfresco dining and clubbing options. The whole boulevard is marked by statuary: at one end is a towering Lichtenstein, a symbol of 1992, at the other the towering monument of Columbus, symbol of 1888. It is, in many ways, one of the key projects in the renovation of the old town. Beneath the palms, however, there is a hum of noise, and if you turn your head from the sea you can just witness the semi-submerged Ronda Litoral expressway roar past. Mediterranean settlements are cursed with this problem: the coast road that has become, through the age of the automobile, a motorway. This is one of the most impressive outcomes of the marriage of architecture and engineering, the stitching of major infrastructural projects into the urban fabric. Before, an 11-lane motorway and port warehouses made this one of the least pedestrian-friendly sections of the city. This key demand of the neighbourhood federation—for the city to recover the sea—is deservedly seen as one of the council’s many success stories. However, while the regeneration of the district was aimed at allowing existing residents to be rehoused in the area, there is no doubt that the council relied on gentrification to valorise its initiatives. Along with the selective demolitions, the overall strategy included quite dramatic clearance programmes. The reform of the Raval will culminate at the turn of the century with the completion of a huge central ‘square’ (in reality a thin oblong based on Rome’s Piazza Navona), running between Hospital and Sant Pau. This was one of the heftiest sections of the reform, involving the demolition of five whole blocks of housing, bringing down 1384 flats and 293 commercial premises.25 Elsewhere, new housing has been built in the heart of the Chino, completely transforming its ambience, although the provision of sports and community centres fulfils the council’s promise of finding a stable mix of uses, for a variety of social classes.26 Reviving the traditional barris While the Ciutat Vella was an obvious priority for the council, one of the most interesting aspects of the overall urban policy was the attention paid to the other districts in the city. With the expansion of the city through Cerdà’s Eixample grid from 1860, the villages which surrounded the medieval city and which were already foci for the Spanish industrial revolution were engulfed. Sants, Sant Andreu, Sant Martí and Gràcia (1897), Horta (1903) and Sarrià (1921) were annexed to form the dense urban core that is present-day Barcelona. The early industrial or semi-rural

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heritage of these barris is still very apparent today. In Gràcia, you find yourself suddenly leaving the Eixample’s wide boulevards and being funnelled into a village of narrow streets, squares, church towers and small shops. In Horta, you surface from the end of Line 5 of the metro into the quaint Plaça d’Eivissa, with its masies and cobbles.27 Even in Les Corts, ripped apart by the construction of the Camp Nou and the speculative upmarket flats of the 1950s and 1960s, there remain a few of the 19th century streets and buildings. These traces, along with the annual street festas and community events which were quickly re established after the fall of the dictatorship, help to cement the sense of a distinct identity. Three tenor Josep Carreras, for example, is proclaimed as a child of Sants, as much as of Barcelona. And some of the city’s best-loved novels—Mercè Rodoreda’s Plaça del Diamant, for example—are set around some of the focal points of these districts, rather than in the heart of the medieval city. During the years of desarrollismo, however, the quality of life and the distinctiveness of these districts were eroded by demolition, swamped by randomly parked cars, or pocked with electricity pylons. It was this which inspired many of the neighbourhood movements discussed in the previous chapter, bolstered by an intense sensitivity to local identity: along with the demands for increased school places and local health centres, the manifesto published by the FAVB on the eve of the 1979 elections demanded the ‘recovery of green spaces, urban parks and wooded areas…the prioritisation of public over private transport and recovery of pedestrian areas; struggle against smoke, noise and pollution’.28 The power of the FAVB put pressure on the new council to make a comprehensive provision of public spaces, to help restore a focus to the likes of Sants, Clot or Sant Andreu. Sants and Clot would attain new urban parks, Sant Andreu the restoration of its beloved rambla, one of the most lamented victims of Porciolista traffic management. While much of the best work done by the council is in the quality of its public spaces—finish, surface, level, texture, street furniture, use of water, the highly selective planting—there are several keynote developments of the period which are of enormous importance and act as flagships for the city’s urban policy in the international architectural press. The Parc de l’Espanya Industrial in Sants is perhaps the most recognisable, idyllic on days of hazy sunshine with its fountains, its curious fortress-like lighting towers, its precious green sward, table-tennis tables and basketball courts and dappled lake. Dotted with white neo-classical figures in various states of repose, along with rusty Anthony Caro sculptures, it sits as a monument to the imperfect utopia of Barcelona public space: broken glass and dogwalkers, solitary figures reading newspapers in the shade, swans and almostcopulating teenagers, high-rise housing and aspiring Ronaldos. Nearby, leapfrogging the Plaça del Països Catalans, is the Parc de l’Escorxador, the site of the city’s old slaughterhouse. On closure in 1979 it was quickly claimed by the left Eixample’s neighbourhood groups, and is an important focus of community identity, comprising a library, open spaces and green walkways (and is occasionally used for mass prayer meetings by the city’s Muslims); it has been given added fame by Miró’s enormous concrete sculpture Dona i Ocell (see below). In Clot, the remains

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of old railway sheds were incorporated into a multi-level design, with an array of peaceful, noisy, shaded, secluded and wide open spaces for the park’s multiple uses and users. One could go on, taking in the parks of Pegaso, of Guinardó, or the massive reform of Montjuïc. What is important is this: the parks were claimed by the neighbourhood groups, often—as we saw in the previous chapter—through illegal (peaceful) protest. This was no model of community planning, however: as Acebillo recalls, ‘the truth is that immediately [the neighbourhood groups] understood that what they were doing was their thing; but how the works were to be carried out was ours’.29 Monumentalising the periphery By contrast with the opening of the old town through esponjament, the problem faced in the new districts on the city’s periphery—particularly in the areas of Nou Barris and Sant Martí—was their chaotic history of urbanization. Twenty-storey tower-blocks soared above dusty, unfinished ‘spaces’, with a complete absence of any form of aesthetic consideration. Here, the aim was to close down space, rather than open it up, ‘a posteriori urbanisation’, in the words of Acebillo.30 Design was employed to provide definition, with the use of unusual street furniture, public art and variable planting and surfacing giving a uniqueness in feel to each of the districts, with most of the major projects being executed by small teams of architects, artists and engineers working together. Here, the aim of Bohigas was to ‘monumentalise the periphery’, the flipside to the airing of the old city. The wide open spaces of the new districts were to be redrawn and redesigned with the architectural principles of form and aesthetics being prioritised over the functional, engineering criteria which had prevailed. As Moix puts it, Bohigas was initially knocked sideways by the peripheral areas, only a few kilometres from the Rambles and the splendours of the old city by distance, but a world away in terms of architectural design. ‘Bohigas had for the previous fifteen years been breathing the atmosphere of the gauche divine and, suddenly, he was inhaling the air of Via Júlia or Torre Baró. The change required an acclimatisation’.31 By all accounts, he managed it rapidly. The reform of the Via Júlia—a formless dual carriageway which roared through the outer estates— involved Bohigas in a direct confrontation with the roads department, altering the road layout to preserve architectural harmony. ‘He wanted to impose a new style of intervention,’ recalls the participating architect, ‘—meticulous, citizen-centred, minutely calculated—in that corner without any tradition of urbanity; he wanted to set a precedent. The fury of the engineers was memorable.’32 Being restored to a rambla from 1986, the Via Júlia was also adorned with a set of sculptures—including the 28-metre-high lighting tower at the Ronda de Dalt which, on account of its unfortunate grey cylindrical form, is known locally as ‘la xeringa’ (the syringe) or ‘el monument al ionqui’ (monument to the junkie).33 So, through the ‘airing’ of the old town, the enclosure and redefinition of the periphery, and the overall concern of seeing Barcelona ‘from the neighbourhood’ (in

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the words of Bohigas), the public space policy which comprehensively reshaped the city’s texture in the 1980s provided the council with a lot of well-earned prestige. It is a temptation, particularly in critical geography, to view the actions of the state pejoratively. Here, I have little to say about the quality of the spaces provided except that they are, by and large, imaginative and economic uses of space that have, by and large, reflected the needs of local people. We might, however, be concerned with the present direction of the council in the light of the previous chapter. The past few years have seen controversial re-zonings of green space to allow for development, and the Port Vell has, through Maremagnum and the World Trade Center, been subject to intense commercial development. Furthermore, it could be argued that the redevelopment of the Ciutat Vella will— whether intentioned or not —lead to gentrification and a redefinition of the ‘public’ in that neighbourhood. The most striking point about Left rhetoric is the desire to represent a public. How this is defined is critical, however. Certainly, regardless of the shifts towards new realism in social democratic politics that I discussed in chapter 4, the concept of the public realm is still something that is pursued as a desirable goal. As Mark Fisher, British Labour’s spokesman for the arts, has put it: [Cities] should offer public places, squares and parks and waterfronts, in which it is a pleasure to be. There should be choices, of theatres and cinemas, of book and record shops, of bars and restaurants. Most of all there should be other people to meet, with whom to share these amenities.34 Here we meet the idea of civil society again—the importance of cities to civil society is expressed in its architecture and spaces. We recall the importance of such a concept to Maragall’s Catalanism and social democracy, of seeing cities as spaces of heterogeneity, of social and cultural mixing. However, the concept of public space is highly problematic. Don Mitchell has summarised the two dominant (and contradictory) visions of the function of public space as being ‘a space marked by free interaction and the absence of intervention by powerful institutions’, and its flipside, the commitment that such space should be ‘planned, orderly and safe’.35 The happy vision of Fisher fails to address the argument that a good many geographers and urban sociologists have hammered home: space is contested, and is furthermore undergoing a gradual encroachment by private interests (as in the dystopian visions of the American city put forward by various authors).36 This has made the council face hard decisions about who their public actually is. The changing profile of the municipal socialism of the 1980s reveals some of the pressures faced by the council, and this has had a clear impact on the renovation programme of the old town, as Maragall notes in a discussion of the reform of the Ciutat Vella: Our concrete idea was to rehabilitate but literally leave people where they were, without forcing them to move, which is a far more humane and leftwing policy. But the process you have to follow in order to do this is long and

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complicated, because you have to temporarily rehouse people, reconstruct their homes and then let them back in again. The battle was lost from the start, though, since it’s taken eight years for the ‘wheel to turn full circle’, and in the meantime some have died and others have left… The problem is that for all the planning and humane ideas, the cleverest and most courageous of the young people who have been able to have all left the district, and the void they’ve left behind has been filled by people who, depending on how you look at it, create more problems than they solve. So we have to make more realistic calculations and attempt to keep up with the spontaneous natural forces at work in a market society such as ours….37 This problem—the conflict between harnessing market forces and following the ‘humane and left-wing policy’—runs to the heart of most Left attempts to regenerate public spaces. Similar programmes (such as the removal of the ‘black island’ discussed in chapter 2) were targeted at creating a new mix of classes and activities in the area, which may ultimately lead to the pricing out of those who ‘create more problems than they solve’ from the heart of the city. This had important implications for the public space programme: recall the tension facing all such strategies between allowing ‘free interaction’ and imposing order and safety As Bohigas has recognised, this tension was very pronounced in some of the reforms of the old city: I believe that Barcelona needs harmonious spaces… But I do admit that the form a space has gives structure to social life. One example is the famed Plaza Real [Plaça Reial], a neo-classical square that was a considerable problem neighbourhood in the seventies. When I was director of the City Planning Department we turned it into a pedestrian precinct. We also thought we were doing a good thing by making a genuine living room in the city with the use of concentric benches. The square as a living room has become such an enormous success that it is mainly used by marginals. Every day they do things there we’d rather not have to see.38 This encapsulates the problem facing the council: a genuine public space is difficult to sustain if all groups are not playing by the same rules. Drug addicts and petty criminals do not, generally, contribute to the successful functioning of gentrification or tourism. While I would be wary of using such examples as proof of a hardening attitude towards public space as sacred, when read in the context of chapter 5 it is clear that the quasi-utopian days of the early 1980s are now over. Nonetheless, the principle of public space and a whole and inclusive, rather than dual and exclusive, city still appears to be contained with the philosophy of Maragall. This stance also applies to the council’s views on commemoration and monument, as I shall now describe.

