Barcelona and Fuenteovejuna, all together

There is little doubt that the 21st century will be the century of cities. The United Nations has estimated, for example, that by the end of this decade around 60% of the world population will live in large cities.. The proportion may still seem small, but it must be taken into account that in a large part of the planet agriculture is still the main means of subsistence, and hence its anchorage to the rural environment..

The consequence of such rapid urbanization of the territory is the birth of new problems for cities such as overcrowding, the lack of basic infrastructure, the proliferation of waste or the overexploitation of resources, which ultimately causes dramatic effects on the climate.. There is already talk of city-states, which inevitably evokes ancient Greece, built around the polis. At the other extreme are the small municipalities, the vast majority of which are condemned to disappear..

Spain, of course, is no exception. While their problems are clearly those of the first world, to use old United Nations terminology, there are some parallels.. In 2022, for example, only two cities, Madrid and Barcelona, accounted for 10.3% of the Spanish population, despite the fact that both municipalities are a microscopic proportion of the more than 8,100 municipalities in the country.. If other large cities are added to the list, in relation to the size of Spain, it turns out that cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants today account for 40% of the population, despite representing only 0.70% of the municipalities. Never before has there been such a relevant level of human concentration around cities.

What is singular, however, is that in parallel there has not been a reduction in the number of municipalities, which, far from decreasing, have grown, albeit very slightly.. The result is final: 85% of Spanish municipalities have less than 5,000 inhabitants, which makes it difficult for them to be sustainable to the extent that they are not capable of generating sufficient economic activity to survive..

Current expenditure

Its budget, in fact, is a monument to current spending in light of its minimal investment capacity. Ordinary spending accounts for 84% of the budget, while capital expenditures, which in the medium and long term are a growth multiplier, barely represent 11%. The remaining 5% are financial expenses.

This lack of investment is precisely what prevents them from competing with the big cities, which means that their offer of public services is clearly insufficient.. A fact clearly reflects it. The average expenditure per inhabitant in Spanish municipalities is equivalent to 1,082 euros, being 42% higher in municipalities with more than one million inhabitants.. This explains why even medium-sized cities, which until now were the forced destination of residents of smaller municipalities, have begun to lose population in favor of large ones.. It is an unstoppable process that reflects an uncomfortable reality. The future passes through megacities more important than the states themselves. Just as many multinationals are today larger than many countries, cities will also be larger than their states..

Spanish legislation, however, continues to be alien to this process. The design of the territorial model was built around the autonomous communities, which in the end has generated, particularly in single-province regions, a paradox. Many provincial capitals are politically and economically more important than the autonomous community itself. The most striking case is that of Madrid, although there are others of a similar nature: Barcelona compared to Catalonia or Bilbao compared to the Basque Country.. The capital of Spain represents 50% of the region's population, and its economic importance is notably greater, but the city council, due to lack of municipal autonomy, is subsidiary to what is decided in Puerta del Sol, seat of the presidency.

It is not a specific problem linked to a certain political leadership, but hides a worrying reality. The autonomous communities have tended to subtract municipal powers, a kind of autonomous neocentralism, despite the fact that the importance of large municipalities has not stopped growing. The result, how could it be otherwise, is the existence of multiple duplications in the management of certain public services, mainly in social services, cultural management or infrastructure development.. And what is no less relevant, a chronic inefficiency, even in urban policy, derived from legislation designed for a time that no longer exists.

In its day there was talk of a second Transition focused on the recovery of municipal powers kidnapped by the autonomous governments despite the existence of a constitutional principle favorable to bringing decision-making closer to citizens. However, and after various reforms of the local government, little progress has been made. Neither Madrid nor Barcelona nor other large cities in the country have their own status, rather the legislation treats a municipality with half a million inhabitants practically the same as another that slightly exceeds 5,000..

a singularity

In parallel, and here is another of the paradoxes, thousands of municipalities languish or are about to disappear without there being their own legislation that reflects their uniqueness. For example, introducing the figure of a professional manager in charge of mobilizing and maximizing the available resources and running the corporation's day-to-day activities, which is not incompatible with the figure of the mayor elected by the residents.. In other words, a more professionalized management to make better use of public resources.

It is obvious that this second territorial Transition, which includes the effective concentration of local corporations that today are only an identity without any administrative substance, can only be done from a calm political climate.. It is not the case. Instead, they have opted for confrontation, which has turned into chronic problems that should have been addressed long ago.. For example, the role of the provincial councils, which is completely redundant with the autonomous communities, and which today, as they were during the Franco regime, but with a completely different territorial model, have become an instrument of political control thanks to the large resources that manage.

The loss of identity of the municipalities in favor of the autonomous communities is not politically negligible. Citizens have fewer incentives to oversee their mayors at the polls and, on the contrary, do so based on other parameters that have nothing to do with their management. In particular, introducing into the public debate issues of general policy that have little to do with municipal work, whose main function is none other than the provision of public services.. Neither the income redistribution policy, nor the general economic policy, to give two examples, have nothing to do with the management of mayors. Of course, unless large cities have their own statute of autonomy. In the case of Madrid, a capital law.

It is true that what happens in large cities, how can it be otherwise, has a national projection, and that is precisely why they should enjoy their own statute that does not make them hostages of the autonomous governments. And the vote this Saturday in Barcelona, where thanks to the Popular Party, the socialist Collboni has been elected mayor, clearly reflects this. Undoubtedly, a success by Feijóo to the extent that it can be seen that it is possible that the two great parties in the public space can collaborate around certain purposes and nothing happens. It is part of the pragmatic policy that should guide public affairs.

The Popular Party, with few exceptions, has benefited from this reality (the national code vote) in the last elections, but it is probable that in the future it will be the PSOE, or any other party, who obtains the benefits of the weakness of municipalities as a political subject. This is undoubtedly helped by the coincidence in the time of the electoral cycles, which prevents the voter from differentiating the different territorial areas in the electoral competition. On the contrary, creating deliberate confusion that sometimes favors one party and other times another to the extent that the system revolves around an imperfect bipartisanship that today tends to be reinforced.. It is curious to observe, in this sense, how the blue or red stain varies depending on the national political moment, which only reveals a certain contempt for municipal autonomy protected by the Constitution.

The existence of a captive vote completely unrelated to municipal management is bad news because it goes against the times. If cities are to become more important, it seems reasonable to think that they must have the appropriate instruments to face the new challenges. But for that, reforms are needed that are neither here nor expected today. That is why there are reasons to think that Lope de Vega could not have written Fuenteovejuna today, which is the symbol of the struggle of a people against injustice in favor of outraged women.. Or perhaps he could have written it in the event that what happened this Saturday in Barcelona —a pact of three— had spread to more municipalities. It's called reason of state. And the PP, which sometimes plays with fire, has shown it this Saturday in the Catalan capital.