Hundreds of pro-independence activist demonstrate during the general strike in Barcelona on October 3, 2017. Miquel Llop/NurPhoto/Sipa USA/PA Images. All rights reserved.
There are two large metropolitan areas in Spain: Barcelona and Madrid.
While Madrid, with a population of 6.5 million, sits in third place in Europe,
after London and Paris, Barcelona is in sixth place, with nearly 5 million. The
two are global capitals and compete primarily in a European and international arena,
although the tensions between them can be seen as drivers of the current political-territorial
dispute in Spain.
Both are members of a small group of cities – not more than a dozen in
Europe – where resources and information flow at high speed, in a game of
planetary dimensions. In this sense there is no direct competition between
Madrid and Barcelona; it is only that they compete in the same league, each with
its own strengths and weaknesses.
However, the current conflict between Catalonia and Spain cannot be fully
comprehended without understanding that, in the context of globalization, both
cities, and the large metropolitan areas in which are embedded, are trying to
concentrate the prominence and accumulate most of the resources linked to
growth and power. For this reason, any analysis of the territorial conflict in
Spain should incorporate this dimension if it is to avoid falling into an
outdated understanding of the current political conflict.
Asymmetric competition
It must be understood that a metropolitan area is a top-level node in this
globalized world, drawing resources from its surroundings while it distributes
them. So, it requires a political articulation that normally implies the recycling
of traditional state models that emerged in the 19th century, albeit with some significant
changes.
Obviously, if this state recycling does not take place smoothly,
adopting new functions that permit develop intense relations with other areas
and territories, the development of the metropolitan area and its global
position can suffer, even though (of course) it all depends on its competitive
advantages. Global cities need states; in fact, they certainly need to make
them theirs. A state can serve a single metropolitan area converted into a
global city, as in the cases of Paris and London, or it can serve more than
one, as we see in Italy and Germany. Logically, if such support is distributed,
the capacity and projection of global cities does not reach the same
proportions, as shown in the cases of Milan and Rome, or Berlin and Frankfurt;
but note that these are cities belonging to two relatively new states, both formed
in the second half of the 19th century.
Without digging into historical revisions, tensions between Barcelona
and Madrid in recent decades, and especially since the start of the great
economic crisis initiated in 2008, contain an element of dispute over the role
of the state in supporting the construction of global cities. Barcelona’s
economic, cultural and social elites perceive that they do not receive enough
support from the Spanish state, since it directs its support towards turning
Madrid into a global city. They complain that Spain’s model is a state with a
single global city, having the largest possible projection and heaviest possible
economic weight.
Madrid’s political and economic elites perceive Barcelona as something alien to their state model.
Madrid’s political and economic elites perceive Barcelona as something alien
to their state model, and consider that in any case its global positioning
should be subordinated to the objectives of promoting a single great global
city in Spain. Unlike Italy or Germany, the Spanish state has bet on a single
global city. Or, to put it in other way round, Madrid elites have mainly captured
the state.
It is obvious that this is a conflict between the elites of two European
global cities which share a state, where one of them has captured the state, to
propel its own development in the global arena. Therefore, it is unsurprising
that the elites of the other global city in Spain are considering the idea of
building a state of their own. The awareness of such a need is a fundamental
difference in the political positions in recent years of much of the Catalan
elites, compared to their positions over the previous two centuries, when there
were no major claims for a state of their own.
This ambition is often formulated through nationalist speech, but also
with cosmopolitan arguments, and discussion of investment and the distribution
of fiscal resources. In many cases, this involves a similar tension, based on
the absence of a state capable of backing and assisting the position of
Barcelona and its surroundings as a global city.
Without going more deeply into Spain’s current political configuration,
it should be noted Spanish state's significant weaknesses in knowledge and specialized
skills. Outdated and widely inefficient recruitment procedures, an old-fashioned
organizational model, and its numerous bodies of civil servants undergoing
constant internal struggles and heavily corporate, have together generated a
weak state when it comes to acting in a globalized environment. It is unable to
autonomous leadership as to territorial matters and depends heavily on the
large business corporations that have contributed to made Madrid its global
capital. This interpenetration among a few national champions –that benefited
from state support, and very much so, in their global expansion – and within
the state itself as an organization, has been consolidated in the age of
globalization, contributing to the upholding and projecting of its global city.
Will the state evolve
into a model of two global cities?
It is difficult to imagine how this model can be reversed, and how Spain
could adopt a state model with a number of global cities, or at least two, and
evolve into a format of neutrality. There are examples in Europe, but the difficulties
of such a transformation would be extreme, given the existing historical and
social conditioning.
In fact, one could view the efforts to reform the Catalan Statute in
2006, and the claims for a fiscal pact for Catalonia at the beginning of the
2010s, as a bid by its political and economic elites to establish a model that would
permit the absorption of additional resources and capabilities from the Spanish
state, yet which would still be compatible with the state’s commitment to
support Madrid as a global city.
