David Quirós is mayor of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat since last summer and has the complicated challenge of replacing Núria Marín, also of the PSC, who spent 16 years in front of the second city of Catalonia. Quirós is from the Pubilla Cases neighborhood, son of a SEAT worker, a diploma in labor relations, married and has an 18 -year -old daughter and a 13th son. until 2016. He has been in office for seven months and has an obsession to transform the city.
Ask: How have you ended up being the mayor?
Answer: My family is left -wing, workers, migrants … You start like this and you end up mayor of your city.
P: How do you differ from Nuria Marín?
R: I like being with people in the normality of their day to day. I live with your feet on the floor.
P: What decisions will you make to transform L’Hospitlet?
R: It has already been announced that the lands that play with L’Hospitalet. This will be our chance. We will create a great boulevard between the diagonal and the Gran Vía. It will connect the new clinic, with the FIRA and the Bellvitge Hospital.
P: Between the diagonal and Gran Vía there are many obstacles.
R: The Minister of Transportation, Oscar Puente, will soon make the informative study that will allow building a railway exchanger in the La Torrassa neighborhood just on that axis. This exchanger will decongest Sants and respond to connectivity in the metropolitan area. There are 30 hectares of roads crossing Hospitalet.
P: They have been announcing the burial of the train tracks for decades. Will they do it now?
R: It is time to finish off.
P: Even so, to build that great boulevard they not only hinder the roads.
R: We plan, together with the Generalitat, a great intervention in the Samontà area. There, in just two square kilometers five neighborhoods are distributed: the plans, Florida, Pubilla Cases, Collblanc and Torrassa. 140,000 people live and 87% do so in homes of more than a century, built without urban planning. 7,000 young people live who neither study nor work. There are 37% child poverty … We have to intervene.
P: As?
R: From urban planning. Generating more spaces and more decent housing. You have to sponge the area, generate green spaces, equipment …
P: And what does the clinic and boulevard have to do to Gran Vía?
R: The clinic is right on the border with the Samontà next to the land of Can Rigal. From the planning of the Clinic we have to rethink the Urban Plan of Can Rigal where we will build 1,200 homes.
P: Do I understand what you want to tear down buildings and comply with neighbors?
R: Yes. Today in the Samontà area there are buildings at risk. Nothing is irresponsible and means putting lives in danger. A year ago there were three deaths in the collapse of an apartment in Badalona and then people evacuated in Esplugues and Santa Coloma. That is the consequence of how decades was built in the metropolitan area. We have to know what is the reality of each building and the people who live there and make decisions.
P: Making decisions is always the most difficult, especially if there are demolition.
R: The City Council will not demolish a farm if there is no housing alternative. Even so, it would be irresponsible not to do anything and then regret misfortunes.
P: ¿A How many neighbors will these demolition affect? Dozens, hundreds, thousands?
R: It is soon to know. To have real knowledge you have to study farm to farm and know what conditions it is under. Now is the time to refine.
P: Other problems such as access housing will follow in the rest of the city
R: We don’t have much ground, so we must rehabilitate. In L’Hospitalet there is also a lot of empty housing because many neighbors who have retired, have returned to their towns of origin and resist taking their floors to the rental market. If we convince them to rent there will be more offer.
P: Another problem of L’Hospitalet is security.
R: The new Minister of Interior, Núria Parlon, has been mayor and is aware of our needs. Too bad that has encountered a very obsolete Mossos organization in terms of territory planning.
P: Obsolete?
R: L’Hospitalet has 280,000 inhabitants and needs to have intervention, transport, investigation police units … We don’t have because the central police station of the South Metropolitan Region is in Sant Feliu. In L’Hospitalet the FIRA converges with five million congressmen a year, it affects everything that happens in the Camp Nou, we have line 9 from the airport … We should have more resources from Mossos.
P: There are also many complaints about the lack of schools
R: We have a educational system tensioning for the lack of investment and planning. The Generalitat, for many years, has not treated our young people.
P: Put me examples
R: In Samontà all public primary centers are of maximum complexity and in the rest of the city all are of high complexity. We have 2,000 students in living registration during the course. The courses begin with a ratio of 22 students per class and end 28. Most of these students come from outside and have idiomatic needs. There are centers with 120 children in the reception classroom. Something is failing. Our students must have the same opportunities as the rest.
P: Is the rest of Barcelona’s problems spread ah l’Hospitlet?
R: Making border with Barcelona is an opportunity. Mobility, housing, security … should have a common supramunicipal response. The mayors not only of Barcelona and L’Hospitalet, but of Esplugues, Cornellà, El Prat, Santa Coloma, Sant Adrià … we must be coordinated.
P: Its predecessor did not always get along with the former mayor Colau, now that the PSC governs in both cities, has changed the treatment with the mayor of Barcelona?
R: Collboni and I have a fluid and collaborative relationship. Jaume has metropolitan sensitivity.
P: Collboni will prohibit in 2028 the tourist floors and you?
R: We have a moratorium, which we approve in September, to think how we address this matter. We do not have the same problem as Barcelona but we cannot live apart. There are only 512 tourist floors licenses.
P: Do Hospitalet neighbors still consider second?
R: Those of Hospi We have a special sensitivity and pride. If we manage to improve public space, improve security perception, bet on education and transform the city … we will get our pride again.
P: How would you like to remind you as mayor?
R: The goal is for citizens to validate the bet we are doing to transform the city. If that works, in 2027 we want to recover the absolute majority.
