One hundred days after being invested as the fifth socialist mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni remains trapped in an apparent contradiction that, although it worries him slightly, so far does not seem to make him lose many hours of sleep. Strive from minute one to mark differences with respect to the predecessor in office, Ada Colau, to proclaim to the four winds little less than the birth of a new era for the city, but, at the same time, be very aware that, if you want govern Barcelona with minimal comfort – and unless the inscrutable paths of Spanish and Catalan politics guide him in another direction -, he is doomed to renew the votes that united socialists and commoners in the previous term.
Here is the paradox in which Collboni lives immersed on the eve of a double negotiation, that of the municipal budgets of 2023 and that of an almost essential expansion of the base of the most minority government in the history of the city with the sum of BComú and , even from ERC.
In the interview published yesterday in La Vanguardia, Collboni assured that it is not his will to make a complete amendment to the policies that bear the stamp of Ada Colau. But the truth is that in these one hundred days of mandate that are completed today, the mayor has written a long list of intentions and actions – which so far have not required the support of majorities in plenary – with which he has drawn up a first account of change, of filing the common cause that, more out of mutual need than conviction, he defended for four years with the commons.
Very significant, in the sense of loudly proclaiming that almost nothing in Barcelona is the same anymore, is the deployment during the summer of the Endreça Plan. The name chosen for this campaign explains by itself the pretensions of Collboni at the start of his mandate: a safer city, more civic, in short, more orderly, with more uniforms on the street, uniforms of the Urban Guard and cleaning services . Not surprisingly, security and cleanliness have historically been, and still are today, the main demands of Barcelona residents on the City Council. And, all this, wrapped in a speech of forcefulness and an iron fist with incivility and crime that at the moment looks good on the theoretical level, but which still has to pass the test of loose cotton.
Since he was sworn in as mayor on June 17 with the support of the PSC and BComú and the high-interest loan of the PP’s votes, Collboni has been activating a strategy that he already pointed out in the electoral campaign, and even before, when in January he left the City Council and left, however, the socialist councilors in the government. From one day to the next, he liquidated the so-called tactical urbanism, of which the communes are so proud, and suddenly erased the colors once painted on the asphalt of Carrer Pelai. A whole declaration of intentions. On the other hand, the reform of the Ronda Sant Antoni designed by the team of Ada Colau and her deputy mayor for Urbanism, Janet Sanz, had to be swallowed, on the pretext that the new government alone of PSC, a party that had spoken out against that solution, was not in time to stop a project already underway.
It is necessary to see how PSC and BComú turn the page on a relationship that has never been easy and lay the foundations of a new alliance in which, from the first day, the communes and lately also the socialists consider that ERC would have a place. However, the three long months that have passed since the municipal mandate have only accentuated the differences much more than the affinities between the former partners.
In this first quarter of Barcelona’s socialist renaissance, Collboni has had plenty of time to announce much-anticipated reforms, such as the continuation of the work covering the Dalt roundabout, and other decisions that are difficult to implement, such as the reduction of deadlines for redevelopment works of the Rambla. Or to state that he will soon address a thorough review of the coexistence ordinance in public space, another difficult issue, especially if those who sit on the other side of the table are commoners and republicans. It is clear that in a game of balances and trade-offs such as that of political alliances, a rabbit can always appear in the hat to overcome the resistance of the other side. Mark one for the imminent negotiation of budgets and ordinances for next year: a step further in taxation on tourism, an activity that, now, almost everyone considers that it cannot and should not to continue growing indefinitely.
The interview with the mayor published yesterday by this newspaper was yesterday the trigger for the statements of the municipal representatives during the celebration of Mercè. BComú and ERC took up the gauntlet that Collboni had thrown in the pages of La Vanguardia and hurried him to concretize and materialize the proposal for a tripartite pact. In the absence of Ada Colau, councilor Jess González, on behalf of the commons, demanded a tripartite meeting to begin the path that, led by Jaume Collboni, must lead to a “stable pact”. For his part, the leader of ERC, Ernest Maragall, recalled that already before the investiture session in June he asked Collboni for a meeting of the three formations that add up to a large majority in the City Council (24 of the 41 councilors) and that, since then, the current mayor “has not moved a finger”.
