Barcelona's New Mayor Aims To Put Citizens Ahead Of Tourists

Ada Colau, Barcelona's new mayor, vows to fight inequality by sending tourists packing.

- Stephen Faris

In 2007, Ada Colau put on a black leotard, a yellow cape, and a Zorro mask and gate-crashed a campaign rally in Barcelona. For two and a half minutes, Colau commandeered cameras, holding up a cardboard sign—“Housing Out of the Market, Like Education and Health”—while she delivered a speech on irresponsible development. “We don’t want to hear that the solution is to build more,” Colau told the crowd gathered in the small city square. “We have devastated our territory more than enough. There are a lot of houses. What we need is that these houses fulfill their social role.” When she was done, she dashed between a pair of parked cars and sprinted down the street.

She didn’t know it then, but her appearance as a superhero was one of the first steps on a path to city hall. In June she was elected mayor of Barcelona, with the support of a coalition of leftist political parties. She campaigned on fighting inequality.

The Spanish economy in 2007 was afloat on an enormous housing bubble, and real estate was rapidly becoming unaffordable. She had launched a prescient protest. “The government was making a show of success: ‘The Spanish Miracle,’ ” says Colau, 41. She’s wearing a long, casual cardigan sweater and sitting at a small conference table in a corner of her office. “But the people were already suffering, because the prices of houses were very high.” Donning the mask and cape—and videotaping the stunt— was a way to call attention to an issue she felt none of the candidates for mayor were appropriately addressing. “In a media culture like ours, you have to find ways to be seen and heard,” she says. “It worked well. The message was, ‘You have to be a superhero to survive in this city.’ ”