The commons view with some resentment the first steps of the new mayor of Barcelona, ??the socialist Jaume Collboni, who today celebrates his first month in office. The deputy mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanz, has demanded that the mayor stop behaving like a simple “manager”, to start “doing politics” and to “clarify what his city model is”, a prerequisite for defining possible government agreements in the City Council.
In the absence of former mayor Ada Colau, who has assumed a low profile at the start of this mandate, Janet Sanz has been in charge of putting a note on Mayor Collboni’s first month. In the balance, some positive actions are combined, in the opinion of the commons, with others that they consider very worrying.
Among the first, the decision to maintain the Sant Antoni round redevelopment project, approved in its day by BComú against the criteria of its PSC partners, and the reform of La Rambla, although in this case what Collboni has done it is to express his intention to speed up the works and cut their duration in half.
And, among the aspects that most worry the common people, the announcements that in October the mayor will launch the revision of the civility ordinance, with the purpose of toughening some sanctions, and the obligation to allocate 30% of the new promotions or large rehabilitations to social housing.
Another of lime and another of sand from the Socialists, according to the assessment that the common people have made of the first initiatives of the government alone. On the positive side, the easing of speed cameras that limit speed to 30 km/hour in school environments. Janet Sanz has pointed out in this regard that in the last weeks of the Colau era, her own department already commissioned a report to see the options to review the regulations that did not discriminate between school hours and the rest of the day and holidays. On the negative side, the possibility of extending the licenses of the discotheques on the seafront.
Janet Sanz has not missed the opportunity to ironize about Jaume Collboni’s recent trip to Paris, where he attended the events of the French national holiday invited by the socialist mayor Anne Hidalgo. The deputy spokesperson for the BComú municipal group has “celebrated” that the mayor of Barcelona has been precisely in a city that has applied measures similar to those of the 30% reserve to alleviate the problem of the lack of affordable housing.
“Paris –said Sanz, recalling the excellent relationship between Colau and Hidalgo– is the city with which we have shared the most model, with which we have worked side by side”. According to the councilor for the commons, Collboni should take note of the mobility policies developed in recent years by the Paris City Council, such as the extension of the network of bike lanes and other measures linked to the reduction of private traffic to combat pollution and climate change.
While waiting for Collboni to define a city model that is close to that of the commons, Janet Sanz has once again intoned the mantra preferred by her formation: the agreement of the progressive forces (PSC, BComú and ERC) to configure a broad majority of government and avoid the temptation of the socialists to practice variable arithmetic in the hands of the Trias per Barcelona group.
