IN-PERSON Barcelona Livable Cities. Section A

Abstract

Municipalist movements around the world have been seeking answers to multiple crises under conditions of austerity. The best-known example is the movement party Barcelona en Comú, which turned the Catalan capital for eight years (2015-2023) into a flagship of new urban politics. A new alliance between the municipalist government and local communities was supposed to break up the dominance of private economic interests and national government’s austerity and thus not only address the social precarity and deprivation but also revolutionise the way of doing politics. Although social rights and social precarity were a major focus of the protest movements that brought Barcelona en Comú to power, a comprehensive analysis of actually implemented municipalist social policy and public services is still lacking, apart from housing policies. By focusing on social policy in Barcelona, we not only draw attention to an understudied policy field. Using a multi-sited, comparative approach with four exemplary domains (basic social protection, public infrastructures, energy rights, and home care services), we analyse how politics have been remade in these fields, with a special focus on the role of civic and community participation in its various manifestations. To open the black box of participatory governance in the social realm, the analysis follows three intersecting axes municipality–civil society, municipality–central state and municipality–private sector. This multi-scalar perspective clarifies how participatory ambitions interact with fiscal constraints, national regulation and market logics, and thereby limit or enable municipalist action. By foregrounding an understudied but central policy field, the input enriches debates on new municipalism and distils lessons for cities seeking to improve and democratise welfare under conditions of permanent crisis.