Banishing once and for all the practice of the blanket top from the streets and squares of Barcelona is one of the priorities of Mayor Jaume Collboni’s government for the rest of the mandate. And the long-awaited reform of the city’s civics ordinance constitutes, in his opinion, a fundamental step. The municipal government announced yesterday that it hopes the new text will enter into force at the end of next year.
Albert Batlle, deputy mayor for Security, presented to the opposition groups the ways in which the executive hopes to update a rule aimed at guaranteeing coexistence that dates back to 2006. Everyone agrees that this text requires an update . It is a pending issue for a long time. But the consensus surrounding the treatment that the new ordinance must give to maintenance workers is not so clear.
The path of this long-awaited reform will be much more confusing than Batlle implied. The determination with which the socialist government wants to stop some endemic phenomena that in the eyes of many people harm the public space, mainly that of unauthorized street vendors, may encounter many obstacles in the Town Hall meeting room.
For months, the Urban Guard has redoubled the pressure on maintenance workers. Alternative movements call this campaign racist. They say they treat people who are just trying to make a living as criminals, a speech that has always found more or less resonance among commoners and republicans. And lately these sellers are moving faster than ever, in ever smaller groups, from one place to another, on the metro, from Casa Batlló to Barceloneta, to sell a pair of sneakers and play the two before for the municipal police to arrive. That is why for some time now it is so easy to find them with their blankets closed at the stations in Plaça Catalunya, Passeig de Gràcia, Barceloneta…
The political groups agree that the City Council must find a way to collect fines from drunken tourists who happily urinate in the streets. Another much more difficult issue is the treatment that the Consistory gives to maintenance workers and other collectives in complicated situations. The criminalization of poverty has been for years one of the most controversial aspects of the current civics ordinance.
The deputy mayor hopes to have a broad political and neighborhood consensus soon, that the proposal to modify the rule will be approved by the governing commission in May, thus starting a process that should end with the final approval of the norm in November. In the meantime, the City Council will set up a participatory process open to entities and residents.
In addition, this reform comes at a very complicated political moment. As the tough negotiations around the tax ordinances and the next budgets showed, the opposition groups are not ready to make things easy for the socialists.
Especially BComú and Junts are determined to take on government responsibilities, and their support for the municipal government is getting more expensive every day. Both want their electoral programs to determine the action of the City Council. And the ERC councilors show no intention of being part of a government led by the PSC, but neither of giving their support for free. In fact, they study to exercise a very tough opposition, more and more every day. ERC is committed to reforming the civics ordinance. It was proposed by the presidential commission in September. But it remains to be seen whether on the same terms as the municipal government. The Republicans have already shelved the collaborative ways of the previous mandate.
Mayor Collboni would really like to continue governing alone, and agree with one or the other depending on the circumstances. Feel comfortable with variable geometry. But the pressure from the left and the right grew so much in the last few weeks that, already in the previous plenum, faced with the possibility of having to extend the first budgets, Collboni opened the door to agree on the governance of the Consistory. These talks have not yet started. Both Junts and BComú regretted yesterday that the mayor has not yet taken the second step, to continue in the field of gestures.
The investiture of Pedro Sánchez and the reform of the citizenship ordinance can speed up the negotiations on the governance of the Consistory… or end up dynamiting them. This update is one of the legs of the Endreça plan, intended to bring brightness to the public space. In fact, it has been months since the officers of the Guardia Urbana also received the instruction to make a reading in the strictest possible way of the current rule and to apply the highest penalties, especially regarding the consumption of alcohol , urinate, the tags …
Batlle also detailed that at the end of September, the technical commission appointed to start this process was formed, led by the Security Manager, María Casado. Then six subcommittees were formed in charge of different areas, the revision of the texts still in force, the study of new behaviors that need to be regulated that were not foreseen in 2006, the preparation of a more effective fine collection procedure, the revision of the amounts of the sanctions, the inclusion of gender perspectives and also the consideration of the most vulnerable groups and the alternative measures to the fines from which they could benefit. “There are technicians from all areas of the City Council working on this – Batlle insisted -. We are at the beginning of the process. We hope to be able to add all the sensitivities”.
