When Jaume Collboni entered the Barcelona mayor’s office for the first time on June 17, already invested as mayor, the trace of Ada Colau, the previous tenant of these offices, had completely disappeared. Among the objects that had been removed, the photographs of eight illustrious women, from Frederica Montseny to Mercè Rodoreda, passing through Neus Català, which the mayoress had introduced in a salon-museum dominated, then and now, by paintings by artists (all men) such as Miró, Tàpies and Casas.
The new mayor immediately wanted to leave his stamp on the new workplace. He has not had time to renovate furniture, to redecorate more thoroughly an office where from the first day there are photos that accompanied him in other municipal offices during his time as first lieutenant: that of Harvey Milk, pioneer of the political struggle for the rights of homosexuals, and those of Collboni himself alongside Felipe VI, Barack Obama and the four former socialist mayors of Barcelona.
The case of Collboni, which has added to the flags of Barcelona and Catalonia those of Spain and Europe – in addition to a small Arc de Sant Martí flag -, exemplifies that changes in mayors’ offices lead to changes in town hall offices which do not usually affect the pieces that are part of the municipal heritage and which are limited to the appearance of personal objects such as photographs and books.
The office of Rubén Viñuales in Tarragona has little new. The only elements that betray the change of mayor are two family photographs and a Funko Pop figure, a gift from his brother, representing the Godfather. “I think that nothing has changed here since Joan Miquel Nadal was mayor”, says Viñuales. And Nadal left the office already 17 years ago. Since then, the same table, the same chairs, the same sofa and the same paintings. One of which, however, has all the numbers to be replaced. “It’s a panorama of Tarragona, but very gray, and I like the pictures with colors,” explains the mayor.
The day before the inauguration, the socialist Fèlix Larrosa shared a coffee with the republican Miquel Pueyo in the mayor’s office, the same one that Larrosa had left in 2019. Pueyo told him that he would leave him a chest of drawers. In one of the first interviews as mayor he was asked what had been found in the drawers and he replied that there were no drawers. Larrosa stated a few days ago that she intended to remove that piece of furniture: “I don’t like drawers, things get forgotten in them, I need to have the papers on the table”.
Xavier García Albiol is familiar with the two Badalona mayoral offices. He already occupied them from 2011 to 2015 and seven months in the subsequent mandates. In the Casa de la Vila, which is only used for institutional events, no changes have been made. Yes, the one in the El Viver building, built in 2007, has changed, where he has asked for pegs to be installed to raise the table so that it is at his height. Albiol is not very prone to introducing new decorative elements: he only has a photo with the King, but no picture of his family. He is a very jealous person of his privacy and tries to keep it away from any public exposure.
More light, more color and more plants is what the mayor of Girona, Lluc Salellas, longs for in an office that he has not yet finished making his own. A photo of his family at the foot of the computer is practically the only contribution to the decoration of a room where he will spend many hours and which looks, for now, very dark. It will not be the only memory of his daughters. In the office there will be some drawings of the girls and maybe some toys for them to entertain themselves if they visit. It is very likely that Salellas changed some of the paintings to others from the municipal catalogue, probably by artists from Girona. Among those chosen could be some work by Narcís Comadira, one of the hundred signatories of the manifesto in support of Guanyem, before the start of the municipal electoral campaign.