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Public art in the New Barcelona Catalans have had enough of ‘monuments’ in the official, pejorative sense — those crystallisations of power and vanity with which no interaction is possible, which speak one way to the urban void from their plinths and carry an air of pharaonic extravagance. (Robert Hughes)39 When Nationalist troops scaled the hills that ring Barcelona on the 26th of January, 1939, and came down into the last major stronghold of the Republic, it was the beginning of what Vázquez Montalbán has called ‘not so much a “scorched earth” as a “scorched culture” tactic’.40 The banning of Catalan, the censorship of cinema, literature and the press, the removal of freedom of speech, the imposition of religious values went alongside the poverty, the rationing, and the torture and executions. While the privations would slowly lift as the dictatorship matured and autarky was abandoned, the public realm would continue to be unloved. The ideological sea change was reflected in the street names: The Republic had named Barcelona’s streets after important representatives of republicanism and the workers’ movement, as well as Catalanizing almost all the nomenclature in the city: Marx, Seguí, Durruti, Prats del Molló, Voltaire, Ferrer i Guàrdia, Zola…a collage of political culture which was surgically removed by the conqueror. In a statement made on 25 February 1939, the councillor responsible for culture…authorized ‘the change of street and square names of this city so that heroes and martyrs can be honoured and that the mobs of the past which stained the city’s streets with foreign and undesirable names can be erased from our memories’.41 Along with the street names came the monuments. The Francoist taste-makers were committed to redefining the artistic canon of the dictatorship: The return to historical models, and the rejection of foreign avant-garde influences, was seen as a way of restoring religion, the family, patriotism, order, and authority through a construction of ‘Spanishness’. Many literary figures, artists and architects began investigating medieval culture, seen as compatible with Nationalist values because of its association with unquestionable religious and hierarchical order. Roman classical themes were also investigated, and neo-classicism was revived in sculpture, painting and prose as well as in architecture.42 In other words, there was the familiar turn that fascist artists would make towards religious essentialism and classical monumentality, contributing to a Barcelona lacking in public commissions, and with a private sector ‘saturated with the bad taste of the official aesthetic’.43 Once democracy was re-established, Bohigas

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famously—and fatuously—remarked that ‘[t]o set Barcelona back on course, everything built under Franco would have to be demolished’.44 And so, once elected, it was clear that the democratic council would have an important role in fomenting a distinct ‘democratic’ zeitgeist. The initial task was to rid the streets of their Francoist connotations, as the battle of the street names was rejoined. Serra’s approach was prudent: in a period of high tension and political uncertainty, there seemed to be an awareness that the triumphalist removal of monuments could be counter-productive. Monuments were discreetly removed by municipal workmen, not torn down by angry mobs. A monolith which commemorated the Condor Legion, the Nazi airborne division which had helped to bombard Barcelona into submission during the Civil War, was removed at night and with no publicity.45 Street names were rapidly changed: the Avenida de Generalísimo Franco reverted to the Diagonal; Marqués del Duero to the Paral·lel; José Antonio Primo de Rivera to the Gran Via. When it came to ornamenting these streets, however, there was a wariness of the monument. But, rather than turning their back on urban statuary, the council went to enormous lengths to promote a programme of public art, conceived particularly by Serra. He argued that the city lacked a collection of modern sculpture, and that through the municipal parks budget a programme of public art could be established which would complement the new public spaces. From 1980 onwards, through the mediation of Xavier Corberó, a Catalan sculptor, and the New York art dealer Joe Helman, a range of leading North American sculptors were persuaded to design pieces for the city. This brought to Barcelona works by the likes of Richard Serra, Claes Oldenburg, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Bryan Hunt and Beverly Pepper for the rock-bottom price of $20,000, the council paying for the expense of the materials in addition. Major European, Catalan and Spanish artists also contributed.46 Together with these newly commissioned pieces, the council also took out, dusted down and refurbished many of the monuments which had been removed from the streets after Franco came to power. By the mid-1990s, taking together all the public sculptures and artworks in the city’s streets, the council could publish a compendium listing 535 pieces along with 28 architectural monuments.47 A multitude of aesthetic tastes make up the municipal collection. The Parc de la Ciutadella, Plaça de Catalunya, the reposeful gardens at the Palau Reial at Pedralbes, and the glades of Montjuïc are dotted with the white neo-classical noucentiste (turn-of-the-century) allegorical nudes which complement the rather more brutal, hulking, rust-brown abstractions which often sit nearby. Pop gets a look-in too: Roy Lichtenstein’s Cap de Barcelona on the Moll de la Fusta, a giant face rendered in his characteristic red cartoon dots; or Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen’s Mistos, a giant red and yellow book of matches at the Vall d’Hebron Olympic site. And, of course, there is an ample helping of the bizarre: the gold ball with squiggles which adorns Plaça de George Orwell at the lumpen heart of the Barri Gòtic; Rebecca Horn’s almost-about-to-topple set of four iron and glass cubes on the beach at Barceloneta; the Clangers-inspired (surely?) homage to the 1888 Fair located at the northern end of the Ciutadella park, or Fernando Botero’s

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bulbous, smirking giant cat which has padded around a variety of sites in the city, and which is now poised on a back-street at the back of Drassanes, waiting to leap on you as you stagger back one dark night. In fact, walking through any square or park in Barcelona, no matter how small, usually involves a confrontation with some sort of municipal monument. Even the humble roundabout has been turned into an aesthetic free-for-all as art critic meets road engineer: the swirling tunnelled exit from the Ronda Litoral onto the Paral·lel which encircles a huge, formless space has been laid with basalt slabs to (curiously) imply some sort of volcanic ashscape; the park which cowers within the motorway junction at Glories contains beneath its scrawny trees a Cor-ten steel model of the ‘geodesic cleft’ that runs from the North Sea to Barcelona and which was used to define the metre. Indeed, one of the defining features of the approach to ‘stitching’ in the inner-city motorways is the siting of sculptures at tunnel mouths which pop up periodically around the city, marking out otherwise anonymous roadways. Such a prolific outpouring of creativity is impossible to survey adequately here. Indeed, there are methodological problems in focusing on too narrow and selective a choice of monuments and artworks, selecting a particular piece and then ‘reading off’ all manner of ideological insights. Certainly, the problem of determining meaning in a plural society is often difficult, given the complexity of the tensions between artist, function, and the variety of perspectives held by local residents. The sheer diversity of Barcelona’s public art programme defies quick and dismissive charges of elitism, its portfolio so heterogeneous that sweeping statements about hegemony are difficult to sustain. Furthermore, it is even difficult to point to one defining artwork which is placed for maximum attention at particularly ‘sacred’ sites in the city.48 Nonetheless, I want to make five points here about the art programme. First, there is a definite bias (particularly among the new commissions) towards abstraction, rather than figurative works. The high-profile use of figurative public art by city councils has proved controversial. Birmingham’s use of proletarian imagery (Raymond Mason’s Forward), juxtaposed against its international convention centre, while apparently lamenting the city’s industrial past, reveals fundamental contradictions in terms of conceptualising its public.49 Furthermore, it and projects like it face ‘the same difficulties of reception as the monuments of socialist realism’, reflecting an idealised, state-promoted version of society.50 In Barcelona, there is a marked tendency to promote the avant-garde and the abstract, perhaps in the belief that its neutrality and lack of established meaning is the best way to avoid the heavy-handedness of the state. As a downside, this has ironically resulted in accusations of enlightened despotism which I consider below. Second, a dominant theme of public art has been the assertion that it legitimises controversial development, through massaging public opinion or softening corporate gain.51 Certainly, a major beneficiary of the increased funding available to the art programme was the Olympic Village, which had its identity as l’últim barri (the last district that can be built in the city’s crowded interior) enhanced by the existence of a variety of abstract sculptures. Running down the main boulevard parallel to the sea—Avinguda Icària—twist the tree-like pergolas of Enric Miralles

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and Carme Pinós. Nearby lie a whole bag of eye-fillers: the spindly, puzzling group of spikey, 14-metre-high steel somethings (a gift from Rotterdam city council and the Dutch government in honour of the Games); the towering, lonely chimney of the Can Folch flour mill (1887), a last reminder of Poble Nou’s industrial heritage; the Monumental fountain which dominates the roundabout at the foot of the Village’s twin towers. Certainly, Frank Gehry’s enormous Fish sculpture is the most obvious example of the conventional art-as-corporate-toy, a likeable tinted steel mesh which sits at the foot of the Hotel Arts, 35×54 metres in dimension, which softens the frontage of the two beach-front skyscrapers. Again, however, the eclecticism of the portfolio, and the commitment to the council of opening up new, fairly unregulated public spaces, suggests that the existence of corporate artwork is not a major theme in the redevelopment of the city. Third, there is certainly a degree of anti-monumentality at play in some of the monuments. The most striking example of this must be Homenatge a Picasso (Homage to Picasso), which reflects the desire to substitute an avant-garde interpretation of municipal commemoration for the usual figurative statue. Executed by Antoni Tàpies, the most illustrious living Catalan artist, this sculpture is unassumingly placed on the pavement running down one side of the Ciutadella park in Passeig de Picasso. The sculpture takes the form of a glass cube, filled with furniture and sheets, criss-crossed with beams, the whole thing partially concealed by a steady stream of water running down the glass. Things haven’t worked out as well as Tàpies would have intended: ‘the work frequently steams up, and much of the time there is no water at all, leaving an unseemly film on the glass and, in warm weather, an unappetizing layer of scum in the pool around the box.’52 However, this lack of suitability is perhaps due to the anti-monumentalism pursued by Tàpies, the stated refusal to perform the ritual of much civic statuary of canonising dead locals, usually in the hard-wearing pomp of bronze or marble.53 Furthermore, the work is hardly in a prominent position, located outside the park on a relatively quiet street. This explicit antagonism to the marble or bronze plinths of monumental civic sculptures is, one presumes, something Picasso would have approved of. (Tàpies would go further still: when asked to design a sculpture which would grace the huge domed entrance hall of the Catalan national art museum on Montjuïc, he produced a model of…a sock, a holey, worn sock of the type familiar to anyone who remembers the 1980s: white, ribbed, with nasty blue rings around the top. Needless to say, the sculpture would not be commissioned). Fourth, attempts to commemorate the Civil War are discreet. Beth Galí’s monument at Fossar de la Pedrera is tucked away—appropriately enough—at the quarry beneath Montjuïc castle, where executed political prisoners (including the president of the Generalitat at the end of the Civil War, Lluís Companys) were buried. Roy Shifrin’s David and Goliath, an explicit, foreign-funded commemoration of the role of foreign volunteers in the Civil War, is also obscurely located, this time at an expressway tunnel mouth in the northern district of Carmel. In 1988, between two and three hundred veterans of the International Brigades (out of an estimated 43,000 who had fought in the Civil War) returned to Barcelona, 50

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Plate 8 Homenatge a Picasso/Homage to Picasso. This work by Antoni Tàpies epitomises the anti-monumentality of much of the city’s public art. (Source: Vicky Webb)

years after their departure, and attended the unveiling of the monument. Both the words of the mayor and the location did little to please the veterans. ‘Thanks to you Barcelona is a free city, Catalonia is a nation with autonomy, and Spain is a democracy,’ he began. ‘David, now he has come of age, must help Goliath… Give your hand to those who were on the other side,’ he then continued. The appeal for reconciliation did not go down so well, the real tone of the day being represented by the singing of the Internationale.54 The complaints of the veterans seem justified. There is more emphasis placed on recuperating the heritage of the Republic (a safe golden age) than on memorialising the war. The dusting down of Llimona’s 1910 monument to the late 19th century socialist mayor (removed from the streets by the Francoists) that sits at Plaça Tetuan in the Eixample lends—it is suggested—a ‘certain pedigree to the city’s socialist government’.55 And we must remember the divisions within the Republican forces: Plaça Reial would never return to its Second Republic name of Plaça Francese Macià (the Catalan president at the time), too nationalist by far. So ideological statements are by and large avoided, perhaps the greatest legacy of Francoism in the contemporary built environment, and a sign of the collective amnesia discussed in chapter 2. Fifth, finally, there is a tendency to commission works on a monumental—in the sense of massive—scale. As with the gangling pop of Lichtenstein and Oldenburg/ Van Bruggen, the artists invited to contribute to the public spaces have clearly not been exhorted to think small. Perhaps most striking—easily viewed from a speeding taxi or bus on the way from the city centre to the airport—is Joan Miró’s enormous

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Dona i Ocell (Woman and Bird) in the Parc de l’Escorxador, suggestively phallic but capable of multiple interpretation. Inaugurated in 1983, the 22-metre-high concrete shaft is pocked with bright trencadís (broken ceramic), with a tip that supports, presumably, the bird. Similarly, in the hilly park of Creueta del Coll (formed through the rehabilitation of a disused quarry) Eduardo Chillida has strung an enormous, 80-ton concrete spider from two sides of the rock faces, hanging playfully above a circular pool (the spider collapsed in 1998, with near-fatal consequences for a group of art students standing below). And Richard Serra’s ‘wall’ (discussed below) brought the most infamous practitioner of colossal public art to the city. So instead of the public monument’s function as a grandiose language of political power—the ‘Value-free…architecture of coercion’ of so much municipal modernism56—the approach of the council has been consonant with its stress on rebuilding civic culture. As Maragall puts it: One could say that the new sculptures in Barcelona are but the tip of an iceberg in the process of planning a city that seeks a more pleasant environment with new spaces which enhance city life. This is different from the idea that the city’s sculptures form an open-air museum… Sculptures in a museum play a specific aesthetic, historic or didactic role; whereas open-air sculpture becomes part of the urban system, and thus enriches it. Today, Barcelona is a city that invites one to stroll. The intense period of urban renewal has given way to the more charming tranquility of the present, a time when one can more fully enjoy the city’s parks, squares, beaches, boulevards, gardens… The sculptures, standing proud day and night, defying inclement weather and merciless graffiti, have earned their respectable place in the city. They beckon us to start walking.57 From this rhetoric emerges Maragall’s conviction that citizenship is closely related to a participation in the public space and rhythms of the city. This—a prevalent theme of Maragallisme—is resonant with ideas of community and the legibility of spaces. For Robert Hughes, the projects ‘try, in a medley of different voices, to undo the spurious explicitness of the official public sculpture that goes with such official projects…admitting, above all, that sculpture is not some kind of visual fluoride designed to act on the soul instead of the teeth’.58 The idea that public art and sculpture valorise public space is not a new one: however, rarely has it been incorporated so comprehensively into a programme of urban renewal. Yet this open, undefined aesthetic has not escaped without criticism. Maragall’s city of marvels has been called elitist and pharaonic. Are these charges fair? More state than civil society? The enlightened despots If we recall the comment made at the beginning of the chapter by Bofill, the tension between state and civil society is often entangled in struggles over the production of

