For those of you who haven't had the good luck to visit Cerdanyola del Vallès, it's a town of around 60,000 and forms a part of Barcelona's 'metropolitan zone'. I don't talk about it that much because not much happens here.
Cerdanyola's had a complete face lift over the last three or four years. The town hall has put a lot of effort into re-vamping the town centre and reestablishing the 'zona Sant Ramon' (where we live) as the natural heart of the town. A byproduct of this work is that property prices have shot up. Not unusual, you may think, given that we're talking about Spain (and especially Barcelona province), where prices are always on the rise. But Cerdanyola's turned out be quite the good investment.
And all this time, one party's been in power at the Ajuntament. Although the planning for today's Cerdanyola happened under Cristina Real's PSC mayorship, it's the current ICV-EUiA administration which has managed and overseen the development work. It might sound odd to be thanking the Communists for personal gain (or perhaps not, depending how you look at it!), but that's what I'm going to do when I vote in this year's council elections.
Incidentally, thebadrash.com has been quiet for a while because of my work. I hope that I'll be able to put some more time into the site.
tombcn.com - my blog posts about travel, books, food and music
...a blog by Tom Clarke in Barcelona, Catalonia, covering politics, culture and society