The negotiations surrounding the Barcelona City Council budget dynamited relations between the city’s main political leaders. At the moment the different councilors get along with each other worse than ever. Here trust in others is at rock bottom.
Mayor Jaume Collboni will approve his municipal accounts proposal automatically on May 2, after losing this Wednesday by a large majority the vote on the question of confidence to which he himself submitted. Only the ERC councilors supported him, the only ones who today would be more or less willing to have a drink with him.
The rest of the leaders have the mayor completely aligned. They don’t have any trust in him. Xavier Trias is already tired of strategic maneuvers, one step away from leaving Sant Jaume once and for all by slamming the door loudly. Trias stopped biting his tongue in the recent conference he gave at the El Born cultural center. And since then he hides his discomfort less and less.
“I congratulate you on the spot,” he said after the defense of the budgets made by Deputy Mayor Laia Bonet. Today we witness the failure of a mayor who only works to secure his seat. I had all this planned since the fall. Not only did you not win the elections, but a few months later you don’t even have the support of those who invested you as mayor. It should turn red. All this is very serious. “He is using tactics that have nothing to do with Barcelona’s interests.”
Ada Colau’s thing is more personal. The surprise of the 300-odd votes still stings, and also that her former partner questions her legacy. But what hurts her most is that Jaume Collboni has given her the delay, that she prefers solitude to her support. These days, people close to the former mayor transmit the idea on the networks that Collboni despises her because he is a misogynist, which is why he so often refers to Trias as mayor and Colau as councilor.
“The most surprising thing is that we reached this point when this government had two majorities to rely on, Trias and us. And in the end they have only managed to articulate a minority together with ERC. And on top of that, he holds me responsible for what happened here, the Generalitat and the State, just as he did in the previous plenary session when I had no right to reply.”
And the popular Daniel Sirera appears more and more regretful for having facilitated that surprising investiture. In the end, only the Vox seem willing to join the PP. But Barcelona is not the plateau. Here certain compromises isolate.
But the celebrations of the Parliamentary elections on May 12 and to a lesser extent but also the European elections on June 9 will clear the municipal horizon, mark the relations between political parties, and delimit the red lines at the local level. And then in this courtyard everyone will bite the bullet and will be forced to understand each other in some way, because they will have no choice and because on top of that it is their obligation. But they will not forget anything that is happening now.
What happens in the meantime is that members of the opposition get along just as badly. Collboni submitted to a question of confidence because he is sure that the other groups will not be able to put together a motion of censure and an alternative candidacy for mayor, and because in this way he can boast of fulfilling his commitments: Barcelona will have new budgets this spring.
In truth, the mayor is following to the millimeter the roadmap he designed months ago, his vaunted “step by step.” And this Wednesday, in the final stretch of the corresponding extraordinary plenary session, after blows fell on him from all sides, after finally getting the approval of his budgets on track, he insisted that his next objective is to expand the municipal executive, incorporate new forces.
Those from ERC are the ones most likely to sign a government pact with the PSC. And this is already wearing them down. Trias, who was very forceful yesterday, said that he does not understand how the Republicans agreed to seal a government pact with Junts and a few months later sign a budget agreement with the person who blew everything up.
And the commoners, who got along so well with the Republicans during the previous mandate, now consider that they are a docile troupe at the service of the socialists. Suddenly, Junts and BComú, each in their own way, stopped seeing the Republicans as the ideal partners.
Fortunately, the succession of electoral elections in the coming months will give them time to mend these battered relations. Yes, in no way is this rarefaction an imposture for the gallery. Just look at Trias’s tone that is as contained as it is exasperated. And also in Colau’s harsh gaze, seeing them now, can anyone really believe that Colau and Collboni were partners for so long? Furthermore, Junts and BComú have been cheering on their own for a long time, establishing themselves as their corresponding nemeses.
