Ada Colau

Cities, as well as the metropolitan territories they create, have a major responsibility to provide an effective response to the new global challenges that states, on their own, have proved incapable of resolving. Growing inequalities, climate change, massive population displacements as a result of war, famine and natural disasters, and the crisis of legitimacy of democratic institutions require new leadership. It is for that reason that wherever we think about and plan the future of cities is also where we think about and plan the future of our planet.

Since 1988, Barcelona has been at the forefront of this line of thinking, the first milestone of which was the Strategic Economic and Social Plan for Barcelona 2000.

Now, 30 years later, this line of thought has been continued in the PEMB, with a clear metropolitan commitment. Here at this association, where all of us from the public institutions that push the organisation forward along with all the other members who form part of its governing bodies are present, we want to keep working on this task of reflection and planning by adapting to global changes and increasingly opening ourselves to new metropolitan players. We understand that the debates about the future of metropolitan Barcelona must also include the municipalities that form the ‘real city’ which extends beyond the limits of metropolitan Barcelona.