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space, and comes to light in redevelopment and design controversies.59 Thus far, I’ve suggested that Barcelona has a genuinely popular set of spaces, which were created through the historical conjuncture of a powerful neighbourhood movement and a highly imaginative, politically committed group of municipal architects and politicians. The council’s attempt to remake the city is also defined by certain tensions, however, where the balance between civil society and state tips markedly to the latter. Here, the cityscape of the New Barcelona is seen as the monumental legacy of a generation of enlightened despots, an educated elite who dispense harsh, puzzling designs for the benefit of an uncomprehending citizenry. Of course, such a charge has been levelled at the other major example of ‘architectural socialism’ in contemporary Europe, that of the Parisian grands projets. Mitterrand stated his desire to pursue ‘a certain idea of the city’,60 a particular vision of Paris as being both the centre of a redefined French national identity and a genuinely social metropolis. Through the popularising of high culture (the modernist pyramid extension to the Louvre, celebrating transparency, the creation of the new park at La Villette, or the sponsoring of a popular opera house at the Bastille) he sought to reverse the individualism and anti-urban nervousness of his predecessor, Giscard d’Estaing. However, this brought its own problems. As David Looseley has argued: Mitterrand’s idyll of a living community of the city and his talk in the 1981 [presidential election] campaign of a ‘contre-pouvoir associatif’ that would guarantee the participation of citizens in the creation of their built environment contrasted strangely with the centralised, personalised and statuesque grands projets. Instead, the substantial disruption caused by projects such as the opera house at the Bastille has actually broken up established communities, or such projects have been seen as jarring and provocatively grandiose presidential signatures on the Parisian urban fabric, heavy-handedly pursuing an idealised civic identity.61 As we shall now see, ‘Maragall’s city of marvels’, the Olympic variant of Eduardo Mendoza’s city of the 1888 and 1929 expos, has been similarly accused—of boosterism, the worship of modernisation, and enlightened despotism. Boosterism Eduardo Mendoza’s novel City of Marvels is remarkable for a number of reasons. As I noted before, it is a chronicle of the rise of one individual to the heights of the city’s bourgeoisie between the two fairs of 1888 and 1929. And what is central to this narrative is the attempt by Barcelona’s bourgeoisie and town hall to project the city into the circling dynamics of European capitalist modernity. These fairs were modelled on those being held in Paris, London, Antwerp, Glasgow and Liverpool, and displayed the earliest trappings of modern commodity capitalism. Today, the city demonstrates the kind of lush beauty that the fallow sites of old exhibitions can

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yield. The 1888 Fair is remembered in the Ciutadella park, and the red-brick remnants of that year remain among the city’s urban jewels: Domènech i Montaner’s Café-restaurant, now the zoology museum, and l’Arc de Triomf, with its interpretation of Parisian pomp. The mayor of Barcelona at the time of the 1888 Fair—Rius i Taulet—saw such architecture as one of the principal means of putting the city on the map of European modernity, despite it being launched in the aftermath of a disastrous economic collapse. Similarly, Primo de Rivera’s hopes of sustaining his crumbling dictatorship were pinned on the 1929 Expo, which would endow the city with a range of miscellaneous buildings, sculptures, fountains and gardens, grouped around the Plaça d’Espanya and the foot of Montjuïc. For the long decades of the 20th century when the city was under the thumb, civic pride was very much curtailed. But in the 1980s, when the Olympics were mooted, the opportunity arose again to become part of the European spectacle circuit. And in such affairs, architecture is one of the main ways a distinctive civic identity can be forged for the outside world. This process has often been described as an attempt to forge hegemony by local elites, whereby mass culture is manipulated to legitimise particular growth strategies, and to advertise the city in an international market of trade and tourism.62 And so, 1992 was framed with a strong sense of the importance of fine architecture in establishing Barcelona’s civic identity. The council’s efforts to reposition the city in the new European economy were combined with the realisation that they could—as with their forebears—use the money levered from Madrid to endow the city with lasting architectural monuments. The major sports and infrastructure projects could both ‘market’ the city internationally, and provide a symbolic demonstration of the city’s belated (or delayed) modernisation. To achieve this, a galaxy of international architectural stars were lured to the city. Arata Isozaki, Norman Foster, Santiago Calatrava, Alvaro Siza, Richard Meier were all found commissions, not all related to the Games, taking their place among prominent figures from the local architectural community. The ‘signing’ of Meier was particularly satisfying to Maragall, as the architect was at the time the holder of the Pritzker Prize, the top award in architecture, and was on the ascendancy in Europe. Every now and then a European city or corporation decides it wants a major symbolic building, something that sets it apart from its competitors, that speaks of its unique good taste. Then it goes to Richard Meier. It knows what to expect and gets it: a white, rectangular, gridded building with a drum and perhaps a piano curve attached. Everyone seems happy.63 The socialists’ symbolic building was the projected contemporary art museum, opened in November 1995 as the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). The gallery filled a surprising gap in the city’s cultural infrastructure: despite several institutions devoted to modern art—Miró, Tàpies, Picasso— Barcelona lacked a single building for the display of the work of contemporary

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international artists. It offered a remarkable opportunity for a landmark building, sited in the middle of the northern Raval. Meier’s talismanic status among European municipalities and corporations has been attributed to two factors: In the first place, his work is always instantly recognisable, an attribute that clearly appeals to those who are unsure of their own taste. Meier appeals to the kind of people who would have bought Julian Schnabel in the eighties, on the grounds that not only was he fashionable, but that smashed crockery glued to the canvas could not fail to be recognised by even the most casual observer. Just as Schnabel stuck to plates, so Meier is always designing essentially the same building, using the same geometries, the same nautical imagery, and above all the same white stove-enamel steel cladding.64 Second, he avoided the postmodern fripperies that characterised North American corporate architecture in the 1980s. With municipal commissions to design two museums in Frankfurt and town halls in The Hague and Ulm, he also found corporate favour. For Siemens, Swissair, Canal+, Mercedes and Luxembourg’s Hypolux bank, ‘Meier’s serious-minded aesthetic approach had a strong appeal. They could be sure that, even if he made them look as dull as graph paper, he would not make them feel ridiculous’.65 The site chosen for the MACBA was at the northern end of the Raval, close to the university. In amongst the crowded tenements rises Meier’s creation: it is white, gleaming white, its frontage is almost entirely glass, and inside it is also white, with the major access between its three floors achieved by way of a ramp which sits behind the facade. Opinion is divided as to whether it fits in: many see it as an elitist slap in the face to one of the city’s poorest neighbourhoods. An Observer reviewer sneered at the ‘white, white, white and white’ of the museum, containing the ‘standard four-star International Art starter pack: a Beuys bathtub, a stack of Christian Boltanski false-memory deposit boxes, a leaden V-2 rocket by Anselm Kiefer and a number of Spanish makeweights’.66 Others regard it as a beacon of light in the depths of the old city: Maragall was quick to stress Meier’s lineage with the modern movement ‘which has had such happy echoes in Barcelona’s architecture’, and seeks justification in its insertion in the Raval as evidence that the city is ‘once again making its own that synthesis of old and new’ that, he asserts, has characterised the city’s history.67 Regardless, what the presence of Meier really symbolises—as with Frank Gehry’s Guggenheim art gallery in Bilbao—is the importance of architecture as image and talking point, a kind of free publicity, indispensable for place marketing. By the late 1990s, when Meier had achieved near godlike status for his new Getty museum in Los Angeles, Barcelona could say ‘we’ve got one too’.

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Plate 9 MACBA. Richard Meier’s contemporary art gallery lies at the heart of the northern Raval. (Source: Vicky Webb)

The Olympic skyline: monuments to modernisation Significantly two of the principal commissions awarded under the auspices of the Olympics were for communications infrastructure. Seen as an essential part of a post-Fordist, or informational, or whatever, future, the use of hi-tech architecture actively advertised the city’s refound modernity. Maragall was a sucker for the celebration of progress through the grand projet: on his Financial Times tour of London, he goes to see Nicholas Grimshaw’s new international rail terminal at Waterloo. He is enthused: ‘It’s airy, it’s wide…it’s beautiful… It’s EUROPE…this is going to change London’s history’.68 The social democratic embrace of technology and modernity has many echoes in the recent past—from the white heat of technology to the González government’s Seville Expo. As well as projecting the city abroad, the use of international architects was explicitly conceived as justifying certain projects domestically. As well as the architects’ reputation and experience, Maragall suggests that there was a need ‘to create a state of legitimacy…by choosing an important architect it would make it more difficult to prevent a building from being constructed’.69 In the case of both of the city’s new communications towers there was some dubiety and political debate over the need for the developments, so there were practical issues of municipal statecraft behind the employment of prominent architects. Along with Meier’s museum the most apparent evidence of the trophy architect is on the city’s skyline, altered through the hi-tech signatures of leading European architects. The two communications towers, by Norman Foster and Santiago

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Calatrava, demonstrate the council’s desire to be semiotically associated with the informational economy. Foster’s tower was the first to be commissioned. While accounts vary, according to one insider it originated during a lunch in 1985 between Maragall and the head of Telefónica, the state telecommunications company. The mayor had remarked on how good it would be if Barcelona were to have a tower which rivalled Madrid’s pirulí (which stands above the state television centre). The man from Telefónica agreed, arguing for the importance of centralising the various aerials which stood on the Collserola hills above the city. With this injection of public funding, the council was determined to profit by using a trophy architect. Through an invitation-only competition, Foster emerged triumphant with a typically hi-tech design, beating off—significantly—a proposal by Calatrava. However, not long after his failure Calatrava was contracted to design another tower, this time on Montjuïc. The decision to employ Calatrava provoked an unprecedented controversy. The site awarded to him was, essentially, part of the Olympic ring—the cluster of sports installations which included the main stadium, Isozaki’s gymnastics amphitheatre, and the diving pool—which was being masterplanned by local architects Correa, Milà, Margarit and Buxadé. They had foreseen a simple cylindrical monument, but Acebillo took issue over the cost and, having negotiated again with Telefónica, persuaded them to fund another communications tower. The local architectural profession took severe umbrage, and with a longrunning tension between Bohigas and Acebillo as a subtext, the whole affair became public when 58 architects and intellectuals signed a letter to the Ajuntament protesting the issue. Calatrava’s tower won out, however, and endowed the Olympic hill with a distinctive, highly visible and imageable ‘wishbone’, strikingly floodlit against the night sky.70 Calatrava is showing every sign of joining Meier and Foster as favourite architects of the European municipality Gaining widespread acclaim for the remodelling of Zurich railway station, he was one of the first major architects to benefit from the Ajuntament’s policy of bringing design aesthetics to working class districts. His bridge linking the Carrer Felip II and Carrer Bac de Roda in Sagrera was one of the first examples of how the council would use architecture to enliven the landscapes of the city’s working class suburbs, a generous (white) structure over the main railway line to the north, with a comfortable segregation of pedestrians and vehicles, its floodlit structure at night displaying the dinosaur skeleton influences on his work. Furthermore: Calatrava…finds himself in good historical company, with Viollet-le-Duc, Antoni Gaudí, Robert Maillart, Pier Luigi Nervi and Felix Candela. Like them, Calatrava makes poetry out of the kind of civil engineering usually treated as just a prosaic business of applied mathematics.71 This is what makes Calatrava so attractive for city governments. He gives added value to potentially mundane infrastructure projects, and the white, skeletal bridge and angular communications tower provide the kind of landmark which speaks

