Guided Democracy

One of Barcelona's grand avenues is looking a bit shabby and smelling a bit nasty. Avinguda Diagonal, choked by up to eight lanes of traffic, needs a make-over, and the mayor and council have decided to submit the matter to citizens in a non-binding referendum. In a referendum process, as in any electoral process, the state is supposed to be neutral. The state handles logistics; parties and civil society campaign, and citizens vote. Not so in Barcelona: we can vote three ways, but public money is being spent to publicise only two of the options, while the third goes unmentioned or is hushed up. A flashy website (http://www.bcn.cat/diagonal/) does its flash for Option A and Option B; city hall's monthly mass-mailed glosses them; billboards on subway platforms illustrate them. Where is Option C?

City Hall is campaigning, not informing.

The campaign has a Youtube channel (http://www.youtube.com/ideadiagonal#p/a), a Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/IdeaDiagonal), and a blog (http://ideadiagonal.wordpress.com/). The campaign has an official documentary (http://www.bcn.cat/diagonal/46-passat-present-i-futur.html), available for viewing on the self-described "official page of the street". The documentary lacks proper production credits. Who paid for it? Who produced it? I couldn't say. The production values match the quality of the prose on the campaign's web page: they are what you'd expect, derivative, hackneyed, and not very good. Option C must be lost on the editing room floor. Perhaps we'll see it in the director's cut, after we've voted.