Paris (France), (EFE) .
“I give all my support to Pedro Sánchez, he has to win, not only for Spain, there could not be such a big setback,” said the socialist Hidalgo in a joint statement together with the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, also a socialist.
“Spain has already known dictatorship, it has already known fascism and it is a democratic country, it cannot go backwards with a vote for the extreme right and a right that runs after the extreme right”, added the mayoress of the French capital.
“You cannot have a regression, as many surveys say,” Hidalgo insisted.
Collboni, who made his first international trip in Paris today after taking office, defended that in the face of the “rise of the extreme right” in Europe, the “big European cities” are still places “where freedoms, tolerance and democratic values continue to be majority”.
He also thanked Hidalgo for the invitation to visit Paris on July 14, the day France celebrates its national holiday, and on which he has witnessed the traditional military parade from a guest rostrum.
Meeting of both mayors
Both mayors later held a meeting at the Paris City Hall, in which they agreed to renew the cooperation agreement signed in 2016 by Hidalgo and the previous Barcelona councilor, Ada Colau.
“A new life is needed for this agreement and to work together, hand in hand, because we are in very difficult times for human history and for the history of Europe,” said the mayoress of Paris.
Collboni has affirmed that housing is one of the great challenges facing Barcelona at the moment.
“Young people and the working middle class are being expelled from our cities,” he denounced, for which he considers that “legal measures are needed to promote the construction of subsidized housing.”
Paris: a model that “is giving positive results”
In this sense, he praised the Paris model, which “is giving positive results”, since “it generates a pool of resources to make social housing in the center of the city and also allows private investment to flow.”
The Barcelona mayor has also stressed the importance of the fight against climate change, a field in which Paris, he said, “is an example of leadership at an international level.”
He has also defended his plan to promote green inside the blocks of Barcelona’s Eixample, to increase vegetation and mitigate the effects of climate change.
In the meeting between the two leaders, there was also talk of the Olympic Games next year in Paris.
“I relied a lot on (the Olympic Games in) Barcelona, they represented a tremendous transformation of the city. It has been an example for us,” Hidalgo said.