PRO BCN 2023 project has been promoted by the Fundació Barcelona Promoció and coordinated by the Institut Cerdà, Rethink Barcelona and Tech Barcelona, Barcelona Oberta, Turisme de Barcelona, l’Associació d’Empreses de Teatre de Catalunya and the Casal dels Infants

Barcelona, 3 March 2023 – Nearly 100 organisations from Barcelona’s associative network, leading representatives of civil society institutions and candidates in the forthcoming municipal elections in Barcelona, attended the presentation of the conclusions of the PRO BCN project this morning. The work was built on the participation of a large number of the main civil society organisations that wished to collaborate, coordinated by the Cerdà Institute, Rethink Barcelona, Tech Barcelona, Barcelona Oberta, Turisme de Barcelona, ADETCA and Casal dels Infants, based on the press release issued in September 2022, at the start of the project.

The main conclusions of the project include the need for greater public-private collaboration, within a regulatory framework favourable to the consolidation of a competitive and inclusive metropolis, capable of consolidating its urban, economic, technological, commercial, tourist, cultural and inclusive leadership; and a sustainability based on the need to facilitate economic, environmental and social progress, through a permanent dialogue between all the actors involved in its development, which promotes job creation and quality living conditions for all citizens.

The event took place at the Llotja de Mar, in the presence of representatives of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, who were the hosts; Jaume Collboni (PSC), Ernest Maragall (ERC), Daniel Sirera (PPC) and Xavier Trias (Junts), Jordi Martí, number two of Barcelona en Comú, Maria Eugènia Gay, number two of the PSC, and other representatives of relevant organisations and institutions of the country.

PRO BCN was born from the initial impulse of a group of entities that agreed on the need, in view of the upcoming municipal elections, to gather the collective and structured opinion of Barcelona’s civil society on the present and future of the metropolis.

The proposal is available to all citizens and to all candidates for the next municipal elections and has been worked on with the participation of all the representative organisations that have wished to contribute to it, accepting from the outset the impossibility of covering all the issues of interest to the city.

The coordinating entities and their representatives who, together with the Executive Secretary, have constituted the PRO BCN Coordination Committee are as follows:

• Institut Cerdà (Carles Cabrera, Director General)
• Rethink BCN (Fèlix Riera, Director) and Tech Barcelona (Miquel Martí, CEO)
• Barcelona Oberta (Gabriel Jené, President and Nuria Paricio, Directora)
• Turisme de Barcelona (Eduard Torres, President and Gabriel Guilera, Assessor)
• Associació d’Empreses del Teatre de Catalunya, ADETCA (Isabel Vidal, Presidenta)
• Casal dels Infants (Enric Canet, Director de Relacions Ciutadanes)

The leadership of the project has been shared collectively by the Executive Secretary and the promoting/coordinating entities, which have acted exclusively as facilitators of the process of reflection of the participating entities, which are the origin of the opinions reflected in the synthesis documents.

The different proposals presented have the minimum common denominator of pursuing the same objectives, without having pretended that they coincide in the same concepts or criteria. It should be noted that the opinions provided refer specifically to each of the six areas and can only be attributed to the entities listed at the end of the section corresponding to each document.

Support for the project as a whole was provided by the Barcelona Promotion Foundation, represented by Joan Ramon Rovira and Xavier Carbonell, who were in charge of the executive secretary, and by Intermèdia, Communication Agency, represented by Toni Rodríguez, who was in charge of media relations. The following people have also collaborated with the executive secretary: Salvador Alemany, Jordi Cabré, Joaquim Coello and Mateu Hernández.