How has COVID-19 affected municipalism’s confederal and democratizing mission? In Spain, as elsewhere, the government’s response to the pandemic has implied a centralization of power. At the same time, municipalities are seeing their already limited resources stretched to the limit by the health and economic crisis. The politics of daily life — municipalist politics — have been recognized now as the foundation of individual and collective well-being.
The pandemic will surely have done damage to municipalism in Barcelona; in general this has not been an experience of decentralization, democratization or citizen empowerment. But what has been strengthened is the municipalist hypothesis itself: if distance makes us weaker, our strength must be rooted in togetherness.
Photo: Joe Green