The cleanliness and safety are two of the most important challenges that any mayor must face. In Barcelona, From Narcís Serra to Ada Colau, and leaving aside the issue of criminality, all the democratic governments have had problems with street washdown or with waste collection. And each stage has had its campaign, its protagonists, its slogans. Perhaps the one that arouses the most smiles is the one led in 1981 by the comic actress Mary Sanpereloved by all and hated by no one. Beside Núria Feliu and Enric Majó, participated in a popular sweep on the Rambla. Broom at the ready, they left Miró’s mosaic like the jets of gold. sympathetic gesticulation in an emergency. Infallible.
Things have changed a lot since that salutary municipal campaign. Garbage was taken to Garraf landfill or to the Besòs incinerator, the containers had not yet been deployed and recycling was then a word as little used as vegan or ‘influencer’. In October 1980, during the presentation of the municipal campaign ‘cleaning operation‘, to which Santpere joined in his esteemed Rambla (his other passion was Paral·lel), Mayor Serra said the following: “Having technical means, what will make Barcelona clean will be the level of civic awareness of its citizens”. It was better, because the oven for buns was not there, that is to say, that the municipal coffers passed through critical moments.
Three month sweep
Appealing to the neighbor has been a constant in these four decades. Even then, as is the case now, there was a feeling that the city he had, to put it mildly, a very improvable aspect. In that case, because it was dragging a endemic sloppiness in terms of cleaning, in terms of personnel and in terms of machinery. That first sweep lasted only three months, with a government in which they were Pasqual Maragall, Mercè Sala, Josep Miquel Abad and Enric Truñó, and without any council with the nickname of ‘cleaning’ or ‘environment’ but a commissioner in charge of the matter.
The streets were cleaned, but trees were also planted, more than 700 abandoned vehicles were removed from public roads, they deratized 264 lots and 65 schools, 913 traffic signs were repaired and fined more than 2,000 people due to uncivic attitudes linked to caring for the city. It is often said today and was already practiced in 1981: dirt is a perception that transcends the appearance of the floor and also affects the care of the vegetation and the maintenance of urban furniture. A set of elements that, already in Maragall’s time, began to be defined as “cityscape“, where the vertical public space also played a very important role, that is, the facades of the buildings.
Saw like Reagan
But before moving on to the Olympic mayor, a last anecdote about Serra which will come in handy to give alternatives to those who, in a heated debate, use ronald reagan when it comes to solving public service strikes. In August 1981, the US president had to face a strike of air traffic controllers. He got like in his Cowboy movies and gave them a period of 48 hours to redirect the planes. They did not comply and fired 11,000 workers without batting an eyelid. Seven months earlier, on this side of the Atlantic, in February 1981, a cleaning workers strike turned Barcelona into a small Saigon of rubbish. Serra, seeing that the labor conflict was not advancing and the streets smelled of devils, appropriated trucks and collection machines of waste that were owned by the concession companies and put the personnel of public works and parks and gardens to collect shit. Unlike Reagan, however, he didn’t fire anyone. What a dinner that was never given to comment on those moments, despite the fact that they coincided in Washington in 1984 when Serra was already Defense Minister.
If Serra had his ‘cleaning operation’ with Mary Santpere, Maragall promoted his ‘Barcelona, pose beautiful‘ beside Coby and Petra. It was December 11, 1985, and that campaign added the facade improvement and the reform of buildings, so that the city was presentable on the outside and also on the inside. The first real estate to be covered were a farm in the Plaza del Pi and the Hotel Ritz. They were followed by La Pedrera and the Garriga Nogués house (work of Enric Sagnier). On the canvas, from the moment that Juan Antonio Samaranch gave the Games to the Catalan capital (October 17, 1986), the mascots of ’92 began to appear, and later the woman brushstroke by designer Enric Satué, whose eyes were balconies and whose mouth was the shrimp of marshal sita in the wasted Moll de la Fusta. Until 1992 they had carried out 5,181 performances in heritage (churches, fountains, monuments…, everything, with public and private financing) and rehabilitated 4,571 facades. At the end of the campaign, Maragall closed his speech thus: “The best force there is, the most important, the unbeatable, is the complicity. When there is complicity in a city, all things are possible and Barcelona has shown it and will continue to do so”.
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In the mid-1980s, the cleaning staff consisted of 2,300 people, almost half what it is now. They began to install ‘pipicans’ and containers (there were just over 8,000 and today there are about 26,000) were gaining ground. ‘Barcelona, more than mai‘, read the advertisement. From there he went, in 1996, to the ‘Barcelona Net’ and since then little or nothing is remembered, because that desire for teamwork has been lost, of the cleaning campaigns, beyond the known fact that it is the most important economic item of the city council. Cleaning continues to be, and in recent years increasingly, one of the main concerns of citizens. Perhaps a hit is missing…Who would be the ideal Mary Santpere for 2022?
Reference-www.elperiodico.com