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sweetly to the modernising urban elite, setting it apart from the conservationism that provides the aesthetic for the leaders of ‘historic’ cities. Organic curves with a reassuring air of hi-tech. The enlightened despotism of the ‘hard squares’ Occasionally, the city’s architects were deemed to have gone too far, to have used too elevated an architectural language. One of the most striking—but best-hidden —pieces of municipal avant-gardism was the invitation to Richard Serra to design a sculpture for the outlying Plaça de la Palmera, a newly created square in the heart of working class Sant Martí, out towards the northern boundary of the city. The busride to reach this barri involves a trip through the high (literally) modernism of the grey years of Porciolismo. And there, a few kilometres from the city centre and a good few more from Federal Plaza, Manhattan, lies Tilted Arc. Except it isn’t called that: it’s called El Mur, The Wall. It was actually two walls, slightly curving, slightly overlapping, off-white, kept ajar by the square’s defining feature, its towering palm. The square itself is a red asphalt garden for an infinity of high-rise flats. It is a striking example of bringing art to the masses, a deliciously luxuriant use of an international art star in an unremarkable peripheral housing estate. Incredibly, the artistic bloody-mindedness which had seen Tilted Arc enter the courts—Serra’s Manhattan are had completely cut direct access across its windswept location, and the artist had resisted the owner’s attempts to dismantle it on the grounds that it was site-specific art—had been lapped up whole by his namesake’s public space-obsessed regime in Barcelona. Unlike Manhattan, however, the wall posed little obstacle to the square’s users: the gap between the walls removed the problem of obstruction and, indeed, it was seen as a highly functional way of separating the flat playing area from the lusher, quieter space for those who wished to sit in the shade. While public art meaning-seekers may welcome the poetic division between lush fecundity and desert-like aridity,72 what is interesting here is the literal adoption of the Bohigas credo of ‘monumentalising the periphery’. While Serra’s Barcelona wall survived its Manhattan fate (despite threats to bulldoze it in election campaigns) through its successful functionality, the most outstanding piece of municipal bravado and the most spectacular of the hard squares was the Plaça dels Països Catalans adjacent to the main railway station in Sants. Designed by the local team of Piñon and Viaplana, this is also high aesthetics combined with mundane functionalism. Faced with a huge and ill-defined open space surrounded by tower blocks and highways, Piñon and Viaplana responded with an architectural essay of enormous minimalism. The square, paved with grey stone, is dominated by a 15-metre-high square canopy, measuring 30 metres on each side, and accompanied by fountains, a clock, and lamp standards. ‘What is that?’ might be the response. Skateboarders like it, pedestrians and travellers cross it on the way to the station, or between Sants and the Eixample, and when the sun is low the poles send long shadows across the square. It has a sex-shop beside it, and a

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Plate 10 Plaça dels Països Catalans. But is it art? (Source: Vicky Webb)

hypermarket, and a hotel. You feel you are in the New Barcelona, certainly. But is it art? Architecturally, the answer is clearly yes. For Kenneth Frampton, ‘[t]he delicacy of the metal framework recalls the unrealized constructivist cities of the Soviet avantgarde; hence the inclined planes, the floating slab-like benches, the diagonal stanchions and the parabolic trajectories implying non-traditional urban forms of infinite extendability’.73 I can see that. Those disconcerted by the square who sought enlightenment from its authors would doubtless be reassured by the rationale which accompanied Viaplana and Piñon’s design: At first we felt distressed. Anyone who knows the site on which we were to work will understand. But we did not complain too much; in fact, we did not complain: we decided that from that moment on the project itself had to embody the feeling which arose from the place; cunning is essential in our field, and silence is one of its forms. With a cunning smile we planned a horizontal surface to unite all of the parts, even the most intractable, as could be done with a route as wide as it is long. But even the existing streets vanished in that desert….74 And so their prose spins off into a frenzy of nonsense, a flurry of the architectural bizarre. Interviewed later, they’re off again:

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To call it a ‘square’ always seemed to me ironic to the point of sarcasm. It was a desert…an urban wasteland. The responsibility of not knowing how to begin made us ‘lift our eyes up to heaven’. In this way we realised that we could only turn towards that great patch of sky that exists in that part of Barcelona. It was the most living presence, the only presence we could grasp on to.75 Opinion was split beautifully between the architecture profession and the uninitiated. On visiting the site, Alfonso Guerra—then the General Secretary of the PSOE—joked to Maragall that it looked like a petrol station. Other politicians went further: a representative of the far-right Alianza Popular made an electoral promise that it would be demolished should they be voted into power. For the majority, however, the main point of contention was the lack of greenery in the square. The president of the local neighbourhood association described the work as being conceived for those using the station, rather than those who lived in the area. The council responded that this was indeed the case: locals were already provided for in the adjacent Parc de l’Espanya Industrial.76 Furthermore, supporters of the hard square pointed out its relevance on two counts. First, grass is expensive to plant and maintain, a luxury that the financially stretched council was unable to succumb to. Second, gardens need time to mature. The hard square, however, is ready immediately. Given the vast range of projects the council was trying to inaugurate across the city, the hard square was something that had to be swallowed.77 For the cognoscenti the square was a remarkable success. In 1983, it received the Premi del Foment de les Arts Decoratives (FAD), the principal award of the Catalan design profession. International commentators praised it fulsomely. For Kenneth Frampton, ‘[p]art sculpture, part architecture, the success of this tectonic gamble makes it one of the most daring and brilliant works of the “plan-project” to date’.78 And in 1991, the Harvard Design School awarded the city the Prince of Wales award for Design as recognition of its quality, along with the Moll de la Fusta and the park at Clot (what the Prince of Wales would have said is left to the imagination). Such avant-gardism has not gone unchallenged, however. Bohigas reels off a list of complaints at those in the city who have challenged the council’s projects: those who criticised the avant-gardism of Tàpies, who saw Dona i Ocell as pornography, the journalists who criticised the renovation of Plaça Reial, the pedants who criticised the planting of palm trees for these being non-indigenous to Catalonia, and the electoral promises to demolish Richard Serra’s wall sculpture in Plaça de la Palmera.79 We could add the electoral opposition of both the Spanish and the Catalan right to the Plaça dels Països Catalans, or the Generalitat’s opposition to (or jealousy of?) Acebillo’s powers of spraying the city with sculpture. Much of this was political point-scoring, but it could be seen as ideological: as Vázquez Montalbán has put it, the emblematic Plaça dels Països Catalans was

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…a ‘hard’ square in a ‘soft’ and compromised age, scorned by the press and by Pujol’s conservative nationalists, who are all imbued with the antiquated concept of bringing nature to the city. The Plaça dels Països Catalans bears witness and pays homage to the uncompromising realism of the urban aesthetic and makes no concessions to the ‘little house and garden’ philosophy.80 This is a useful summary of the council’s approach: a celebration of urbanity and avant-gardism, rather than rurality/romanticism and conservatism. Yet such tastes are rarely the most popular, and give credence to those who argue that the ‘city of marvels’ was a city of despots, enlightened or not. ✤✤✤ Throughout its 19 years of continuous government, the PSC-led city council has intervened comprehensively in Barcelona’s built environment, giving the city international renown for its design and architecture. And—as with Mitterrand in Paris—it has sought to make the city a stage, a theatre, a visible display of humanist socialism. So can we identify a distinctive Left aesthetic and spatial policy for cities? Reading across the narratives presented above, I think that three basic points can be made about the Barcelona experience. First, there is an issue of architectural literacy: it was clear that architects were close to the decision-making process within the council, and were able to capitalise on both the initial focus on small projects (rather than major infrastructural works) and the larger commissions required by the Olympics. The centrality of architects in the planning process allowed a greater degree of aesthetic control over the major engineering works often off-bounds to urban designers, such as the landscaping and ‘stitching’ of the new expressways into the urban environment. Furthermore, there was a peculiarly well-developed notion of aesthetic issues within the mayor’s office, evidenced in the biographies of both Serra and Maragall. From this, it seems fair to suggest that the social composition of the state (including the personal preferences of its leaders) has a lot to do with the intelligence and proactivity with which aesthetic strategies are pursued: Serra, Maragall, Bohigas et al. were all sensitive to the Left’s heritage in international modernism, evidenced in the reconstruction of the Mies Pavilion, and were keen to promote the avant-garde, in the commissioning of Richard Serra, for example. Most notably, Ricard Bofill’s postmodern classicism found few supporters in the council establishment, and he was left to pick up the altogether scarcer commissions from the Generalitat. Second, there was the council’s firm promotion of public space, and its use of public art as a complement. This strategy had different phases: the early involvement of Bohigas in the formulation of policy, with his emphasis on architectural approaches to solving engineering problems. This would be superseded by the progressive shift upwards in scale in the later 1980s. Given the antidevelopment political climate of the transition and its aftermath, both the council and the neighbourhood groups were working in the same direction: tensions only surfaced over the degree to which the latter could dictate the actual designs and

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forms of the new spaces, with the planners and architects jealously guarding their professional standing. While the public spaces are a very definite part of the council’s philosophy, the shift to a more pro-development agenda (see chapters 4 and 5) has meant that re-zoning is now taking place in certain key sites that would never have been considered in the early days of democracy. Furthermore, it is clear that the illegal occupations that yielded rewards such as l’Espanya Industrial would not be viewed with sympathy under the ‘democratic’ state. Thus while Maragall—in his opening of the Mies Pavilion—could stress the importance of the monument for the city, his rhetoric on citizenship is somewhat hollower than it was in the 1980s. Third, the local state has gone a long way to imposing its aesthetic choices. This has been described as an enlightened despotism: the careful choice of the right architect from the international star system, the ‘difficult’ public art pieces, the controversies over competition decisions. The council’s strong aesthetic tastes have certainly paid little heed to populism. This is not necessarily a bad thing: the ability to dictate taste, wants and desires is a central part of state and economic power, and is accountable to a certain degree. Nonetheless, the echoes of the Mitterrand ‘pharaonic’ grands projets are obvious, and the council’s explicit aim of using buildings such as the MACBA as a means of changing the social mix of certain neighbourhoods is not a value-free policy. These observations will not hold for all Left councils in European cities, many of which have committed the very same atrocities in the name of modernism as Barcelona’s very right-wing dictatorship. The misuse of state power in imposing aesthetic agendas is something that, Left or Right, progressive or reactionary, is always a potential issue in any redevelopment scenario. Furthermore, the rebuilding of Barcelona took place at a unique conjuncture of opportunities—the funding opportunities offered by the Olympics, the uncertainty of the transition which allowed significant land purchase, and the economic boom which demanded the modernisation of the urban landscape. While the city’s development is thus distinctive to the contemporary European Left, I would suggest that it has successfully ‘re-enchanted’ the city; which surely must be at the heart of restoring or defending a socialism of citizenship. Notes 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Hughes (1992), p. 466. Hughes (1987), p. 25. Knox (1987). Ley (1987). Cited in Moix (1994), p. 241. Rowe (1997), pp. 34–5. Ley (1987). Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 171. Bradley (1996); Dent Coad (1995a, 1995d). Moix (1994), pp. 15–16.

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11 See Moix (1994), pp. 21–9. 12 Cited in Moix (1994), pp. 30–1; see Bohigas (1985) for a more detailed account of his design philosophy. 13 Cited in Moix (1994), p. 77. 14 Account drawn from Moix (1994), quotation from p. 80; Acebillo (c. 1993) provides a discussion of this change in scale. 15 Jimmy Burns, ‘Man with a plan tries to make sense of London’, Financial Times 5 June 1993, London supplement, p. x. 16 Cited in Febrés and Rivière (1991), p. 169. 17 See Landry and Bianchini’s (1995) booklet, The Creative City, for example. 18 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 118. 19 See MBMP (1991) on the design influences of the Olympic Village, which has a distinct modernist lineage. 20 ‘Presentation’, in Ajuntament de Barcelona (1987), pp. 8–9. 21 This essay is included in Bohigas (1985). 22 Moix (1994), p. 44. 23 I draw the statistical material from FAVB (1991), and the historical data from Huertas (1996). 24 FAVB (1991), p. 25. 25 Marta Ricart, ‘La urbanización de la plaza central culmina la reforma del Raval’, La Vanguardia 28 April 1998, ‘Vivir en Barcelona’ supplement, p. 4. 26 The council’s recent activities in the Ciutat Vella are included in Ajuntament de Barcelona (1996), pp. 107–20. 27 A masía is a Catalan vernacular farmhouse. 28 Cited in Subirós (c. 1993), p. 32. 29 Cited in Moix (1994), p. 51. 30 Acebillo (c. 1993), p. 107. 31 Moix (1994), p. 39. 32 Cited in Moix (1994), p. 73. 33 Huertas (1996), p. 265. 34 Fisher (1991), p. 1. 35 Mitchell (1995), p. 115. 36 See, for example, the essays in Sorkin (1992). 37 In Mateo and Cervelló (1990), p. 14. Original translation, my emphasis. 38 Cited in Bouman and Van Toorn (1994), p. 188. 39 Hughes (1987), p. 26. 40 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 142. 41 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 146. 42 Dent Coad (1995c), p. 223. 43 Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 160. 44 Cited in Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 160. 45 Fabre and Huertas (1989), p. 326. 46 Moix (1994), p. 105; Apgar (1991). 47 Tolosa and Romaní (1996). 48 In contrast to, for example, the location of the ‘Forward’ sculpture in Birmingham (Hall, 1997). 49 Hall (1997). 50 Miles (1997), p. 77.

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51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 61 62 63 64 65 66 67 68 69 70 71

72 73 74 75 76 77 78 79 80

See, for example, Crilley (1993) on ‘architecture as advertising’. Apgar (1991), p. 117. Permanyer (1991), p. 111. This account drawn from Pyne (1989). Apgar (1991), p. 117. Hughes (1991), p. 108. Pasqual Maragall, ‘Presentation’, in Tolosa and Romaní (1996), p. 7. Hughes (1987), p. 26. See J.M.Jacobs (1994, 1996) for an example of this in the City of London. Cited in Looseley (1995), p. 141. Looseley (1995), p. 150. See Ley and Olds (1988); Pred (1995). Rowan Moore, untitled commentary on Richard Meier, Blueprint 126, November 1996, pp. 3–5, quotation from p. 3. Deyan Sudjic, ‘Blocks on the landscape’, Guardian 18 March 1996, G2, p. 10. Deyan Sudjic, ‘Blocks on the landscape’, Guardian 18 March 1996, G2, p. 10. William Feaver, ‘In their element’, Observer 31 March 1996, Arts supplement, p. 11. Introduction to ‘Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona’ catalogue, 1995. Cited in Jimmy Burns, ‘Man with a plan tries to make sense of London’, Financial Times 5 June 1993, London supplement, p. x. In Mateo and Cervelló (1990), p. 16. Moix (1994), pp. 214–16. Bouman and Van Toorn (1994), p. 220; Dent Coad (1995b) points to a strong local tradition of architectural engineering, running from Gaudí, through Candela (Republican) and Torroja (Francoist period) up to Calatrava. Tolosa and Romaní (1996), p. 114. Frampton (1987), p. 20. Viaplana and Piñon (1996), p. 4. Viaplana and Piñon (1996), p. 122. Gómez and Marcè i Fort (1996), p. 240. Moix (1994), pp. 66–7. Frampton (1987), p. 20. Bohigas (1985), pp. 277–9. Vázquez Montalbán (1992b), p. 197.

