In Badalona things can happen. The City Council has decided to sell a building –“El Peix”– that has no use to see if it can obtain 1.7 M€ and a private person can do something that the city may need. On the one hand, the news is positive. They have made a decision and have overcome the immobility and the agenda of analysis to the paralysis so common in Badalona in recent years.
On the other hand, there is also the well-founded fear that the competition will be deserted and that nobody wants said building. Could occur. If that were the case, the solution would be –for me– to transfer its building area to another urban plan that might need it and demolish the property, opening a street that could be seen from Calle de los Arbres and that would reach the end of the other large mystery of badalonity, which is the municipal market of Maignon. A facility closed today and without news that allows us to know when the stall holders who have been in another “provisional” space for 12 years (12!) will move.
In the case of the Maignon it is necessary to make the decision and execute it. It’s not that expensive or that complicated. Whoever wants to follow, facilities. To those who do not want to continue, recovery of the stop. And here peace and after glory. There are no shortcuts, and what I say is known by everyone who should know. It remains, as in the case of “El Peix”, to decide. The positive thing is to think that a government that realizes that it can make decisions, and that by holding its own the people recognizes them, can continue to make a profit.
La otra cosa que podría pasar en Badalona es que saliera bien la operación de dotar de usos a la CACI, la famosa fábrica que toca el Puerto y que ha pasado por varias ideas sin que ninguna pudiera realizarse, ahora por culpa de uno, ahora por culpa del otro. O de ambos. Sea como fuere, se ha superado la última de las ideas –era más que eso–, que fue la apuesta que hizo Restarting Badalona por llevar a IREC, el Instituto de Investigación de la Energía. Un centro que debía trasladarse al campus de la UPC de Sant Adrià de Besòs, pero que en un momento coyuntural no tenía el convencimiento ni el dinero para hacerlo. Si en ese momento el Ayuntamiento hubiese hecho algo más de lo que hizo, quizás lo habríamos salido. No es una crítica, porque hizo mucho. Pero este artículo, y ahora entro en serio en lo que quiero transmitir, va de lo que para mí significa hacer algo más. Y de lecciones aprendidas. Y que el diablo, cuando es viejo, sabe más por experiencia que por consejo.The other thing that could happen in Badalona is that the operation of equipping the CACI, the famous factory that touches the Port and that has gone through several ideas without any of them being able to be carried out, goes well, now because of one, now because of the other’s fault. Or of both. Be that as it may, the last of the ideas has been overcome –it was more than that–, which was the commitment made by Restarting Badalona to bring IREC, the Energy Research Institute. A center that had to move to the UPC campus in Sant Adrià de Besòs, but that at a certain moment did not have the conviction or the money to do so. If at that time the City Council had done something more than it did, perhaps we would have left it. It is not a criticism, because he did a lot. But this article, and now I am getting serious about what I want to convey, is about what it means to me to do something else. And of lessons learned. And that the devil, when he is old, knows more from experience than advice.La otra cosa que podría pasar en Badalona es que saliera bien la operación de dotar de usos a la CACI, la famosa fábrica que toca el Puerto y que ha pasado por varias ideas sin que ninguna pudiera realizarse, ahora por culpa de uno, ahora por culpa del otro. O de ambos. Sea como fuere, se ha superado la última de las ideas –era más que eso–, que fue la apuesta que hizo Restarting Badalona por llevar a IREC, el Instituto de Investigación de la Energía. Un centro que debía trasladarse al campus de la UPC de Sant Adrià de Besòs, pero que en un momento coyuntural no tenía el convencimiento ni el dinero para hacerlo. Si en ese momento el Ayuntamiento hubiese hecho algo más de lo que hizo, quizás lo habríamos salido. No es una crítica, porque hizo mucho. Pero este artículo, y ahora entro en serio en lo que quiero transmitir, va de lo que para mí significa hacer algo más. Y de lecciones aprendidas. Y que el diablo, cuando es viejo, sabe más por experiencia que por consejo.
If we want to make a commitment to have a technological center of international reference for industry 4.0, we do what we have to do, that in the end the CACI is our home
Something else is also a decision in relation to this project. The CIM Foundation, also from the UPC, could attend the CACI. The government team and the first deputy mayor push to make it possible. It is quite probable that this possibility would not have arisen if IREC had not been tried beforehand. And for this reason, if I may say so, the fact that Restarting made the proposal and those contacts could have been, and is, the seed of the solution that is finally implemented. If you don’t move, nothing ever happens. And it’s only when you move that things happen. The CIM Foundation could turn the CACI into a reference center for advanced, additive and 3D manufacturing, with diverse industrial applications and, why not, with synergies with hospital centers such as our Can Ruti. This is the project. A good project.
What needs to happen to make it possible? What is something else that the City Council can do to ensure this bet? So let’s talk about money. In the same way that Barcelona has put up money to run the America’s Sailing Cup, which can be many seconds how and who looks at it, with the confidence that the activity generated by the competition will mean a return on this investment, we, the city, we must know that if we want things to happen, we will have to make bets to make them possible.
With IREC, the City Council provided –if I remember correctly– half of the budget for the works and hoped that whoever came would provide the other half. It is the thought of someone who settles into a romantic idea that there will be slaps to come to the CACI and that whoever wants to pay. Error. It has already been seen that there will be no slaps. And that thought lengthens and makes things complicated. And it ends up frustrating. The same thing happened with the UB, and with the Comic. If we want to make a commitment to have a technological center of international reference for industry 4.0, we do what we have to do, that in the end the CACI is our home.
Let’s allocate all the money to fit it out, let’s quickly sign with the UPC and not get involved in looking for items from the rest of the administrations, which must do other things in Badalona that, moreover, are their responsibility. Administrative and legal, it is complicated to invest in someone else’s house. The CACI is from Badalona, and 5 million euros for running a technology center is a price that we can perfectly pay for keeping the headquarters.
This is not the time to let another opportunity pass while in the municipal treasury the money is counted in the hundreds (of millions). It is time to play hard and bring a project with added value to the city. And this one is.
Ferran Falcó, president the Restarting Badalona association
