The mayor of Tortosa, Jordi Jordan, denounces that the replacement of the municipal government is not being easy and that the collaboration of the previous executive “has been minimal”. “The handover meeting we did at this table lasted twenty minutes. It was very fast and they told us that they had another meeting, ”Jordan explained. In an interview for ACN, the mayor of Tortosa laments the difficulties that this entails, with situations such as “finding all emails linked to the Tortosa mayor’s office for the last sixteen years deleted.”
The mayor of Tortosa has been immersed, since the day after the construction of the Town Hall, in an intense schedule of meetings with all the departments of the consistory to catch up. The transfer of the new municipal government, formed by Movem-PSC and ERC, is being “difficult” and in most issues, the new executive “starts from scratch.”
Without wanting to go any further, the local executive studies “whether it is correct or not” the disappearance of information, such as the mayor’s emails, but Jordan acknowledges that the information they have is minimal.
The mayor considers it hasty to talk about carrying out an audit in the consistory, but explains that each department of Tortosa and all the councils will be analyzed to find out what is “the economic situation and the execution of the budget so far.” “Internal diagnostic work” from which it will be decided whether to carry out other actions, such as audits.
Jordan says that he comes to the mayor’s office “with immense enthusiasm and a lot of responsibility”, but with strong opposition, with the municipal group with the most councilors (10) Junts, and the CUP, the external partner of the local government. The mayor calls for a “constructive and responsible opposition for the good of the city.” “If they make it destructive, we will report it,” he warned.
On the other hand, he is convinced that the CUP will be an ally throughout the mandate, “as has been evidenced from the moment of the inauguration,” and in the first weeks of the government, and appeals that “the agreement of stability”, signed because it has the ideological consensus of the four formations.
The arrival of a progressive and left-wing government to the Tortosa City Council after four terms with CiU/Junts at the helm, will be immediately noticed, according to Jordan due to “proximity and attention”, which has not been ‘up to now offered to the citizenship, and also because they will put all their efforts into beginning to reverse areas such as cleaning, improving public roads and social projects that “are important” for the municipal government, as well as industrial growth and the generation of opportunities for from the enlargement of the Catalunya Sud industrial estate.
“We must be clear that the budget is not ours and that, therefore, until next year, we will not really be able to begin to carry out the policies of this new government”, recalled the mayor. As he had already pointed out previously, all the projects that the previous government of Tortosa left on the table will also be studied, their technical and economic feasibility will be analyzed, and a decision will be made on whether they are carried out. “Some are drawings, preliminary projects for the gallery that we must look at if they can be done,” Jordan said.
One of the projects with the most proposals for the future, almost one for each municipal group, is the use and conversion of the old Renfe land. Although it will be a flagship project with a political distinctive for the future of the city, from the outset, the mayor of Tortosa is in no rush. It is necessary, he says, to pay for the land first, which has not yet been done, and to look for “a provisional solution” that also includes the new parking lots that are being set up.
Another work highlighted by the mayor of Tortosa is the reform and modernization project of the Parador and the underground galleries of the Castillo de la Suda, which will receive a subsidy of 10.1 million euros and will be carried out by the Spanish state. The delegate of the Spanish government in Catalonia confirmed to Jordan that the results of 23-J will not affect this project, nor will it affect the 2 million euros that have been granted through the Next Generation Fund, to promote tourism in the city walls . This work must be tendered by the Tortosa City Council.
As the last plenary approved by an absolute majority, finally the Tortosa City Council will present itself as a private prosecution in the Efial case, a corruption plot that instructs the National Court where the municipal urban management company, GUMTSA, which presided over, is also being investigated. the former mayor and spokesperson for Junts per Tortosa, Meritxell Roigé. While Roigé considers that the decision involves “opposing the opposition”, Mayor Jordan defends it as “an act of transparency for the interests of citizens”, to find out “what happened” with the more than one million euros that allegedly he cheated in the consistory.
The mayor of Tortosa has justified that they were not more belligerent on this issue during the electoral campaign because they wanted to avoid “focusing it on an alleged case of corruption” and have space “to tell about their project for the city.” “We remember that it is a plot linked to the corruption of 3% of Convergència”, pointed out Jordan, who points out that his municipal group (ICV) already denounced, in 2013, some “anomalies” of the municipal urban development company in ‘Antifraud Office.
