Valencia Congress Centre by Foster and Partners
In Valencia, people refer surprisingly often to the 15th century. Partly because of the splendid gothic buildings that date from that period - the cathedral, of course, but also the wonderful medieval commodities exchange, La Lonja, now an official world heritage site - but mostly because, in those days, Valencia was the largest and most powerful city in Spain. The inhabitants and their leaders have never forgotten that. There's precious little chance, half a millennium later, of overhauling the might of Madrid or nearby Barcelona, but Valencia, like Seville and Bilbao, is fighting back by other means.
Like so many rapidly-revitalising European cities, Valencia has a powerful and charismatic mayor driving its revival. Senora Rita Barbera, a forceful woman in late middle age who comes from something of a tradition of female mayors in the city, puts it very simply. "I want Valencia to be a leading city - leading in culture and in quality of life," she says from her vast office in the converted convent of the city hall overlooking the main square. "I want it to be a place with spirit and personality."
To an outsider, the spirit and personality are clearly already there: this is a city that, although increasingly on the tourist trail, remains true to its trading origins. The central market hall, in that regional variant of Art Nouveau familiar from Barcelona, is an astonishingly active palace of commerce. Fruit-growing, fishing, ceramics and silk-making remain key industries in the region. Yet it was in danger, a few years back, of becoming something of a backwater. Other Spanish cities had emerged into the limelight - Barcelona has had the Olympics, Seville an Expo, Bilbao its Guggenheim and metro and new opera house, Madrid the continuing financial drip-feed that goes with power. Valencia had none of these spurs to regeneration, but it does have the seemingly tireless Senora Barbera, now well into her second term of office.
Following up on a start made in 1987 by her predecessors in a Socialist administration - city-making is always a political imperative in the regional centres of Europe, regardless of party - she is busy forging a new Valencia that will be far more open to the rest of Spain and Europe. Her office is full of plans of the great new projects under way. She wanted - and, unusually, did not succeed - in getting her city nominated as European City of Culture in 2001. But she is proceeding as if she had won that accolade anyway. Outside, the cranes and diggers all over the city bear witness to her labours.
