Local policies to promote care communities: the case of VilaVeïna

Abstract

The aim of the article is to analysis the VilaVeïna project promoted by the Barcelona City Council to develop neighbourhood care communities. Specifically, the manuscript analyses to what extent VilaVeïna fits into the proposals for the transformation of public care policies and services from the perspective of the commons. On the one hand, it analyses the initial conceptualisation of the community in the design of VilaVeïna and its materialisation in the practices involved in its implementation. On the other hand, this analysis puts in dialogue the elements that characterise the project within the framework of the community with the conceptual proposal of the commons (Zuriña, 2020; Blanco et al., 2017). To reach these objectives, we present a case study based on interviews with political and technical profiles, as well as interviews and focus groups with users of the service. The results show up the progress made by this public policy in building communities of care and the limitations in achieving a radically communitarian resource defined from the perspective of the commons.