7 Progressive futures?

The New Barcelona has emerged over a similar period to a discourse of a New Europe and, in turn, a New World Order. And what does this consist of? The end of the old ideologies, certainly, the continuing spread of an ever-expanding global capitalism. The pressures put on by European integration have demanded a new approach from the Left. Whether this should be an obsequious acceptance of capital flows or a more critical challenge which is sensitive to unemployment and immigration has been a source of considerable tension in the socialist movement. One of the more striking approaches has been that of Jacques Delors, who has heralded the coming of a ‘post-modern European politics’ as perhaps the ‘most elaborate proposal for a new left-of-center vision we have seen’.1 As president of the European Commission, Delors was well aware of the changing context facing political ideologies of all shades, and knew that an embrace of economic liberalisation was a bitter pill for social democrats to take. But many have done so, with the supposed pay-off of retaining a competitive stance vis-à-vis other global powers. This has its own spatial logic, neatly summarised by Klaus Kunzmann, who discusses a number of territorial trends related to European integration which will impact upon traditional politics. There is the continuing spread of the technopole and the European edge city. There is the clustering of post-Fordist industrial complexes and gentrified rural enclaves, along with global distribution, finance and tourist spaces. There are spaces of failure, of high unemployment and receding government subsidy.2 In short, there is—arguably—a declining coherence to the metropolis which has long been fragmenting the class identity often held as essential to socialism. This has undermined the Left’s hold on the metropolis in a number of ways: the increasing gender and ethnic diversity in the workplace and district, the fragmentation of the working class in terms of skill and income, the growth of a distinctive and relatively novel youth culture have all dispelled the myth of unified class identity.3 Eric Hobsbawm has suggested that this diversity has long been growing, that ‘labour in the great city’ has never been able to muster the levels of consciousness that it achieved in the small industrial township where employees shared both residence and workplace. The suburbanisation and de-industrialisation of the city which has occurred over the last few decades has ‘snapped the connection between day and night, or between the places where people live and those where they work’. Prosperous suburbs have put a block on the administrative expansion

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common in the early years of metropolitan governance, hindering intra-urban redistributive strategies; the ‘inner city’ has emerged as a source of a sub-proletarian ‘underclass’; and—worst of all for Hobsbawm—the planning policies of the 1960s destroyed many of the ‘“urban villages” upon which so much of labour strength had rested’.4 Of course, a lot of socialist history has been written since then, and in post-war Europe we have seen emerge a range of distinct social movements and parties that have articulated a cross-class sense of socialist identity. Victims of economism, the political parties of the Left have been unable to adapt to the profound social changes that have been eroding their social bases. As Sassoon notes: [T]he permissive society, pop culture, the revival of industrial conflicts of the late 1960s, student power, feminism, black consciousness, homosexual rights, the plight of the Third World, ecology, the end of ideology, European integration, the revival of ideology, the crisis of the family, the end of communism in Eastern Europe, the growth of nationalist separatism. Not one novelty worth vvriting or thinking about had been envisioned or predicted by the European socialist movement.5 New groups—from Greens to squatters to Eurocommunists and feminists—have emerged independent of ideology and political party, more sensitive to issues of the street. We have seen a shift away from the commanding heights to the face-to-face. It is significant that 1968 is a marker not only of the first sustained criticism of postwar capitalism but also of actually existing socialism (social democracy included). From the Parisian situationists to the pro-democracy movements in Spain, the call has been to shift away from socialism as technocracy, and to engage with the politics of everyday life. The city is a crucible for allowing us to do so. My aim in this book was to try to get some sort of sense of the texture of contemporary urban politics in Europe. The tales that have emerged may be too contingent and speculative for some readers (and too structured and determinist for others), and there remains an enormous lacuna concerning the cultural politics of place and Left identity. However, the aim was also to open up further possibilities of research in this area, and therefore I want to conclude by looking across the five main chapters and discussing some of the themes which have emerged in the course of their telling: the increased squeeze put on the urban Left by European integration; the growing use of urban spectacle by social democratic parties; the role of the city as a political space in an era of political re-terrirorialisation; and the question of the ‘right’ to the city. The Eurocity and urban entrepreneurialism On the 2nd of May, 1998, as most of the European Union nervously inaugurated a single currency, Barcelona’s mayor Joan Clos was speaking of the challenge it would pose to the city:

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It is in this new context—that of European economic and monetary union— that Barcelona has to compete and cooperate, because cities combine both… The imminent introduction of the euro is going to strengthen the intrinsic factors of differentiation between cities and nations. This new European context…has to serve as both excuse and stimulus for improving our capabilities…and to maximise those aspects that will make us more competitive.6 As I described in chapter 5, Manuel Castells has provided an intriguing insight into how the urban Left has adapted to changing economic climates in their attitudes to the city. As Castells has put it, European cities are now caught up in a globally competitive information economy, and soon ‘we will be witnessing a constant struggle over the occupation of meaningful space in the main European cities’. This will be focused on key central areas of the older city, as ‘traditional working class neighbourhoods [become] the battleground between the redevelopment efforts of business and the upper middle class, and the…attempts of the countercultures…to reappropriate the use values of the city’.7 The vocabulary used by Castells is interesting in itself: he employs the classical concepts of 1970s Marxist economics— exchange value and use value—as a means of understanding the changing position of the European city. And as we have seen, some of the key actors in Barcelona city council have followed the logic of a Marxist analysis in accommodating the everchanging profile of global capitalism. It is worth noting that social democrat urban leaders are often even more bullish in their focus on competition than those in central government, as we can see in the rhetoric of Clos. When one looks at the modernisation projects pursued by Socialist International colleagues such as Jorge Sampaio (Lisbon), Graham Stringer (Manchester) and Pierre Mauroy (Lille), it is clear that urban entrepreneurialism is now a part of mainstream social democracy. It is these figures— high-profile leaders of important European cities—who have on their doorsteps the effects of global economic shifts: declining industrial areas, large numbers of long-term unemployed, and declining levels of central government subsidy. Much of the subtext to the debate on the post-Fordist, post-Keynesian cities has been the search by social democrats for a means to ‘plug in’ to an emerging global space economy, which induces them into an ever-growing political schizophrenia, as they embrace the values of urban entrepreneurialism: ‘To the left, the entrepreneurial approach promises a way of asserting local co-operation, promoting the identity of place and strengthening municipal pride; for the Right, it can be seen to support ideas of neoliberalism, promotion of enterprise and belief in the virtues of the private sector’.8 It may, in fact, be the perfect urban ideology for a post-ideological age. Allan Pred’s account of the recently built Stockholm Globe sports arena—a quite literal metaphor for the globalisation of the city—tells us something else: the apparent collapse of the Swedish model of social democracy which had once been the great hope of the mainstream European Left. While Pred may be in danger of reading too much into such a convenient icon, he persuasively argues that the Globe

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is an example of the over-commodification of Swedish society, an erosion of public space and, furthermore, a street-level reflection of the policies that have ruined Swedish social democracy: The Globe as market-place where commodified bodies are used to market other commodities, where the jerseys and pants of ice-hockey players are covered with advertisements for global firms that market cars and household electronic goods in Sweden (Opel, Pioneer), with advertisements for Swedish firms that globally market steel, cars, trucks, food products and insurance, with the advertisements of Swedish retail chains and coffee firms with global sources.9 This Eurocommodification—the increasing inter-penetration of goods sold on a single European market—has been a major reason for the implantation of the Globe in Stockholm, with all the disruptions and hegemonic connotations Pred describes. ‘What remains of our self-determination, of our ability to keep joblessness to a minimum,’ he asks, ‘if the called for monetary union results in a German(-like) central bank which vigorously prioritises low inflation levels over low unemployment levels?’10 At present social democrats have few answers to this question, and the advent of the Globe—apt metaphor or not—also amply demonstrates the failure of the ‘Swedish model’ of low unemployment and strong welfare services which was once the envy of the European social democratic movement. The only response is an invocation of the need to compete, despite the lack of apparent correlation between competitiveness and social equity: the GDP of a particular urban region may rise, and average incomes may rise, without affecting the absolute levels of poverty which exist among certain groups in the city. Interestingly, the Barcelona councils of the 1980s made a far-reaching attempt to address the non-economic aspects of this, and Maragall has stressed the importance of the ‘Barcelona model’ in avoiding the polarisation of North American cities. His distinction between ‘living’ and ‘sleeping’/residing in the city is interesting, and astute when he combines it for a call to make urban taxation regimes redistributive across metropolitan areas. While the idea of yet more taxes is likely to be politically unpalatable, it is a useful case to make: the huge effort to make areas such as the Olympic Village, the beaches and the new urban parks genuinely welcoming to a diverse public is one of the distinctive aspects of Barcelona’s urban experience, and ties in with appeals to embrace difference, making the city the centre of a renewed citizenship.11 What does this mean for the city more generally? There are two trends which are important to stress here. First, the European city is less and less proletarian in the sense of political consciousness. In terms of both changing social structure and the decline of class-based voting, social democratic parties have to look for cross-class support for their policies to remain in power. Second, urban entrepreneurialism has at its core the need to generate income both from direct taxation and through the multiplier effects of increased money circulating in the local economy. Urban policies have tended to be skewed towards attracting high earners and spenders (be

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they tourists or residents), attracting them to both visit and, increasingly, live in the city. The Ajuntament de Barcelona’s attempt to avoid ‘Marseillisation’ through the construction of the Olympic Village is a process that has been repeated by the private sector many times across Europe. Here, the council appear to have ‘gone with the flow’, attempting to wring infrastructural and public space gains out of private sector redevelopment projects. The downside is pretty apparent, however: the demands for social housing denied in favour of attracting disposable income into the city, the gentrification of Poble Nou and the Ciutat Vella. There is nothing necessarily sinister in this (although the experience of property speculation under the dictatorship was always clouded by claims of corruption). What it means is that those on low incomes, who still seek the potentially cheap use values offered by the city, are no longer represented by social democrat councils. Is there any alternative? The problem facing the PSC in Barcelona is that they have but a tenuous grasp on the city council, making radical policies electorally unpopular. Furthermore, and as the case of Birmingham shows,12 even with backbench opposition to boosterist schemes, social democrat parties are now firmly committed to maximising exchange, not use, values. There is nothing inevitable about this, however: it requires the recognition that social democracy is now representative of a centre-ground. As Maragall has argued, the Left to remain Left has to seize upon the values of a general, voting public, and he has sought to seize the centre-ground of Catalan political space. But it should also be noted that in both Britain and France there has been a certain backlash against boosterism within social democrat councils, aware that their once loyal voters may be deserting them.13 A move to the centre surely vacates a political space to be filled by an anti-boosterist party (be it Green or neo-Marxist), but this requires the final recognition by many dedicated to socialist myth and nostalgia that the days of a politically unified working class have gone, and that more realistic, redistributive quality of life policies must be formulated. Here is where the strengthening of the city-state proposed by the likes of Maragall, Castells and Borja really could benefit those who continue to struggle over the defence of use values in the urban arena. But this requires imagination. Culture capitals: the politics of spectacle There have been few who have doubted the success of the 1992 Olympics for Barcelona. It stands as an exemplar of how the urban spectacle can be manipulated as a means of promoting the values of citizenship at the same time as pursuing strategies of civic boosterism. Yet as Vázquez Montalbán has pointedly reminded many in Barcelona, the modernisation process is rarely a neutral thing, above all because of the political coalitions necessary to ensure the successful achievement of investment. That urban spectacle—be it an Expo, the Olympics or a cultural festival —is used as an instrument of sustaining hegemony by a local ruling elite is now a prevalent theme of urban geography, an integral part of contemporary statecraft, for both Left and Right. However, controversy exists over the extent to which ‘the

