Barcelona’s Municipal Policies since 15-M
The notion of the speed of time could not be more evident than in the fact that today, when writing this text, the historic date of May 15th 2011, a moment when the anti-austerity protests and occupations of public space opened a new horizon of political action known in Spain as the historic »15-M«, is turning fourteen. These fourteen years that embody previously unimaginable paradigm shifts and incredibly rapid transformations in the Catalan metropolis of Barcelona. They have also had a peculiar effect on our (political) life, in terms of the way speed, density, rhythm and interruptions in the passing of time impact us.
Kathrin Golda-Pongratz (KGP) has been engaged in the city’s programmes and urban interventions of democratic memory since the creation of the city’s Institut dels Passats Presents and a curator and consultant under Barcelona en Comú's council of Democratic Memory.
Xavi Matilla Ayala (XMA) became chief architect of Ada Colau’s second mandate in 2019 and was, until 2023, a key agent of public space interventions and the most recent implementation of the Superilla and Green-Axis strategies.
Jere Kuzmanić (JK) is a doctoral student researching the anarchist strain of urbanism and an activist in the Pla Popular de Barris de Muntanya, which tries to defend a self-built neighbourhood from pending eviction and gentrification.