Barcelona, ​​from Alpha to Beta

Loughborough University (UK), throughl GaWC (Global Cities Researchers Network), has generated for decades a ‘ranking’ of cities in the circuit of the global economy. He divides them into three large groups, Alpha, Beta and Gamma, with some subdivisions inside them. Above all are New York and London, followed by a list of 50 cities that connect the great regions of the planet with the world economy. Madrid is located for a long time among the first 25 of that ‘ranking’ Alpha, while Barcelona, ​​which also featured (although well behind the Spanish capital), has fallen in 2020 to the Beta category, that is, on the list of medium-sized metropolises. And it has been overtaken by cities like Prague, Dublin or Lisbon. Beyond that ‘ranking’, the truth is that Barcelona has more than one decade getting worse, without model or project. It has ceased to be a benchmark of modernity and it has become a more provincial city.

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The causes are diverse, but the independence process that began in 2012 and that continues to set the political agenda, along with the bewildered alcalía by Ada Colau, particularly in his first term, they have been determining factors in a decline that everyone recognizes. The decline is not only in the metropolis, but in Catalonia as a whole, and that is why businessmen do well to come out of their lethargy to demand a stable government focused on recovering the economic dynamism and in attending to the real problems. Unfortunately the probable new ‘president’, Pere AragonèsAfter being silent for many days in the face of serious street disturbances, he has once again found curious explanations for the violence. It is useless to condemn her if she immediately says that the fault has it “The low quality of Spanish democracy”. As Joan Coscubiela has said, “To contextualize violence is to justify it.” The cause of our decline is mainly to be found in the mediocrity, cynicism and infantilism of the ruling class Catalan responsible for the ‘procés’, by action or omission. And there we continue.

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