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spectacle represent[s] the hegemonic values of an elite, foisted upon a deluded mass public’,14 a position often articulated by Marxist geographers such as David Harvey.15 In the cases of the Millennium Dome, Glasgow’s City of Culture campaign, Mitterrand’s conception of Paris, the Barcelona Olympics, the interesting point is that spectacle has been firmly in the hands of social democratic parties. To what end? First, these events often involve controversial re-interpretations of socialist heritage. Unlike the public events staged by Italian communist parties and the Greater London Council in the 1970s and early 1980s which aimed to valorise public space and popular culture,16 there is a general consensus that recent spectacle is geared more towards marketing and commodification, primarily through the involvement of sponsors. Of course, few would claim that the working class still ‘owns’ the city culturally, and there is little desire to embrace the masculinist celebrations of heavy industry. More serious, however, is Vázquez Montalbán’s persistent questioning of the desmemoria or un-remembering of the past in Barcelona. This was politically expedient and perhaps acceptable in a situation of grave social conflict, when the aftermath of the Civil War was still riddled with tensions and deeply entrenched positions. However, in post-industrial cities more generally the development of the heritage and theme park industry has raised a number of questions over commemoration and memory: A nineteenth-century quayside where casual dockworkers laboured in appalling conditions for ridiculously low wages was a context rich in meaning and political tinder, for instance, but such a quayside done up as the backdrop for postmodern warehouses-turned-into-apartments occupied by a mobile new middle-class has been stripped of its original meanings and political resonances… Our specific source of disquiet here…concerns the transformation that all too commonly occurs whereby one particular form of memory—namely, that of the bourgeoisie—becomes the officially-sanctioned History (with a capital ‘h’) of a given territory, nation or city.17 While we can wonder about the relevance of the ‘bourgeoisie’ as being the most accurate descriptor of the realities of contemporary politics, the point is well made. The biggest baffle on attempts by marginalised groups to gain a voice is this conception of the city as being socially unified, united in citizenship. In this sense, discourses such as urban renaissance and civic pride function in a way similar to nationalism: they create an ‘imagined community’ of city-dwellers which is dangerously illusory.18 Violence against women, discrimination against and attacks on ethnic minorities, the exclusion of the older worker from the labour market, the exclusion of the young from the labour market, the general stratification of access to cultural knowledge and the new information economies, the concentration of unemployment in certain urban areas: these are all generally recognised problems faced in the city which contribute to a ‘feel-bad’ factor that few political parties are prepared to take on. Again, there is a need to explode the myth that social

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democracy represents a problem-free conception of the ‘public’, as we saw in the case of the Ciutat Vella. Second, while post-Keynesian cities may be more vulnerable to the vicissitudes of the global economy than before, they also have the ability to insert themselves into wider ‘mediascapes’ and economic spaces, such as global tourism markets. Mitterrand’s attempts to use Paris as a kind of political theatre during the bicentenary commemorations of 1989 were fiercely contested by Jacques Chirac while mayor of the city. Such spectacles can thus form part of a wider electoral battleground between different social groups for political control of the city. Furthermore, certain cities—Paris and Barcelona included—form keys for control of wider regional and national territories. We saw how Pujol seized the importance of the Olympics as a means of projecting Catalonia’s difference worldwide. Maragall proved equally adept at milking his status as Olympic mayor, dropping in on George Bush, greeting Gorbachev, chatting with Pérez de Cuellar, and schmoozing with mayors from New York to Berlin to Beijing. These tensions— Mitterrand/Chirac and Maragall/Pujol—show the premium on symbolic and material control of cities as embodiments of political identity. And while the former tussle was largely directed at controlling French space, Maragall and Pujol have both shown how the New Europe offers possibilities of by-passing the nation-state entirely. The urban spectacle is a means of achieving this. Political spaces in the New Europe So, it is clear that Barcelona has been used as both a symbolic and a material base for wider political projects, and that Maragall—‘The Prince’—has been ingenious in establishing a political reputation that goes far, far beyond the municipal boundaries. He has been one of the quickest and most successful municipal politicians to interpret the ramifications of European integration for political organisation. While he is canny enough to recognise the continuing importance of the nation-state, he would doubtless be partial to the arguments of those who see an ‘unbundling of sovereignty’ in the contemporary world, one where nation-states are involved in a complex negotiation of power with city-states, regions, media moguls and transnational corporations of all kinds.19 And this has been one of the hardest lessons for many on the Left to learn, unwilling to give up a focus on controlling the ‘commanding heights’ of the national economy. Perhaps the most explicit and concrete embrace of such ‘postmodern territorialities’ is the building of a Europe of the Regions, which both Maragall and Pujol have been active in pursuing. As the case of Catalonia shows, we have two contrasting approaches to the decentralisation of power, between a cosmopolitan urban social democracy and a more essentialist ‘bourgeois regionalism’. The muchvaunted Europe of the Regions is clearly by no means a homogeneous movement towards decentralised Euro-utopia. There is a lot of ground between the chauvinism of the Lega Nord or the cultural conservatism of Bavarian regionalists, and the more progressive sentiments of Maragall, the German Greens or some strands of Scottish

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nationalism. The path illuminated by Maragall is fascinating, but depends on striking a judicious balance between defending an inclusive citizenship, and ensuring that boosterism doesn’t create a consumer polity, where full participation comes only with requisite income or cultural knowledge. This is not an easy position for any urban leader, having to balance the books, encourage investment for job provision, and try to ensure that public space is not eroded in the process. But it is a terrain over which the Left will have to navigate itself in the coming years.20 However, Maragall has gone further by looking at how the new political spaces emerging will require new forms of political organisation. We may recall his arguments about the future role of the political party, which has been under transformation for the best part of a century in any case. One can see the practical projects set up in the Eurocities movement—based on apparently mundane issues of computerised traffic systems or pollution control—as a chrysalis for future, ‘harder’ forms of political co-operation and decision-making by actors with a common political stance (rather than the more functional co-operation taking place in, say, the Council of Ministers). Maragall has been very quick to gange the possibilities of the ‘mediatisation’ of politics, enhancing his own profile through urban spectacle. And, of course, he has long been stating that the city-state is the best basis for building a positive conception of citizenship in a period of apparent global entropy and neo-liberal deregulation of capital flows, a means of ‘earthing’ globalisation, and has Manuel Castells to lend solid academic weight to this vision. This is dependent on articulating democratic representation within Europe: Maragall’s vision of a European party may be seductive to those who identify a real ‘democratic deficit’ at the heart of the European Union. And if it comes to fruition, does this mean that we will see a simultaneous de-territorialisation of politics, paradoxically combined with the increasing importance of certain symbolic places as synergetic spaces (where their importance outweighs their territorial delimitation or population size)?21 Red heritage, green future? And in the race to explore these new avenues, what about the places and people left behind by the mainstream Left? The battle to find a sufficient electoral base to pursue coherent policies has always been a problem for the Left in the post-war period, as their social constituencies have fragmented. Do social democrats still represent the guardians of progressive politics in the city? What is fascinating about Barcelona is the starkness of the transformation of its Left intellectuals. From possessing a Marxist-oriented, explicitly anti-rentier intelligentsia in the 1970s, they are now among the vanguard of competitive (read boosterist) European cities, which thrive on capturing the fickle circuits of property capital. This is one of the deliciously ironic things about Marxist analysis: its insights into the workings of capitalism remain as powerful as ever, but its programmes for social change remain as derivative as ever. And this is thrown

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into sharp relief when one sees how the physical sites of urban protest in 1970s Barcelona have now been sold off to developers by the same cohort of urban radicals. And that, somehow, illegal protests over planned developments could be justified on moral grounds under Francoism, but not under the democratic state. It is worth remembering two things here: first, that some of the jewels of the city council’s public space programme—such as l’Espanya Industrial—would have been irretrievably lost to residential development had illegal action not been taken by grassroots groups; second, that under the dying days of the dictatorship there may have been more democracy, more debate, more critique, than after 18 years of democratic government. Contra Franco estábamos mejor, indeed. Vázquez Montalbán has had the good sense to admit that much of his literary lament for the old city is nostalgia; his call echoed by the likes of Ian Spring’s Phantom Village, a similar requiem for lost public cultures, for forgotten industrial cities, for the Barcelona of the North.22 Here the protest masculinity of some Left intellectuals comes forth in anti-yuppie tirades. The snobbery and nostalgia often clouds the real impact of this service economy. is the spread of ‘nice bookshops’23 not a positive thing, the arrival of the wine bar a more civilising, sociable contribution, the refurbishment of old warehouses a means of recreating a damaged public realm? This cultural terrain is one of the most emotive issues in debates on the contemporary city, for gentrification is not a simple story. Maragall is keen to speak about citizenship, and Barcelona is a model of a user-friendly city in terms of public transport quality, decentralised local government and well-designed public spaces. How do we evaluate such civic cultures? Are they stratified by occupation, by gender, by ethnicity, by mobility and age? Is one dependent on high income and education for full access to them? This is an important research area, yet it involves moving beyond simple indicators of quality of life into a fuller debate on what citizenship means in the context of contemporary Europe. Or are we merely witnessing the continued dominion of the rentier in the city, the city as commodity, the city ‘which has always been in the hands of the right’?24 It is noticeable that Manuel Castells, for one, still frames part of his analysis in the now unfashionable dichotomy of use value vs. exchange value. And as it has been the Green movement, primarily, which has taken up the baton on defending urban use values over the past few years—whether in the peaceful anti-airport protests in Manchester, or the sometimes violent squatters’ movement in Berlin (and now Barcelona)—it suggests that the anti-developer vanguard is now residing with groups far less willing to carry the baggage of Marxism. Such groups are thus less willing to accept the teleology of much of what has passed for Left political strategy. And the implicit message of today’s social democrats—put up with the negative effects of growth today, and it will trickle down tomorrow—still retains this teleology. It is the continued existence and strengthening of these more radical groups—be they based around neighbourhood associations, public transport or homelessness campaigns, or urban environmentalists—which holds the greatest promise of the defence of the public, democratic city which the Left once promised.

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I made clear at the outset that Barcelona was chosen as a site of study for the dramatic trajectory of change that the Left has undergone over the past 20 years. Yet as the allusion to Orwell suggests, the city can also be compared with the situation before Francoism, before dictatorship. The New Barcelona is new in two senses: it is post-Francoist, certainly, and the shadow of the dictatorship is one of the crucial points to bear in mind when considering its history. Second, however, these local narratives of historical change intersect with a broader ‘end of ideology’ being felt the world over, and here it is worth wondering whether the Left has a future at all in any meaningful sense. Sadly, my conclusions are weakened by the absence of work on ‘actually existing socialism’ in the contemporary European city, which makes the prescriptions put forward in recent social science for ‘progressive politics’25 or the ‘creative city’26 difficult to situate in the messy world of political practice. While doing this research, the fact that my focus of interest has been the direction of the Left has been met with some curiosity. One prominent geography professor asked for my reasons for studying a movement which was, to his reckoning, dead within the contemporary city. My response was, and would still be, that the key to unlocking meta-narratives such as the ‘death of the Left’ or the ‘end of ideology’ still lies in examining the textures of the contemporary city, and in scrutinising the activities of those who claim to be the heirs to the tradition of progressive politics in Europe. And instead of writing urban geographies that disguise either a (masculinist) proletarian nostalgia for the blue collar city, or else a red rose boosterism (which lurks beneath apparently ‘social scientific’ policy studies), can we not find space for a return to the traditions of ‘muckraking’, of popular critique in academic work? In my research into one of the most vivid, beautiful, civic, cities in Europe, I found a lot of muck had already been raked by local journalists and critics, and through my reporting of this work I hope to have identified some of the political contours which shape the contemporary European urban experience. To be continued. Notes 1 See Coates (1998) on a radical strategy; Lafontaine (1998); Sassoon (1998) on a more centrist approach; and Holman (1996) on why the Spanish socialists have pursued a neo-liberal strategy; on Delors see Ross (1995), quotations from pp. 241 and 243. 2 Kunzmann (1996). 3 Anderson (1994). 4 Hobsbawm (1989), quotations from pp. 153 and 154. 5 Sassoon (1996), p. 197. 6 Joan Clos, ‘El euro en las ciudades’, El País 2 May 1998, Cataluña, p. 4. 7 Castells (1994), quotations from pp. 25 and 27. 8 Hubbard and Hall (1998), p. 6. 9 Pred (1995), p. 203. 10 Pred (1995), p. 207.

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11 See Taylor et al. (1996) for an interesting insight into how different publics and social groups participate in the restructured industrial cities of Sheffield and Manchester. 12 Loftman and Nevin (1996). 13 Le Galès (1998). 14 Ley and Olds (1988), p. 191. 15 Harvey (1989). 16 Bianchini and Schwengel (1991). 17 Philo and Kearns (1993), pp. 24–6. 18 The idea, developed by Benedict Anderson (1991), that a sense of community can be felt between people who may never meet each other. The European city is often represented as being a place where such a community can exist, by contrast to the more polarised North American experience. The problems begin when such a polis is accepted uncritically, or where membership is exclusive, requiring a certain level of cultural knowledge, income, or mode of behaviour. See Young (1990) for a more progressive discussion of this. 19 Anderson (1996). 20 Harvie (1992) provides some quirky analysis of the progressive potential of some of these spaces. 21 On the impact of mediascapes on European culture, see Morley and Robins (1995). The logical outcome of the growth of a European electronic landscape is surely the creation of a virtual European political movement. The Left would do well to consider its tactics here. 22 Spring’s Phantom Village (1990) is an excellent evocation of some of the pressures on traditional socialist identity in post-industrial cities. 23 Derided by one prominent Glaswegian artist as part of the cancer of the New Glasgow; see Boyle and Hughes (1991) on the debate over socialism, culture and identity in Glasgow. 24 Moreno and Vázquez Montalbán (1991). 25 Massey (1993). 26 Landry and Bianchini (1995); Amin and Graham (1997).

