The former director of the CCCB speaks of the virtues and perils of public space and, more specifically, about political public space, which is frequently corporatized.

Shared Spaces recorded a conversation with Josep Ramoneda in March 2013, when this journalist, philosopher and writer visited the Centre of Contemporary Culture of Barcelona (CCCB) to give a lecture titled “Freedom”, as part of the “In Common” series. Ramoneda believes that “the defence of public space is basic in an increasingly urban world”. He warns that “although public space is, by definition, a shared space, a space that is common to everyone, there are more and more attempts to turn it into occupied, privatised, restricted and colonised territory”. Finally, he sustains that the importance of public space lies in the fact that “it makes contact between different kinds of people possible, and this is a basic principle of the heterogeneous, complex city”.