Mateu Hernández

Caitlin Morrissey

So Mateu, what is the DNA of Barcelona?

Mateu Hernández

Barcelona is like human DNA, so very complex, very diverse. And this is what gives an interesting approach to Barcelona. Many cities are single oriented. Barcelona is a highly diverse city with a huge culture. It's a more than 2000 years old city. And every civilization in the Western world has had something to do in Barcelona. And you can see it while walking in Barcelona, from even before the Greeks arrived up to the most contemporary architecture is in Barcelona. That's a sign that it is a longstanding city, which is very important. So this DNA is based on a longstanding city, a long story where every period on humans and the Western world story has had something to say in Barcelona. And that's the first thing on the DNA.

The second thing on our DNA is that it is a port city. And that gives a sense to the city, which is being an open city, open to other civilizations, open to other cultures, open to other gastronomists, open to other sensibilities. So Barcelona is an open city because it's always been a port city.

It is also in our DNA is Barcelona is the south of the north of Europe and the north of the south. So it's the city located in the Mediterranean with its southern, its Mediterranean approach. But at the same time, it's a city with order and it's a city predictable. So it's a city where everything works, and that's important as well. So being north of the south and south of the north is another important issue of our DNA.

And more close to our times, it's an industrial city. It's been an industrial city since the beginning. And that gives an entrepreneurial approach to the city. And also in our DNA, it's very important that it's a city which is not a capitalist state. It's a city that has been built by itself since the beginning. Everything you visit in Barcelona has been designed, built and financed mostly by its civil society, from the Gothic cathedrals up to the Sagrada Familia, to the Palau De la Musica or even to Casa Batllo or the parks or all those kinds of things. It's been built because it's industrial, it's civil society. Its people want it to be built. It was not the idea of a king or a president of the republic. So this private DNA, the civic approach to Barcelona, is also very important. 

Caitlin Morrissey

It's brilliant. There's so much to unpack. And so I'd love to pick up on the point you made about Barcelona being the north of the south, and the south of the north, and ask you what that means for Barcelona and Catalan identity.

Mateu Hernández

The Catalan identity of Barcelona is an important part of our DNA. Catalans are, as Barcelona is, open and people who loves – it's a nation of traders. So it's a mixture, it's important. Barcelona, as Catalonia is, has been built through different generations of different kinds of people arriving to Barcelona, even since the beginning with the Greeks or the Romans, but more recently with people from the rest of Spain massively came to Barcelona when it was needed. And more recent people from north of Africa, from South America, from other parts of Europe, from Asia, are joining the Barcelona project and mixing with the Catalan identity, which is quite open and makes things easy for people to be integrated.

When you look at something famous in Barcelona nowadays, which is gastronomy, and you see that this gastronomy, which is succeeding worldwide, is based on a mixture of identity. But together with the big cosmopolitan appeal, this Catalan cuisine, this Barcelona cuisine, has been able to add to the Catalan cuisine, which is interesting, all the appeals of the Mexican cuisine, of the Asian cuisine, of the Scandinavian cuisine, of all cuisines from all the world and to be innovative. And this would be something that expresses the mixture of the classical traditional identity with the openness of the Barcelona cosmopolitan approach.

Caitlin Morrissey

Well, in that case, that leads me into the question of how many Barcelonas are there and what differentiates them, is there more than one?

Mateu Hernández

I think that as every city, there are many identities, but what makes us unique, a city, is sharing that city. So one of the most interesting things of being Barcelonian is that being a Barcelonian is something unique, it's like being a Londoner, and that makes in a strong identity like the Catalan identity is. Being a Barcelonian is something positive, is something that everyone, from someone who arrived recently to Barcelona to someone who has been for generations in town, share the sense of being from Barcelona. And what is this sense of being from Barcelona is being a fan of the city, knowing that the city is important. It's very important knowing that we have a commitment with the city and we have to do something for the city. And together with being very critical also with how the city is always managed, and being critical is something of importance. Of course, we care about the city. So whatever you can be, you feel being a Barcelonian and you care about your city.

Greg Clark

Mateu, it's very interesting. And, you know, I'm a fan and you know that you have been my professor learning about Barcelona. But one thing is very interesting to me that for a city of its size, it has an incredible global ambition and global appetite to be relevant to the whole world, to what we say in English, to punch above its weight, to be a really significant city, even though it's moderate in its size. Where does this ambition come from?