Divergent perceptions and other commitments – all in the middle of a
harsh Spanish fiscal and financial crisis – prevented the completion of such
agreements, triggering higher-risk alternatives that had been discarded until
that moment by the Catalan elites. Besides, EU single market and globalization
also helped to consider alternative scenarios.
There’s something else
A struggle between elites of two global cities favoured very
asymmetrically by a state can become bloody, but this would be a limited explanation
of the aggravated social and political conflict between Spain and Catalonia over
the last few years. As much as one cannot look upon the role of the state in
the territory as if we were at the beginning of the 20th century, this alone is
not enough to explain the mobilization capacity and the intensity of the
feelings aroused. There is something else.
Globalization has not only generated the phenomenon of global cities, it
has also produced profound changes in the distribution of income between
different social sectors, as well as access to well-paying jobs. Following the
studies of Branko Milanovic and other analysts, we know for a fact that among those
left behind by globalization there are numerous segments of the middle class
and skilled workers from the developed countries.
The reasons for this relative impoverishment are related to global
competition that led to open trade agreements and promoted new technologies;
its political consequences have become apparent in recent years. Events such as
the recent election of Trump in the United States, or the UK voting in 2016 to
leave the EU, are in a way related to this process of relative impoverishment
of some social groups in the developed countries, to the extent that speeches calling
for a reversal of globalization and a return to models of markets protected by states
can now be perceived increasingly as a political option.
These developments are also present in Spain and in Catalonia – not in
the form of a rise of the extreme right, fortunately, as in France or just
recently in Germany, but in forms buried in numerous political behaviours,
conditioned political strategies or multiple social mobilizations. We cannot analyse
in detail the political implications of these social changes in Spain, but we
can highlight some very visible aspects.
Although Catalonia benefited also from the afore mentioned territorial pact, the weight and the visibility of its global city destabilized the equation.
One central element is the challenge to the maintenance of the classical
benefits of the welfare state, focused on the distribution of resources in a
passive way to many social groups affected by economic changes, direct or
indirect, as a result of globalization, that are especially intense in some
areas of the country. To some extent, strong state support to launch a global
city was legitimized by keeping such policies for large social groups across
the entire Spanish territory.
To oversimplify, we could point out two large groups. There are several
generations of workers who have experienced relatively stable employment and
the welfare state benefits established in the 1980s by socialist governments.
There are also professional sectors and large groups of young people who have
enjoyed hardly any welfare safety nets, and whose prospects of stability and
professional advancement are slim. Both groups share expectations and
frustrations about the political-economic model, betting on different policy
options to avoid welfare dismantling.
Although Catalonia benefited also from the afore mentioned territorial
pact, the weight and the visibility of its global city destabilized the
equation, as well as its particular social and cultural integration with
different legitimate discourses. Yet in Catalonia it has generated an
additional alternative, which attracts a broad segment of the second group and,
possibly, some members of the first group. That alternative is the option of an
independent state of Catalonia.
Setting aside its eventual plausibility, these perceptions encourage the
mobilization of broad sectors of losers – or potential losers – due to globalization
in Catalonia, and those who in recent years have experienced wage reductions,
lack of opportunities, professional stagnation, or even exclusion from the
labour market.
Among the attractions of this additional
alternative are the expectations of better social benefits, because the new state
will have, predictably, a greater income. There may also be higher expectations
of growth, with the perception of a more sustainable economic model, as well as
diffuse expectations about state-building opportunities and further potential support
for professional careers.
A singular coalition
The pro-independence movement in Catalonia has created a singular
coalition that includes: beneficiaries of globalization, the elites of a global
city, those left behind by globalization, and the popular sectors that are losing
opportunities in comparison to previous generations and are witnessing shortages
or are being left out of the welfare state.
This alliance, not so conspicuous in daily politics in Catalonia, but
very effective, is held together by three very important conditions. First, there
is the common perception that it is a non-zero sum game bigger that zero, where
everyone will benefit. Secondly, there is the shared perception of belonging to
a political community, a well-defined territory with elements of cultural
identity, widely recognized; and third, the balance between rural territory and
a global city that does not generate major tensions.
However, cities still need states.
Thus, the independence movement in Catalonia is not only a nationalist
movement, although there is a strong nationalist component within it; nor is it
a movement based on irrational feelings, mired in a glorious past. It is also a
political response, with a strong strategic component of territorial base, to the
challenges that globalisation is creating in all developed countries,
particularly in its current multi-polar phase.
The struggle for survival and well-being of political communities in the
developed north has just started. Global cities and regional integration
mechanisms have much more capacity to adapt to these changes than European states
established many centuries ago -unless they actively transform and innovate themselves.
However, cities still need states.