García-Bragado, Isla's icebreaker to solve the housing crisis

Barcelona“A single phone call was often enough to put any mayor in his place,” says an urban planner, reflecting on the 2000s. He's referring to the era of solid majorities and large-scale urban development projects under Pasqual Maragall's administration, particularly in the metropolitan area. But things have changed considerably: large majorities haven't returned—municipal power is more fragmented—but a megaproject worthy of that era has: the public planning of tens of thousands of new homes. And this has brought back into the spotlight a very specific figure from those years: “He was an enabler,” explains someone close to the man to ARA.

This is Ramon García-Bragado, a card-carrying socialist who pulled the strings for several years in Maragall's Generalitat and in the Barcelona of Joan Clos and Jordi Hereu. And now she returns to politics after more than a decade to assume a position that is largely out of the media spotlight: the presidency and coordination of the working group of the Interdepartmental Housing Commission. "It will be held by a person of recognized prestige in the functions they will have to perform," announced a January government agreement regarding this new body.

The appointment has gone largely unnoticed, although it plays a key role in Salvador Illa's government: planning, coordinating, and overseeing the implementation of urgent measures to increase the supply of subsidized housing in Catalonia and, above all, the transformation of residential land through Incasòl and the management of the public land reserve. Basically, the 50,000 plan involves mobilizing plots of land—that is, ready-to-build land—to boost that number of social rental apartments before 2030. But it also involves advising, in general terms, on the Generalitat's new housing policy model, which also has another major project on the table: to build up to 214,000 public housing units—both for rent and for sale—and private housing.

"In the end, the politicians say: I want this many homes. But the person who carries it out is someone they trust," says an architect who knows him well. "And he's that person," he adds.

An icebreaker task

"He's like an icebreaker, a plow, because he's broken so much ground throughout his career," explains this urban planner about Ramon García-Bragado. "If Bohigas had the vision for Barcelona in his head, Ramon had the project for how to do it all from a legal and management perspective," adds this source, with whom he still speaks occasionally for consultations on professional projects. "He had the whole city and the country in his head, especially the city. I remember him as a very methodical man," agrees a City Hall employee, with whom he worked years ago.

His name is strongly linked to major urban transformation projects in Barcelona: from the 22@ District to the ring roads, as well as the expansion of critical infrastructure, such as the Port of Barcelona and El Prat Airport, for which he has been recognized primarily by the professional architecture community. His work consisted of making urban plans a reality, activating and unblocking projects, and making them legally viable. First through the Municipal Institute for Urban Development (IMPU) and Barcelona Regional, and later from the second tier of politics: he was Barcelona's Urban Planning Manager from 1999 to 2004, under Joan Clos; then he crossed through Plaça Sant Jaume to serve as Secretary General of the Presidency in Pasqual Maragall's tripartite government until 2007, when he returned to City Hall to become Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning under Jordi Hereu.

"He's very stubborn, very difficult to sway with an idea, but, on the other hand, he was a person who listened," says this employee. "He's a very persistent, tenacious, very intuitive person; he knows which paths he should try to close and, on the other hand, which ones are safe, even if they aren't optimal. He's not a cynical pragmatist, but rather says: 'What needs to be done has to be done,'" adds an architect.

The challenge of fattening the machine

"Ramon is an operator who has dedicated himself to transforming the city. His leadership is like adding oil to aioli. He picks up phones and makes calls, and he knows exactly who to surround himself with, who to call; he has a significant network of experts. He has a direct line to the president: the island calls him." Now, with the shift in political consensus, his role is interpreted as a tool of the government to "enable" its housing plans. In fact, one of the challenges of this land mobilization is convincing municipalities to submit their plots to the public reserve being managed by the Generalitat (Catalan government). The first call for applications resulted in 666 plots, and the government is expected to launch the second call at the end of the year or the beginning of January. Similarly, another challenge for the government is getting municipalities, especially those not aligned with its political party, to buy into the housing development plan. "Perhaps they're worried that medium-sized cities not aligned with the Catalan government are being denied land: he'll approach the city councils because medium-sized cities have a high absorption capacity," says another urban planner.

The task is also complicated in small towns: planning 500 homes in a village can generate initial resistance because of its social impact. "What has he definitely done? He's taken note of the people he has access to in the Catalan government and who's in charge. He's surely consulted with everyone he needs to reach an agreement with," says a source close to him professionally.

A thick-skinned profile

The most bitter episode of his career was as Deputy Mayor for Urban Planning under Jordi Hereu, when he became embroiled in the legal proceedings surrounding the Palau de la Música Hotel case. Those were years of "ordeal," as described by someone close to him. It led García-Bragado to step aside and leave politics in 2011 to focus on his profession: law. An example of his character is that in those legal proceedings he insisted on representing himself. He refused lawyers and said he would defend himself to the end, even hearing that they were "setting him up" to remove him from the case. And he won. The Barcelona Court acquitted him, along with the top officials of the city's Urban Planning department at the time."With all this, we went through some difficult times; he was a very rigorous and hardworking person," says someone who worked side by side with him when he was a lieutenant.

"He's someone who had to endure legal controversies and had his own personal ordeal with other municipal officials. He knows the harsh realities of politics and the political exposure it entails. I'm sure there are many professionals who don't go into politics precisely because of the exposure that comes with joining a political party. Despite the ideological difference, he sees him as a professional with extensive knowledge of his field. 'Housing without urban planning is incomprehensible,' he emphasizes.

The son of the anarchist Ramón Acín and the artist Katia Acín, García-Bragado has returned to the sidelines to tackle a challenge not too far removed from what catapulted him to fame twenty years ago: getting the government to fulfill one of the most ambitious promises of this legislative term.