Mateu Hernández

The ambition of being a global city comes from the reality of not being capital city. So no one is taking care of us. So we should, Barcelonians, we should take care of ourselves and we should be responsible of our future. And that makes that if the future of Barcelona is being part of a global world, then Barcelona will be fighting for being part of the global world as a project, as a city project, not as a nation project, not as a community project, as a city project. If we want to have a future as a city, we have to be a global city. No one will do that for us. So we have to do it by ourselves. That's why we are proud of our city. That's why we fight to be part of the globe. And that's why we talk about Barcelona as being something more than a city. And that is something shared also with FC Barcelona Football Club, which is always said this is something more than a club. So Barcelona, for Barcelonians, is something more than a city, it's a project we need to really perform well as citizens in the global world.

Greg Clark

And you and I have had several conversations about why you don't use the idea "more than a city" much more, because it seems to me perfect. As you know, Caitlin, "mes que un club" is the phrase of Barcelona football club, more than a club, as Mateu was saying.

Caitlin Morrissey

Mateu, I'd love to ask, have there been key leaders that have shaped Barcelona's identity or its DNA over time, or groups or institutions that stand out in your mind as having played a really strong impact on the way that it has evolved?

Mateu Hernández

So the current identity of Barcelona was built just after dictatorship and in the 80s with the Olympic project, and builder of that Olympic project was called Pasqual Maragall, who really helped the city to have a strong identity through public private cooperation and through sharing that leadership with business leaders and the cultural world as well. So that was important for Barcelona, and that period of huge transformation of the city that was less than 15 years’ time, that gave to more than one generation of Barcelonians a common story to tell. 

So we were part of a generation that opened the city to the sea, that saw big infrastructures being built and quickly in down that path from being a provincial city to become a global player, to be known as a city worldwide and to be admired, and a generation that comes from the older people in town nowadays, people in Barcelona that share that common story. And that is very important in a city showing a common story. And Barcelona for a long while shared the same story. Now, the challenge is which story are we going to share from now on? The Olympic project is over and now we have to build a new future and a new story to be told.

Greg Clark

And this debate, Mateu, about what is the story of the next chapter of Barcelona, you and I discuss this regularly, but why is there a debate? Why is there not an immediate consensus about that? And what are some of the differences in the debate?

Mateu Hernández

I think that nowadays the debate about Barcelona is mainly if the city is done or not. There's people who think that Barcelona has already done its homework and people who think that it hasn't. And I think that Barcelona still has many things to be done, huge projects to be developed first at the metropolitan scale, which is important. But second, to really become the city Barcelona deserves to become, it has the scale, the place, the location, the climate infrastructures, the people, the whatever to really become one of the best cities in the world for talent. And this should be the new project for Barcelona. But since this project is not focused into a single event or it is not focused into a single building or into a single neighbourhood, sometimes it's difficult to concentrate attention to these kinds of projects. But we are working on that.

Greg Clark

So this project is a little bit like the project of Singapore or of San Francisco or of Berlin to become a global hub of creative, capable talent and to do the things that are required to provide the job opportunities, the liveability, the connectivity, the identity to make that real.

Mateu Hernández

Exactly, so we were lucky that because of the previous phase of development of Barcelona, we were able to build important infrastructures. We do have a great airport. We do have a great port. We do have a great subway. We do have a great high speed train connecting us with the world. We do have great cable for internet in Barcelona. We do have great city planning. So we do have the assets to really do something else. And what we can do now is really be attractive for talent, a place to work from. Not a place only to work for, but a place to work from. And Barcelona could really be a place to work from to the world, because it's well connected, because it's well organised, because it has the assets, it has the infrastructures, the climate, the quality of life where talented people can develop, it's careers, it's jobs opportunities, it's creativity, it's innovation capacity or research projects.

Greg Clark

Yes, it's a very exciting project and Mateu is about to launch a film that talks about the future of Barcelona, which he has made with a group of colleagues, and it features one or two of the friends of Barcelona from around the world, including myself. 

Now, Mateu, just before we move on, can we just talk a little bit about the physical form of Barcelona? Because when you have spoken to me before, and you have to say all of this again in your answer, the mountains, the sea, the river, the topography and the geography of Barcelona is quite important in shaping the character of the city. But you've also just said something about the metropolitan area. Can you talk a little bit about the different shapes of Barcelona and what that means for the character the city has?

