How to improve democracy (local) in Catalonia?

The infernal heat of these days in Catalonia should not make us lose the spirit to think about the deepest issues. On the contrary, summer is always a good time to review the long-term horizon with a little more distance and serenity. One of the deep questions is how we can improve our democracy, this “continuous journey,” as the great John Dewey called it. The question can be approached, obviously, in multiple ways. Today I will focus on one of its most important dimensions: citizen participation at the local or municipal level, which is the most natural, accessible, and easy-to-organize form of political participation, and for which we have no excuse not to allow and widely promote it. This connects with the recent adoption of the citizen participation plan for the city of Barcelona for 2026-2028. Take a sip of your favorite wine, beer, or soda and join me for a quick look.

It must be said, from the outset, that in Catalonia, after more than 30 years experimenting in this field, we still do not have the local participation opportunities we deserve and, moreover, we have lost, if we ever had it, any position of international leadership. Some interesting things are being done and we have a well-trained technical sector, but the lack of real political will, the lack of effective resources, and some strategic errors committed have led the local citizen participation sector to a situation of fragility and underdevelopment. We don't even have a Catalan participation law. Catalonia is one of only three autonomous communities —the other two being La Rioja and the Basque Country— that still do not have a participation law, although it seems this could be resolved soon: the Government of the Generalitat presented a draft law on citizen participation in April, which is currently undergoing parliamentary processing.

The action plan of the city of Barcelona, which has just been approved, establishes three main axes —open participation, diverse and universal participation, and innovative participation—, which are composed of 10 strategic lines and for which it proposes 46 relatively concrete actions. In my opinion, this plan contains some important successes, but it also reiterates some strategic errors that should be discussed, also because of the inspirational effect it may have on the rest of the Catalan municipalities (at the moment, few municipalities have strategic plans or specific sectoral action plans for participation, such as Reus, Castelldefels, Tàrrega or Terrassa).

Among the successes, I will mention three. First, it makes a determined and ambitious commitment to more diverse and inclusive participation that leaves no one out, focusing on particularly vulnerable social groups, such as children and adolescents, the elderly, immigrants, cultural or gender minorities, etc. Second, in the innovation axis, the plan continues to strengthen the role of the Decidim platform, the city's virtual participation space and perhaps the most important contribution that Catalonia has made to the world of participation in recent years (proof of its success is the collaboration agreement that has just been signed between the Decidim Association and the city of New York). And third, it proposes to review, rationalize and simplify the complex structure of sectoral and territorial participation bodies, which is arguably the aspect of participation that has historically worked worst in the city of Barcelona.

Of the plan's errors, I will focus on just one. Barcelona insists on betting on participatory budgets as a central instrument of participation and even increases its budgetary allocation. There is nothing wrong with participatory budgets as a general tool. In Barcelona, however, its worst version has been chosen: an aggregative and confrontational approach in which citizens are limited to presenting the proposals they want, which then compete against each other to obtain the highest number of votes or support. This generates small local lobbies and produces winners and losers. Furthermore, participation, exclusively virtual, is carried out without sufficient information to assess which proposal is most suitable for the city or district and, more seriously, without the possibility of effective and quality public deliberation. And this is not to mention that very few people participate. In the prioritization phase of the current participatory budgeting process, according to published data, about 29,000 people have participated (less than 2% of the population). It is clear that the vast majority of Barcelona residents are not even aware of the existence of the Decidim platform, even after 8 years of Ada Colau's governments, who claimed to be committed to participation in general and to Decidim in particular.

I hope that the rest of the municipalities in Catalonia can be inspired by what is good in Barcelona's plan and that they do not make the same mistakes. We all deserve a better local democracy than we have.