The judge who a few days ago ruled in favor of the main commercial hubs of the city that raised an administrative dispute and ordered the Barcelona City Council to reverse the transformation of a good part of Consell de Cent street, in the very heart of the new Eixample superblock , proposed yesterday to the opposing parties to open a mediation process aimed precisely at stopping a dismantling that in truth and at least at this moment no one wants.
This is the penultimate episode of a political and legal soap opera where absurdities have been happening for a long time. If the main commercial hubs of the city and the executive of Mayor Ada Colau had not become entrenched in their differences, perhaps the scenario would be very different today. And the judge’s mediation proposal does not refute her own sentence.
In fact, this last proposal responds rather to the opposite, to an attempt to execute the sentence, while opening the possibility of preserving the reform of this road, all in truth with the objective of closing this strange episode by cutting all its fringes, aborting the possibility that in the end any person or entity could demand that the machines devastate the new Consell de Cent.
As La Vanguardia learned, at least in principle both the executive of Mayor Jaume Collboni and the Barcelona Oberta group of commercial hubs consider the mediation proposal as a beneficial solution for the entire city, as a way to save a few million euros. to the public treasury and to reaffirm criteria when addressing this type of transformations.
Because in this mediation two issues will basically be put on the table, that the City Council does not forget to process the corresponding modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) when planning new green axes in the city, and that the municipal technicians study what Measures could improve the mobility of the streets closest to Consell de Cent and Consell de Cent itself.
The deadlines for this process are not yet clear. The City Council has fifteen days to present the appeal it considers against the ruling that dictates reversing the work in question. The Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia (TSJC) will respond. If the sentence is ratified, mediation would begin. Delays in justice are always unknown, but in this case it is possible that the TSJC will rule sooner than many believe.
Right now the tension is unleashed. The former mayor Colau and especially her followers insist that the true objective of the merchants was to discredit them based on press headlines and judicial appeals that lead nowhere, that in reality they act as a lobby determined that nothing changes, that despite With everything that is happening in the world, everything remains the same…
And on the other side they say that if the executive led by the commons had not been in such a hurry to take a photo in the new Consell de Cent, to have the most attractive jobs ready before the last municipal elections, perhaps they would have been able to sit down and talk on the consequences of these pedestrianizations on mobility in Eixample. In any case, the exchange of reproaches between one another is not new, and the disagreements have been entrenched for years.