Mateu Hernández

Barcelona is a very complex city. First, it's one of the most dense cities worldwide. Density is a great asset in sustainability. And Barcelona is the European champion in density, in well-organised density. And this density is because its natural environment, Barcelona City Centre, is concentrated between two small rivers, a small mountain and the Mediterranean Sea. And that's where you're concentrating, in 100km2 you concentrate more than a million and a half inhabitants, which is important. But at the same time, the city has grown in many years. And the metropolitan area, that would be around 600km2. That's exactly the same size as the municipality of Madrid. So the municipality of Madrid, 600km2, the metropolitan area of Barcelona, 600km2. But that is six municipalities at the same time. And then comes the metropolitan region, which is where you commute to work, and that goes from Matador or goes to the sea coast up to the interior of Catalonia, which is a region of more than four million and a half inhabitants, really well connected. And that's the size of Barcelona. And that shapes a city which is highly dense, which is an asset for a competitive city in the world that needs sustainability as a major axis of transformation.

Greg Clark

Very good answer. Thank you. 

Caitlin Morrissey

Mateu, I'd love to ask you about world-changing inventions that are from Barcelona. And the second thing is, are there certain Barcelonian ways of doing things?

Mateu Hernández

I think that Barcelona, although it's small global size, it's been able to give to the world huge things, especially on innovation and creativity. I would say if you want to understand 20th Century art, modern art, you must come to Barcelona. Why? Because artists like Picasso, Miro, Tapies or Dali decided to create their own museums in Barcelona. Why? Because they felt that Barcelona was a catalytic moment for their careers. And the same with architecture. And you can see Gaudi as one of the masters. 

But city planning was, we can say, mostly invented in Barcelona through Eixample, which is a big neighbourhood that was created about 150 years ago, is one of the most impressive creations done in Barcelona that mostly impacted the world in terms of city planning, how cities have to be organised, especially in the modern era invented in Barcelona. And then you come to all the other things that are related to design, that are related to gastronomy. You cannot understand 21st Century gastronomy without Ferran Adrià. And that happened in Barcelona, but not only Ferran Adrià and even other champions in cuisine that have almost transformed worldwide the way we eat and what we eat. And that was also created in an environment that's open to creativity in Barcelona. 

And regarding the ways we like to do things, again, since Barcelona has never been a capital of a state, it's Barcelonians who move the city. It's not a government who moves the city. So this is one of the main assets Barcelona has had, which is the private engagement, the civic engagement with the city. And the example nowadays we do have is Barcelona Global, my organisation where more than a thousand citizens, proud citizens, from researchers to designers to cultural work to big business to small business, are committing money and committing time and committing talent and are committing contacts to make Barcelona a big and a great city. And this way of working in Barcelona with public and private cooperation has always been the engine of transformation of the city. And this is something that we should always keep in mind.

Greg Clark

Mateu, you're making a very important point, and you made it very clearly, but I suppose one thing that's interesting then is that Barcelona has two different kinds of leadership. You mentioned Ferran Adrià, you mentioned Pasqual Maragall. You mentioned other individual leaders. But you also said that leadership in Barcelona is a kind of collective activity. Public and private civic leadership has been very important. Can you just talk a little bit more about how those two things work together?

Mateu Hernández

So Barcelona is a city that has always had individualities, has always had key individual players being really attractive worldwide. So from Cerdà to Picasso, Miro, Tapies, Dali, musicians, Gaudi, and now even soccer players that the world admired. But at the same time, Barcelona has always had a collective project as a city, a project that is shared by people, by organisations and by collectives. So there's a shared approach to what the city needs to be done. And this shared approach of people getting together to make Barcelona better is due to the fact that we are not a capitalist state and that we need to collaborate in order to make things happen. If we wait for others to do what we need to be done, those things will never happen. So we understood since the beginning of Barcelona that we always have to go together, that we always have to collaborate and share efforts to make Barcelona what it is.

Greg Clark

Very good. Now, in the history of the city, there's been a number of shocks, surprises, traumas. How does Barcelona respond to a shock or a trauma? What does it do?

Mateu Hernández

Barcelona is apparently a fragile city. It's apparently fragile. So shocks and issues that affect Barcelona really impact the city. But at the same time, Barcelona has its network of citizens, of proud citizens, proud organisations, which when shock comes, they react in order to go to another state of development. We had a huge impact with the industrialization of Europe, and since Barcelona was a hugely industrial city, then Barcelona created the Olympic project. And through this Olympic project that had an impact on city planning and an impact on the infrastructure and impact of branding, really, we were able to go out of the industrial era stronger than we were. Now, with political crisis and the city's fighting to get its project back into track. And that makes people understand why organisations like Barcelona Global exist, because they are challenging together with an opportunity in the middle of the crisis, or with the covid crisis nowadays where tourism has almost disappeared from Barcelona. Well, now Barcelona is – many people are thinking and thinking autonomously and sharing those thoughts on what Barcelona should do quickly to perform better after the crisis.

Caitlin Morrissey

Mateu, I'd love to ask you about the myths that unite people in Barcelona. 