Glossary1

All non-English terms included are in Catalan, except those marked with an asterisk, which are Castilian. Ajuntament de Barcelona Barcelona City Council. Barri District. Carrer Street. CDC (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya) Catalan nationalist party led by Jordi Pujol, with a generally more centrist membership than their coalition partners, the UDC. Ciutat Vella Literally the ‘old city’, Ciutat Vella encompasses the medieval sections of Barcelona as well as the 19th century additions of sea-front Barceloneta and the Raval. CiU (Convergència i Unió) Formed in 1979 with the merger of the CDC and UDC, the CiU has governed Catalonia since 1980, but has never managed to win control of its capital. It has, however, supported both the PSOE and the PP in government (although not in coalition) and has used this support to further speed the process of autonomisation. Led by Jordi Pujol, CiU is largely conservative in outlook, containing elements of Christian democracy and centrist social democracy in its ideological composition. Comissions Obreres/Comisiones Obreras* The major post-war trade union movement in Spain, Comisiones has long been associated with the PCE/PSUC as their politically organised factory presence. Enormously important—perhaps decisive—in bringing a relatively early end to Francoism, it was also active in organising general strikes against the austerity policies of the PSOE government of the 1980s. Desarrollismo, años de* Literally ‘years of development’, the term refers particularly to the decades of the 1950s and 1960s which saw Spanish society transformed. Triggered by the regime’s attempt to modernise the national economy, the period was marked by vast migration, particularly by landless labourers from the povertystricken south of Spain (often from Murcia, Andalusia and Extremadura), as well as the growing access to consumer goods such as cars and televisions. In Barcelona this period was associated with Porciolismo (see under Porcioles below). Eixample Urbanised from 1861 to a plan laid down by Ildefons Cerdà, the Eixample (extension) is the distinctive grid pattern of streets which dominates the city’s morphology. ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) Left of centre Catalan nationalist group which polled 5.1% of the vote in the 1995 Barcelona local elections, giving it two councillors. ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) (Basque) A terrorist group born in 1959 in opposition to the suppression of Basque culture attempted by the dictatorship. ETA has carried out countless attacks against the Spanish state, including some indiscriminate

GLOSSARY 185

attacks on civilians, although it has focused much of its activity on Madrid and against its enemies in the Basque country itself. FAVB (Federació d’Associacions de Veïns de Barcelona) The federation of neighbourhood groups which played an important role during the transition from dictatorship. Campaigning primarily for the defence of public space, environmental quality and local services, they remain a diminished but important oppositional voice to both the Generalitat and the city council. Francoism Understood as an ideology, Francoism was the Spanish variant of extreme right-wing European nationalism that accompanied Nazism and Italian Fascism (the governments of Germany and Italy aided Franco substantially during the Civil War). It went through a number of mutations as the various social groups of which it consisted waxed and waned in their favour with el Caudillo, Franco. Profoundly anti-democratic, its early years as governing ideology were characterised by autarky, Spain being constructed both materially and symbolically as a fortress against the cultural infection of European and American modernity, and strongly influenced by conservative Catholic morality. A gradual liberalisation would be compounded by the growing influence of the Opus Dei group of Catholic modernisers, who sought to integrate Spain into Europe (and we see the mass tourism of the costas beginning in this period from the early 1960s). Ultimately, the ideology was doomed to failure, maintaining a ‘backward-looking centralist, authoritarian state which was…on a collision course with Spain’s modern society and economy’. The last few years of the dictatorship would be characterised by a desperate return to bloody repression. This included the notorious Burgos ETA trials of 1970, which numbered Basque priests among the accused: the presumption of guilt before the trial brought international condemnation and underlined the crisis of legitimacy facing the regime. The transition to democracy had begun long before Franco’s death on the 20-N (20th November, 1975).2 Generalitat The autonomous government of Catalonia, formed under the Second Republic in 1932. Dissolved by Franco, it would be re-estab lished in September 1977, and from 1980 to the present has been presided over by Jordi Pujol, leader of the CiU coalition. IC (Iniciativa per Catalunya) Electoral grouping comprising ex-communists and ecologists, which polled 7.6% in the 1995 Barcelona local elections, giving it three councillors. Maragall, Pasqual Mayor of Barcelona between 1982 and 1997, Maragall is known by some as ‘The Prince’ for his consummate political ability. He would personify the 1992 Olympics, the success of which may yet propel him to higher things, notably the presidency of the Generalitat. PCE (Partido Comunista de España)* Founded in 1921, the PCE would gain in importance during the Civil War and provided the most dedicated Spain-wide opposition to the dictatorship, largely through strong discipline and close links to the illegal trade union Comisiones Obreras. Its long-term leader, Santiago Carrillo, was widely criticised for tactical blunders during the transition, accepting legalisation in return for abandoning its revolutionary goals. This Eurocommunist strategy would ultimately end in disaster, with an awful general election result in 1982 contributing to a slow demise. It would revive slightly as an anti-NATO electoral grouping of small left-wing parties, but is still riven with regional tensions

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between the more moderate Catalan wing (Iniciativa per Catalunya) and the harder-line Izquierda Unida.3 Plaça Square. Porcioles, José Maria Mayor of Barcelona between 1957 and 1973, who was responsible for a rapid, chaotic growth in the city under the rural to urban migration of the 1950s and 1960s, and the unregulated destruction of much of old Barcelona. This period of urban policy has become known as Porciolismo. PP (Partido Popular)* Under José Maria Aznar, the PP ended the 14-year isolation of the Spanish Right with a general election victory in 1996. It currently governs with the support of small regionalist/nationalist parties such as the CiU. PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya) Born in 1978 with the fusion of three parties, the PSC is the major social democratic party of Catalonia. Having a limited sovereignty from the PSOE, it has always had to fight to prove its distinctiveness as a Catalan party, and its profile in this direction was boosted by the presence of Pasqual Maragall as mayor of Barcelona from 1982 to 1997. The question now is whether the PSC can win control of the Generalitat, while retaining its tenuous hold on the Ajuntament de Barcelona. PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español)* Founded in 1879, the PSOE was to virtually disappear under the dictatorship, re-emerging during the latter stages of the transition. It finally won a sweeping victory in the October 1982 general election under its charismatic leader, Felipe González, and would remain in government until defeat in 1996. However, its popularity had long been waning under a spate of increasingly dubious corruption scandals, and from 1993 to 1996 it relied on the support of various small parties (notably the CiU) to maintain itself in power. PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) Formed in 1936, the PSUC was the main opposition political party in Catalonia during the dictatorship, operating clandestinely. It was the main communist party in Catalonia, and played an important role in the transition, having particularly close links to the neighbourhood movements. It collapsed, however, riven by internal schisms, at the beginning of the 1980s. Second Republic From its establishment in 1931, the governments of the Second Republic set out on their long-held mission to modernise Spain. Anti-clerical and anti-monarchical, they drew inspiration from 1789. Republican ideals were anathema to the Spanish Right, and led to the violent reaction of Franco’s Nationalists. The re-assertion of some Republican ideals—internationalism, cultural modernity, citizenship—can be detected in the policies of the postdictatorship social democratic movement, particularly in the PSC of Maragall. Suárez, Adolfo Chosen by King Juan Carlos as the transition prime minister, Suárez is chiefly remembered for his consummate skill in negotiating a peaceful transition to democracy, juggling the extreme-right Francoist ‘bunker’ of army and landowners with the grassroots militancy of the communists, all the while trying to keep the favour of his own party, the newly formed UCD. Transition The peculiar period between the fall of the old order and the beginning of the new, the Spanish transition was marked by its remarkable lack of widespread bloodshed. While a range of terrorist groups from the ultra-right and ultra-left, as well as from the Basque nationalist group ETA, accounted for a sizeable number of killings, the main political parties of the period saw the need for a negotiated

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transition. Most commentators see this period as opening with ETA’s assassination of Franco’s only feasible successor, Carrero Blanco, in December 1973, and closing with the victory of the PSOE in the general elections of October 1982. UCD (Union de Centro Democrático)* Main political party to have emerged from the ruins of the dictatorship, and as such placed firmly to the right. Led by Adolfo Suárez, the UCD won the first two ‘democratic’ elections of the transition, before being trounced by the PSOE in 1982. UDC (Unió Democràtica de Catalunya) Christian democrat Catalan nationalist party which has come to play an increasingly influential role in recent years by virtue of its coalition with the CDC. Led by Josep Duran i Lleida. Notes 1 I have drawn the material here from a number of sources, particularly Graham and Labanyi (1995), Pradas (1998) and Preston (1986). 2 Drawn from Preston (1986); quotation from p. 2. 3 See Heywood (1994) and Pradas (1998, pp. 56–61), for details on this. Vázquez Montalbán’s (1996a) novel Murder in the Central Committee (first published in Spanish in 1981) provides an atmospheric ‘insider’ fictionalisation of the PCE and Madrid at the height of the transition.

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Index

Location references to plans or illustrations are highlighted in bold type; those to footnotes are indicated by a page reference followed by ‘n’ and the number of the note. Acebillo, Josep 144, 148, 152 aluminosis 134 anarchists 8 Andalusians: migrants 12, 19 Ajuntament de Barcelona (city council) 35, 36, 55, 69, 111, 116, 129, 143, 149, 165, 176 Antich, Puig (anarchist) 37 architects and architecture 139, 158–9; opposition to 168; Franco 142, 145–2; renewal of city 144; students 143; students’ protest 127 (see also buildings; city planning; sculpture) art gallery 162–9 Assemblea de Catalunya 65, 123, 128 athletics: World Cup (1989) 78–8 Azko (Dutch chemical group) 93 Aznar, José Maria (Spanish prime minister) 10, 86, 102

Raval 33–5; slum clearance 36; Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel 25, 28, 29–32 Basques 52n10 (see also terrorism) beaches: clean-up 97–6 (see also waterfront) beat generation 32 Beauregard, R.A.: Voices of Decline 3 Benjamin, Walter 25, 27: Marseilles 33 Blair, Eric see Orwell, George Blair, Tony 6, 10, 91–92 Blanco, Carrero: assassination 37 Bohigas, Oriol (chief planner) 45, 143–40, 152; A Different Urbanism 147 Borja, Jordi 94, 128; Local and Global 113, 116–14 buildings: beach-side 98; renovation 14 built environment see architecture; city planning Butifarra! 124

Bandera Roja (Red Flag) 128 banks and banking 66, 75 Barcelona 2000 Economic and Social Strategic Plan 95 Barrio Chino 13, 31: history 32–4; planning and development 34–5;

Cabet, Etienne (Proudhonist) 45 Calatrava, Santiago (architect) bridge 165; 197

198 INDEX

communications tower 142, 164–1 Camp Nou 50, 61, 78, 80, 120 campaigns: renovation 95 Candel, Francese (writer) 52n32 capitalism 37, 51, 114, 117 Carmel 11, 19, 121 Carrillo, Santiago 38 cartoons: Butifarra! 124 Carvalho, Pepe 26–51 passim Castelldefels 12 Castells, Manuel: 111–10, 136–3; The City and the Grassroots 111, 114–12, 121; exile in France 114; Local and Global 113, 116–14; The Urban Question 114–12, 119–18 Castilians 19 Catalonia: political parties 14, 18; regional identity 55–61, 65, 67–9 Catalans 12, 60; language 68 catholicism 65; Archbishop of Barcelona 64; Cristians Catalans 60–61, 66 CAU (magazine) 127 CDC (Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya) 67 Cerdà, Ildefons 16 Chillida, Eduardo (sculptor) 159 church see catholicism; religion city council see Ajuntament de Barcelona City of Marvels 11, 16–17, 161 city planning 5, 10, 13, 15–21; change of use 132–9; CMB v. Generalitat 73; districts 149–7; European cities 95–4, 174; Francoism 130–7, 154; identity 139, 146–3, 153; Olympic Village 45; outskirts 152; politics 169;

protest 127; redevelopment 99, 119, 147–4, 180; regulations 120; wasteland 126 (see also architecture; sculpture) cityscape 13; history 11, 15–16 citystates 58, 104, 111–10; Castells on 116 CiU (Convergència i Unió) 55, 67, 68–9, 72; elections 91, 129, 65–5, (1995) 14; electoral districts 17–21 passim Ciutat Vella 11, 31; electoral district 15–16, renovation 148–6, 153 civic realism 140–8 class structure 34: and electoral districts 15–21, 72 Clos, Joan (mayor of Barcelona): European Union 173–70 Clot 16 CMB (Corporació Metropolitana de Barcelona) 72, 83–3 coalitions see local government coastline see beaches; port Cobi (Olympic mascot) 47–8 collective consumption 115 Commissions Obreres (trades unions) 37, 63, 128 communications towers 164 communism 43, 51, 55, 114–12 (see also PCE) consumerism 8–9, 86 Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya see CDC Convergència i Unió see CiU Corporació Metropolitana de Barcelona see CMB Cornellà 12 Crick, Bernard: on George Orwell 4 crime: Barrio Chino 31–3, 35; public spaces 154 Cristians Catalans 60–61, 66 culture see popular culture; urban culture

