Transcript: Mayor de Blasio Meets With Mayor of Barcelona Xavier Trias

October 1, 2014

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Buon giorno.

[Laughter]

This is what we call throwing a curve ball – buon giorno a tutti. Buenos dias. How do you say it in Catalan?

Mayor Xavier Trias: Bon dia.

Mayor: Bon dia. Bon dia. How do you say bon dia a – ?

Mayor Trias: Bon dia a tothom. Good morning, everybody. Bon dia a tothom.

Mayor: A tothom?

Mayor Trias: A tothom.

Mayor de Blasio: Wow, that’s wonderful. Well, welcome, everyone. It is a great honor for all of us from my team and I to host Mayor Trias and the members of his administration from Barcelona. They’re an extraordinary group of leaders. And I said at the beginning that Barcelona is admired all over the world. I said whatever you’re doing, keep doing it.

[Laughter]

No, but the – the mayor has a lot to be proud of. It’s a city that is admired for innovation, for extraordinarily modern and creative use of technology, for a profound sense of social justice, a thriving economy – there’s a lot to learn from Barcelona and we look with admiration at the work you’re doing. And there’s a particular natural organic dynamic to New York City having a partnership with Barcelona. We hope we share some of the same positive attributes. I can say very clearly from our discussions, the mayor is profoundly concerned about social justice and using the tools of government to foster economic fairness.

Once again, we find ourselves having a conversation with colleagues from 3,000 miles away and finding that we have almost the same exact agenda. We talked about early childhood education, which is a great focus of ours. We talked about raising wage and benefit levels for working people. We talked about trying to make sure that we guarantee economic diversity in our cities. Obviously, we are naturally, mutually obsessed with affordable housing. And both cities have become so well liked, so popular, that part of the challenge has been that the price of housing has gone up and up in that process – and we are left with the challenge of making sure that our cities are available to all our people. And therefore we have a profound interest in fostering affordable housing.

Mayor Trias had said something I deeply appreciate – that Barcelona will leave no one behind. I’m immediately appreciative and moved by your personality, your comments, your ideas, because it’s quite clear you mean that, that you’re constantly aware of the need to offer opportunity for everyone and not ever let our cities became just for a chosen few. We also share a deep commitment to sustainability – environmental sustainability – and Barcelona’s been a leader in this area. New York City is very proud now to be the largest city in the world to have committed to the goal of 80 percent emission reduction by 2050. So we think there’s many areas that we’ll be working together in.

I will say only broadly we have a frustrating dynamic in both cities of not getting the support that we would like from national governments. This is, unfortunately, becoming common for cities all over the world. And therefore cities have to act more and more on our own, have to take matters into our hands, and make progress in the ways we can. It’s very very interesting talking to mayors around this country, talking to mayors around the world in the last week – how consistent this is as a value, as a view, as a feeling that mayors are having and they’re experiencing. But I always say, part of why we mayors act is we are the closest to the people. People are demanding action from us – and it’s our job.

So, we have a great deal of affinity and we’re going to work together in many informal ways, but we also have an important formal way we’re going to work together and we’re signing today the Memorandum of Understanding. It’s building upon the spirit of last week’s U.N. Summit, which was extraordinary – and, I think, a breakthrough moment. We know that we share the goal of creating more affordable housing and making sure it is environmentally sustainable. We know that takes great intellectual energies to figure out how to continually improve that process. We want to take the best minds and the best ideas from both our cities and combine them through a process of encouraging architects and design professionals and planners to offer their best ideas – and real live projects happening in each city. We think this creativity that will be tapped into will be decisive for both of us. And Barcelona is known as a capital of architecture and design – it’s known as a capital of innovation. You won – you well deserved – you won a C40 Climate Leadership Award – another thing we have in common.

[Laughter]

New York City was very proud to win one. You won it for your use of technology in your infrastructure development, for your use of technology to constantly find ways to reduce energy consumption, and you’ve got electronic sensors in all of the right locations to make sure that you reduce waste and increase efficiency. You deserve that award. We want to learn from you. We want to offer any of our experiences that would be helpful. And we think that this Memorandum of Understanding is an example of what cities can do to help each other, inspire each other, push each other to greater achievement. Maybe, maybe, our national governments will get the idea and learn to act more quickly and decisively – and we will show them how.

I wish I could give a few comments in Catalan. I’m sorry I have to – I’m going to learn for the next session, I’ll have my Catalan lessons – but if you don’t mind, a little bit of Spanish. I’ll just say very quickly –

[Mayor de Blasio speaks in Spanish]

With that, Mr. Mayor, it would be an honor to hear from you.

Mayor Trias: Thank you very much. Thank you.

Mayor: We welcome you.

Mayor Trias: Thank you. Thank you.

[Applause]