Mateu Hernández

So the myth of Barcelona in recent years has been the story about the Olympic Games. So that was a nice story and a great impact in the city. So that has been always in the mouth of people in Barcelona as a big myth, which had a real impact. This myth at the same time, is it is taking too long to disappear. So we are still living from that story that our parents were the leaders of that story. And we are still talking about that when nobody cares about that myth anymore. So new generations don't know who Cobi was, and Cobi was the mascot or the Olympic Games. But there's people in Barcelona who keep talking about Cobi, who keep talking about the Olympic Games in 1992 that were a long time ago, and new generations of entrepreneurs don't remember that Barcelona was an Olympic city at the same time, at the same situation, like I didn't remember when I was a kid that Munich had the Olympic Games. So that is a myth that is taking too long to disappear.

And there's also something as an image that Barcelona has worldwide, which is Barcelona nowadays, since it is one of the biggest tourist attractions in cities in Europe, is sometimes perceived only as a tourist destination, is perceived as a postcard, which is great being a postcard. But the challenge we do have is adding to that for a business. So being able to tell to the world that apart from being a nice city with a great beach and a great architecture and nice museums, we do have great research, great entrepreneurs, great industrial companies, great logistics, and that we are more than a postcard, that we also are a business card.

Greg Clark

I suppose the question is whether Barcelona has any secrets that we need to understand, Mateu. Is there anything that is only visible if you're a resident of the city or only visible to some people? Is there an underground or a shadow that we need to understand?

Mateu Hernández

I think that the shadow to be understood is the atmosphere of Barcelona. It's something that you cannot see, but you can live. And that's why people here, when they come to Barcelona, that's why they fall in love with Barcelona. It's an atmosphere where you can have at the same time the beach and the mountains. And that same time you can have the most cosmopolitan approach together with the most identitarian and conservative approach at the same time. So this mixture of contemporary and classic, this mixture of sea and montane, this mixture of identity and openness, this mixture of things together in a small part of the world is something that makes Barcelona quite unique. But it's difficult to see. It is only liveable.

Greg Clark

Yes, very good point. So there's a kind of natural hybridity to the city. But I wonder also if you could say a little bit about surrealism, because you mentioned Salvador Dali. Does Barcelona play a particular role in surrealist art? In a way, what you just described is a kind of surreal city where you have this and that together in the same way. Is that fair?

Mateu Hernández

Yes. Barcelona, we always say that people, Catalans have something which is having at the same time spoken in Catalan, Spain and Russia. So being very predictable, so very rational and at the same time the same person in a minute of difference, he can transform himself into a completely different, irrational someone. So this mixture of nationalism, which you can even see in the Barcelona architecture, you have huge rational buildings together with modernistic Gaudi's buildings, which are like phantoms. This is also part of the Barcelona DNA. This combination of rational together with madness. And at the same time, this rational and madness makes us as a city quite unique. And this combination of rational and madness, you can see it everywhere in the city from architecture, rational architecture, together with mad architecture. You can see it in art. You can see Picasso's rational paintings created in Barcelona, together with Miro's matte surrealistic approach. And you can see it always in the way Barcelona behaves. It can really, really be a boring northern European city in a day, and the day after it can be a city of demonstrations and a city of madness in the streets together or being really rational. And you can even see that in recent times in the political approach that Barcelona has suffered, and which is all, again, a combination of rationality together with madness.

Caitlin Morrissey

I'll now ask you the final two questions. The first one is, what does the future hold for Barcelona and how would its DNA shape that, do you think? And then I'll wrap up with a very final question after that.

Mateu Hernández

The future of Barcelona should be becoming one of the best cities for talent in the world. Talent is an asset which is extremely mobile, extremely diverse. People with talent are people who have creativity or have the capacity of research or of innovation or the capacity to invest or a big network or quite the wealthy people or being an artist or a designer. These kinds of people who are really moving the world, who are really adding value to the economy, are highly mobile and these people are seeking for places where they can really perform. And Barcelona, because of its location, because of its infrastructure, because of its size, its climate, its, DNA is, I guess, one of the best cities to be based in talent. And so Barcelona should focus its future in really becoming the city of talent.

Caitlin Morrissey

And so the final question is, if we were to have asked you the right question, what else would you have wanted to say about the DNA of Barcelona?

Mateu Hernández

That the DNA of Barcelona being a more than 2000 years old city is extremely contemporary, is extremely modern. So although this is one of the oldest cities in Europe, is extremely modern, is extremely contemporary, and this is something interesting in our DNA. It's a city always moving forward.