Mostar’s new architect

Date: 04/04/1996

SEVENTEEN years ago, Ricard Pérez Casado brought a small revolution to Valencia. The long, dark era of General Franco's dictatorship had ended and a new generation of Socialist politicians swept into city halls all over Spain after the country's first democratic elections.

Henrique Tierno Galvan in Madrid, Pasqual Maragall in Barcelona, Francisco Vazquez in La Coruña and Pérez Casado in Valencia were the biggest drops in the ocean that engulfed even small towns.

Their mission was to bring the city administration under the control of the people, creating for the first time the notions of municipal services and of cities looking after their residents' needs.

“The new wave of mayors completely changed the relation of citizens to their cities,” said an expert on Spanish affairs. “It had a major impact in Spain.”

Pérez Casado faced a huge job in Valencia, Spain's third largest city and an industrial centre with sprawling slums, but his experience as an architecture teacher and urban engineer helped him confront the task. Eight years after he left the mayor's office, he is still remembered in glowing terms.

The other remarkable innovation introduced by the mayors of Valencia and its sister cities was the concept of 'unity government'. Despite the Socialists' crushing victories over their opponents in electoral races from 1979 onwards, they were careful to include conservatives and other political parties in their municipal administrations.

Bringing Spain's cities out of the feudal age was so important, they felt, that politicians of all persuasions should be involved. Delicate consensus became an art under their guidance.

It is that experience which makes member states believe that Pérez Casado can handle the job of administrator for the EU-run city of Mostar. There, he must bring Bosnian Croats and Muslims together, helping them to create a new environment in which they will share responsibility for the well-being and security of residents and where both sides feel the city is theirs.

But modernising a city is easier than rebuilding it, and bringing opposing political parties together to oversee municipal services is a far simpler matter than getting sworn blood enemies to share a territory that each side would like for its own.

Pérez Casado recognises the challenge and is starting to feel the pressure. The man chosen for this 'mission impossible' has aimed a broad smile at the cameras pursuing him recently and played down the enormity of his task by saying his predecessor has dealt with the worst of it. But, between brave comments to the press, he has admitted: “I haven't slept very well recently.”

Outgoing Mostar administrator Hans Koschnick may be sleeping more soundly now that a replacement is on the way, but he must have had more than a few nightmares over the past few months.

In January, angry Croats attacked Koschnick's house and ambushed his car, pounding on it while the beleaguered EU envoy sat helpless inside.

When Koschnick announced in February that he would resign as soon as he could be replaced, EU officials cast their eyes towards Sarajevo, looking at colleagues there who were already embroiled in the tangle, and whose experience in Bosnia might have prepared them for a job they knew would be physically as well as mentally draining.

However, Koschnick's car-rattling experience helped convince the first candidate to replace him that he did not want the job. Former Spanish Defence Minister Julián Garcia Vargas was the obvious choice, due to his extensive experience in Bosnia, and when he declared he was not interested, he was more or less pressured into finding someone else.

He and Maragall, Barcelona's mayor and president of the EU's Committee of the Regions, supported Pérez Casado's candidacy and his star rose when Italian Foreign Minister Susanna Agnelli said, during an informal meeting with her EU counterparts in Palermo last month, that she and her colleagues hoped to find someone with mayoral experience.

“He will substitute lack of knowledge of the region with strong enthusiasm,” said a Spanish diplomat, dismissing any suggestion that the lack of international experience on Pérez Casado's résumé might be a handicap. Those who know him say he is not only willing but eager for this challenge, and that he has the requisite strength of character.

The Valencian has shown he can stand up to authority if he believes it is wrong. His resignation from city hall in 1988 over an administrative disagreement with the region's powerful establishment is still cited as a measure of his strength and determination. The Socialist party was so strong at that time that to be outside it was effectively to be isolated. “The fact that he rejected a decision of the Socialist government tells us he is an independent thinker,” said one observer.

Even when the politician became a businessman, Pérez Casado continued to work in areas which had much in common with his mayoral pursuits, focusing on the services sector and urbanisation and environment projects.

As a member of the board of directors of one of Spain's biggest banking consortia, the Valencia-based Bancaixa, during the last few years he has remained active in European organisations of municipalities and cultural activities promoting the Mediterranean region.

Pérez Casado studied politics and sociology in Madrid before taking up economics in Valencia and at the Mediterranean University in Aix-en-Provence. He then returned to Valencia to teach economics and urbanism, subjects on which he has written extensively.

The Aix graduate speaks French, but - and this will be a severe drawback in Mostar - no English. To counter this problem, he has asked an English-speaking El Pais correspondent who is familiar with Bosnia to accompany him as his mouthpiece.

Pérez Casado has also demonstrated an interest in bringing cultures together. As Valencia's mayor, he worked to arrange reunions of writers from countries bordering the Mediterranean and breathed new life into the Mediterranean Film Festival.

Furthermore, he arranged a treaty between the European Council of Municipalities and Regions and the Organisation of Arab Cities. That pact served as the basis for Euro-Arab city reunions held in Marrakesh in 1988 and in Valencia in 1994.

Pérez Casado hopes that experience will help him to be a convincing mediator between Croats and Muslims. Koschnick, who tried to bring the two together in a joint police force and other projects, was constantly beleaguered by antagonism. His resignation was hastened when EU governments, giving in to Croatian pressure, overrode his plan to delineate Mostar's central zone - the one destined to be jointly administered by Croats and Muslims - for the purposes of forthcoming elections.

Still, with the war over (at least for now), the Dayton peace accord signed and Mostar's election map drawn and agreed upon by the parties concerned, the major obstacles have been overcome.

But many challenges still face the Valencian. Elections in Mostar will be closely watched as an indication of the chances of success for peaceful cooperation between former enemies in the rest of Bosnia.

Pérez Casado has already hinted at his game plan and his strategy is a simple one: “to talk more with the people”. The mayor universally described as an affable, hard-working man claims to be undaunted by Mostar's multi-ethnicity, accustomed as he is to the rich cultural tapestry of Moorish, Jewish, Gypsy and Catholic south eastern Spain.

He is also confident that his experience as a mayor will help in his new task.

“Administering is the easiest part,” Pérez Casado says. “The most complicated part is tending to the people.”

Among his worries now are whether the NATO peacekeeping force's mandate, and even his own, will be sufficient to assure peace in Bosnia.

Pérez Casado admits that he has not yet worked out how he will try to translate the peace accord into normal, daily life. One way to help restore normality, he has said, is to bring employment to Mostar. “People working are apt to be less violent,” he says.

As soon as EU governments agree on how to fund Pérez Casado's mission, which should happen in the next few days, the new administrator can pack his bags.

His tenure is, in theory, limited to this year. Member states have said they will extend EU administration of the city, originally scheduled to end in July, to the end of December in a bid to ensure that cooperative, democratic institutions are firmly established. But some officials have privately expressed doubts whether all that can be accomplished in 1996.

Just how quickly Pérez Casado settles into his new job could be a decisive factor.