At the presentation, Jaume Collboni highlighted the fact that Clos and Trias were two key figures in the construction of the Catalan healthcare model. They may have come from different political sides, but they agreed at a historical point that was extremely important for Catalonia. Collboni recalled that one of the first Diàlegs de Barcelona was on the now-famous stroll between the then-mayor Pasqual Maragall and his Culture councillor, Maria Aurèlia Capmany. ‘A horizon that the city has reached and gone beyond started from that dialogue’.

Joan Clos and Xavier Trias talked about the transformations in the healthcare model, beginning with the introduction of family medicine and the creation of primary care teams in the late 1970s. ‘Ten years earlier, what had dominated was the “iguala”, which was like a monthly subscription to the family doctor’, Clos recalled. ‘Getting rid of the “iguala” was no easy feat. Now, in retrospect, I think it was a good idea’, Trias commented.

Barcelona’s custom-made healthcare model was launched because the city, unlike Madrid, had a unique feature: social security hospitals were only one part of its system. Of the major hospitals, Vall d’Hebrón and Bellvitge were part of social security, but the Hospital Clínic was a provincial and university teaching hospital, and Sant Pau was owned by the City Council and the cathedral chapterhouse. Barcelona also had municipal hospitals, like the Hospitals del Mar, de l’Esperança, de Pere Camps and the psychiatric hospital. ‘Almost half the hospitals were not affiliated with social security’, Clos, the ex-mayor, recalled. ‘When healthcare competences were transferred to the Government of Catalonia in 1981, there were two approaches: either grow the Catalan Health Institute (ICS) or organise all of that’, said Trias, ‘and fortunately the Doctors’ Association, the Nurses’ Association and many doctors were also leaning in that direction.

A new era which will also be captured in a book

This first conversation of the Diàlegs de Barcelona will also be turned into a small book, as in the previous editions. Maravillas Rojo, president of the Consell de Cent Association, an organisation made up of more than one hundred former Barcelona City Council councillors and the driving force behind these new dialogues, explained that a unanimous decision was taken to revive this publishing project in conjunction with the Editorial Services Department. And like this first conversation, future dialogues will also address some past political decision whose impact is still felt today.