INDEX 199

DATAR (French planning agency): study 94–3, 104 Davis, Mike: City of Quartz 3–4, 25, 51 Delors, Jacques (European Commission president) 172 democracy: establishment 37, 65; Olympic Games 74 demolition: Ciutat Vella 149–6; districts 151 dereliction 13, 126 designers 47 detective of the city 25 dictatorship see Francoism diversity 172 drugs: Barrio Chino 32–3, 35; public spaces 154 economics: internationalism 11, 75, 94; modernisation 84–4 (see also European Union; industry) EEC see European Union Eixample 11–12, 36, 60: electoral district 16–17 elections and electorate 14, 15, 65–5, 69, 84, 91; municipal elections (1979) 129, (1980s) 72–2 (1995) 91; United States 92 electoral districts: descriptions 15–21 Ellingham, J. and Fisher, J.: Rough Guide to Spain 14 els fets del Palau (1960) 60 employment see unemployment ERC (Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya) 19, 20 Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya see ERC ETA (Euskadi ta Askatasuna) 20, 37, 52n10 Eurocities (network) 105 Eurocommunism see communism Europe see New Europe European Union 93–2, 104–3

Euskadi ta Askatasuna see ETA Evening Standard 10 Expos: 1888 161; 1929 146, 161 (see also Madrid) expressways see roads Extremadura 12 fascism 8: end of 37 (see also Francoism) fast food 49 FAVB (Federació d’Associacions de Veïns de Barcelona) 113, 123, 128–5, 134; newspaper 135; planning 151 Federació d’Associacions de Veins de Barcelona see FAVB federalism 70–71 Figueras, Josep Maria (property developer) 41, 131 finance see local government: spending Fisher, J. and Ellingham, J.: Rough Guide to Spain 14 football 9, 12, 18: regionalist icons 61 Forn, Manuel de 94 Foster, Norman (architect) communications tower 164 Franca, Zona: Els Altres Catalans 12 France: socialism 85 Franco, Francisco, general (1892–1975) 8, 59 Francoism 59–61, 74–4, 154; failure 61–1; planning and development 130–7, 145– 2 (see also nationalism) FRAP (Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota) 52n10 Frente Revolucionario Antifascista y Patriota see FRAP funding 106

200 INDEX

(see local government: spending; private sector) Galí, Beth (scuptor) 159 Galinsoga, Luis de 60 Generalitat 65–5, 73, 77 gentrification see city planning globalisation 113, 117 González, Felipe 84–4 Gràcia: electoral district 18–19 GRAPO (Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre) 52n10 grassroots see neighbourhood groups Grupos de Resistencia Antifascista Primero de Octubre see GRAPO Guardian 9, 10 Guinardó 19 Habitat II, Istanbul, 1996 105 Harvie, Chris The Rise of Regional Europe 58; Cultural Weapons 183 highways see roads history: Catalonia 55–61; Spain 67 Hobsbawm, Eric 172–9 Horta-Guinardó: electoral district 19 housing 118–19, 132; apartment block collapse 134; developers 41; electoral districts 15–21; local projects 148; squatters 135–2; Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel 50 Hughes, Robert Barcelona 45–7 passim, 139; The Shock of the New 58–8 IC (Iniciativa per Catalunya) 19, 20 identity 172–9 immigrants see migrants industrial action 37, 41, 61–2; 85 industry 15–21, 93: history 12; red belt 61–2

informationalism 113, 116 inhabitants 99; and planning 153 Iniciativa per Catalunya see IC International Brigades 8, 159 internationalisation 74, 83–3, 106; and competition 103 (see also globalisation) Jacobs, Jane M.: Postcolonialism and the City 1 Jacobs, Michael: Between Hopes and Memories 46, 48 Jospin, Lionel (French prime minister) 91 Kearns, Gerry and Philo, C. (eds): Selling Places 1 Kettle, Martin (journalist) 56 La España Industrial (textile company) 126, 127; park 151 La Seda (chemical company) 93 language: Catalan 68 law and legislation: planning 120 left-wing politics see New Left Les Corts: electoral district 18 local government: coalitions 65–5, 89–93; spending 10, 77, 100–102 (see also CMB) London, future of 10 Maastricht Treaty (1991) 85, 105 MACBA see art gallery Madrid: and Barcelona 104; European City of Culture 11, 74; Expo 2004 102; hegemony 59; ‘Madrid Spring’ 38 Maquinista, La (factory) 63 Maragall, Joan (poet) 61, 69

INDEX 201

Maragall, Pasqual (mayor of Barcelona, 1982–1997) 5, 66, 69; architecture 144–3; British view of 10; Catalonia 66, 69–9; city planning 72–2, 83–3; city states 105, 107; economic policy 86, 100–102; federal Spain 69–71; foreign policy 77; Olympic Games 6–9, 89–8, 94–4, 100; political views 88–7, 92–1, 107, 179; sculpture 160; student life 88–6; United States 89; writer 103, 107 Mariscal, Xavier (designer) 47–8 marketing the city 83–3, 90, 95, 133, 176–3 Martí, F. and Moreno, E.: Barcelona ¿A Dónde Vas 127–4 marxism: and the city 174, 179–6; disenchantment with 39–40, 42, 50–1 (see also PSOE) MBMP (architects) 45 Meier, Richard (architect) 162–60 memory and place 27–9 Mendoza, Eduardo: City of Marvels 11, 16–17, 161 middle class and protest 115 Mies Pavilion van der Rohe, Mies migrants 12,61, 117, 120–18 military 75; coup (1981) 40 Miró, Joan (sculptor): Woman and Bird 159 Mitterrand, François (French prime minister) 85; Paris architecture 161 modernisation 74, 83–4 monarchy 75; Athletics World Cup (1989) 78–8; Olympic Games 79–9 Moncloa Accords 38, 40 Montalbán, Manuel Vázquez see Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel Montjuïc (Olympic Hill) 11, 13, 17, 44, 48– 9

Montreal 142 Moreno, Eduardo 17; [and F.Martí] Barcelona ¿A Dónde Vas 127–4 narratives 4 nationalism 59, 78–9 (see also Francoism; regionalism) nationalists (Catalan) see CiU neighbourhood groups 114–13, 123, 128, 130, 134 (see also FAVB) neighbourhood projects 147–4 New Europe 9, 85 New Labour: England 10 New Left 58, 91–92: Barcelona 38–9, 42, 50–1, 65 noir 25 Nou Barris: electoral district 19, 121; apartment block collapse 134; redevelopment 152 Nova Icària 45 Núñez, Josep Lluís (president of Barça) 41, 118, 131 offices: development 100, 132 Olivetti (factory) 63, 64 Olympic Games 21, 41–2: Calatrava’s Tower 164–1; districts 17, 19, 20–21; funding 131; mascot 47; planning and development 44, 49, 77, 89–8, 131, 144; political aspects 5, 55, 74–9, 130; renovation of Barcelona 94–3, 100; sculpture 157 (see also Montjuïc) Olympic Village 45 open spaces 147–4, 151, 154, 169 opera house: fire 134 Orwell, George: Homage to Catalonia 6–9;

202 INDEX

writing style 4 Parc de l’Espanya Industrial 127 Parc Güell 18–19 parks see open spaces Partido Comunista de España see PCE Partido Popular see PP Partido Socialista Obrero Español see PSOE Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya see PSC Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya see PSUC PCE (Partido Comunista de España) 37–8; grassroots 128 Petras, James: ‘Spanish socialism’ 11 Plaça dels Països Catalans 166–4, 167 planning and development see city planning pluralism 178–5 Poble Nou 16, 20, 44: redevelopment as Olympic Village 45; sea-front project 122 Poble Sec 17 political parties see under names of parties popular culture: in Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel 26–7 population 12, 15, 17–19, 72 Porcioles, Josep Maria (Mayor of Barcelona) 72, 117–17; obituary 130; Olympic Games 130 port 96: expansion 95 post-Franco era 37–44 PP (Partido Popular): elections 17, 18, 20, 86, 91 Preston, Paul: The Triumph of Democracy in Spain 37 private sector 83–3, 99, 116, 174; overseas 132 property developers 17, 41–2, 114, 118, 126, 130–8 prostitution 31–2 protest movements 115, 123–1 (see also FAVB) PSC (Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya) 55, 72–5 passim, elections 65–5, 69, 83–9

passim, 128–5; electoral districts 14–21 passim; Olympic Games 74–5 PSOE (Partido Socialista Obrero Español) 11, 37, 38, 55, 65, 69, 74, 76; corruption 86; economic policy 85–5, 93–2; elections 83–3; Marxism 84–4 PSUC (Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya) 37, 43, 72; elections 65, 129–6; grassroots 128 public art see sculpture public spaces see open spaces Pujol, Jordi (Catalan president) 5, 18, 55–6, 60, 72, 76; abolition of CMB 73–3; concept of Barcelona 66–7; and the monarchy 79; Olympic Games 77–9 Putxet 11 racism 106 radicals 32, 78 Rambla, La 13, 15–16 reading the city 25, 145 ‘red belt’ 61–1, 62 regionalism 55–61, 78–9 religion: catholicism 60–66 passim; history 74; the state 67 renovation see city planning restaurants 49–50: design 47 Riera, Ignasi: Off Barcelona 12 roads 13, 122, 132, 144: coastal 150; Via Júlia 152 (see also transport) Rowe, Peter: Civic Realism 140 Sabadell 12 Sagrada Familia (cathedral) 17

INDEX 203

Sanahuja, Roman (property developer) 41, 131 Sant Adrià power station: shooting 37 Sant Andreu: electoral district 20, 60 Sant Martí 12, 16: electoral district 10–x; redevelopment 152 Santa Coloma de Gramenet: Feria de Abril 12 Sants 12, 16, 17, 60; Carrer Ladrilleros explosion 123; neighbourhood groups 128; Parc de l’Espanya Industrial 127 Sants-Montjuïc: electoral district 17–18 Samaranch, Juan Antonio (property developer) 19, 41–2, 75, 131 Sarrià-Sant Gervasi: electoral district 18 Sassoon, Donald: One Hundred Years of Socialism 3 satire: Butifarra! 124 schools 121 sculpture: public art 98, 139, 146, 151, 156–6; removal of fascist propaganda 155; Serra, Richard: The Wall 165–2; Tàpies, Antoni: Homage to Picasso 158 SEAT car factory 17, 20, 60, 63; sale to Volkswagen 93–2; shooting 37 separatism see regionalism; nationalism Serra, Narcís (socialist mayor of Barcelona) 75, 88, 129–6; cultural background 143 Serra, Richard (architect): The Wall 165–2 Setmana Tràgica (1909) 32 Seville: Expo 11, 74 shanty dwellers 118 Shifrin, Roy (sculptor) 159 shops 50, 96 Single Market see European Union

social democrats (Catalan) see PSC social polarisation 10, 106, 175–2 socialism: and the city x–3, 6–10, 175–1; establishment of 38 socialists see PSOE Spanish Civil War 8, 34 Spring, Ian: Phantom Village 180 Stalinism 8 state see local government; elections and under the names of political parties Stockholm Globe sports arena 175 Strategic Plan: Barcelona 2000 95 street names 155–2 strikes see industrial action Suárez, Adolfo (Spanish prime minister) 38, 65 Sudjic, Deyan The 100 Mile City 102 Tàpies, Antoni (artist) 158; Homage to Picasso 158 Tarradellas, Josep (Catalan president) 65 Tarragona, Carrer: office blocks 100 technology 116 terrorism: Barcelona 78; ETA 20, 37, 75 textiles 20 Tibidabo 11 Torres, Maruja 36 tourism 8–9 trade fairs 95 (see also Expos) trades unions see Commissions Obreres; industrial action transport 75, 95–4 Trotskyists 8 UCD (Union de Centro Democrático) 65, 69; elections 129 UDC (Unió Democràtica de Catalunya) 67 unemployment 10, 40, 93, 117;

204 INDEX

Ciutat Vella 149 Union de Centro Democrático see UCD United Nations 105 United States: party politics 92 University of Barcelona 18 URBAN (funding programme) 105 urban change x–3, 12 (see also architecture; city planning; see under names of districts) urban culture 71, 155, 176–4 urban entrepreneurs see private sector; property developers urban landscape see cityscape urban planning see city planning; see under names of districts urban reportage 4 Urry, John: Consuming Places 9 van der Rohe, Mies 49, 146, 169 Vázquez Montalbán, Manuel 5, 17, 22, 25: The Angst-ridden Executive 39–40; autobiography in novels 28–9; Barcelonas 22, 25, 26; Barrio Chino 25, 28, 30–4; Crónica Sentimental de la Transición 27; detective hero 25–34; as flâneur 22–4, 51; on General Franco 22; Marxism 22–4, 29; An Olympic Death 42–3, 45–6; property developers 135; protest 121; Southern Seas 34, 40; urban change 26,29 Viaplana and Piñon (architects): Plaça dels Països Catalans 166–4, 167 Vizcaya 61 Viola, Joaquim 120 violence: Barrio Chino 33 wasteland see city planning waterfront: renovation 149 working classes 32:

and Francoism 61–x; protest 115; red belt of Barcelona 62–2 World Bank 105 writing style 4