Next Thursday, May 2, Barcelona City Council will have the highest budgets in its history, a total of 3,807 million euros in the cash register, 5.9% more than in 2023. Getting to this point will not it has not been easy. The municipal accounts for this year will be automatically approved, with a delay of more than four months, after the majority of the opposition failed the two attempts proposed by the minority government of Jaume Collboni, the first at the end of last year and then, in the second instance, in March.
Thursday marks the end of 30 working days since the socialist councilor lost the vote of confidence and opened the possibility for the opposition to present an alternative candidate for mayor, an option that, predictably, has not merited no consideration from hypothetical stakeholders, not a single exploratory meeting, not even an elevator conversation. And it is that marrying the interests of Junts, BComú, PP and Vox is something that is only possible in a diabolical mind. In the best of cases, the combination of antagonistic forces, such as the one that occurred in Friday’s plenum between Junts and BComú, only makes it possible to verify the “loneliness” of the mayor in a merely symbolic rebuke.
Jaume Collboni breathes a sigh of relief, not because he had any fears about his future in the mayor’s office, but because very soon, in four days, he will say goodbye to the restrictions imposed by the extension of the 2023 budget that he was forced to to be signed on December 28. “We will have an availability of 3,800 million, a budget that allocates 438 million to social policies and 944 million to investments”, recalls the mayor in conversation with La Vanguardia.
According to Collboni, the turbulent trajectory followed by these budgets, which have the endorsement of 15 of the 41 councilors of the City Council (10 from the PSC and 5 from the ERC) shows that “there is no serious alternative” . “If you block the budgets, it’s because you have an alternative content and government, the most rational thing would have been to enter into the agreement”, points out the batlle. But that will soon be a thing of the past. In short, also his predecessors in office, Xavier Trias and Ada Colau, had to go through the stage of the question of trust to approve the municipal accounts.
The socialist mayor hopes that, once the Catalan elections of May 12 are over, which will be linked in the best case scenario only with the European elections of June 9, the tensions that have been experienced in this first year of office in the The Barcelona City Council should relax and “set up a dynamic of governance” that the uncertainty surrounding the future of the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, does not exactly contribute to pay.
Jaume Collboni wants to refute the opposition’s accusations about the lack of dialogue. He refers to an internal report that reveals that during the months that he has been at the head of the Consistory, 30% more initiatives and files have been approved than in the same period of the previous mandate, at that time with a government more wide (BComú PSC) and with the fairly stable support of ERC.
Collboni is about to have the budgets he wanted. But has the time come to expand the government with the addition of a partner? The socialist mayor does not hide his belief that “the most logical thing” would be the entry of the Republican Left into a coalition government, of course “not before the electoral landscape is clarified, but I am not the one who has to decide- it”. The incorporation of ERC into the municipal government is, as of now, the only option on the horizon. There is no possibility that the commons of ex-mayor Ada Colau will be added, who from practically the minute after Jaume Collboni’s investiture – which they and the PP facilitated – have maintained a not-so-fluid, sometimes hostile, relationship with the socialists
The city has become accustomed to being governed by a minority and it does not seem that this trend will break at any point in this mandate, at least in the short and medium term. Collboni does not look restless. In fact, since he took office as mayor, he has moved with some comfort, applying the manual formula of the minority governor: promoting the aspects of municipal management that do not require the support of other groups – the best example notorious is the Endreça Plan, with the reinforcement of public space cleaning and maintenance services – and postponing for a more propitious moment more difficult issues and in which the agreement is more laborious. This is the case of the review of the rule that obliges developers and builders to allocate 30% of new works or major housing renovations to social flats. The Socialists included this review in the Municipal Action Program (PAM) 2023-2027, which overthrew the opposition a few days ago. They are not willing to give up on this field.
“We cannot afford to have this affair blocked because the results of the current regulations have been very poor”, affirms Collboni from the firm purpose of putting this issue on the table when the end of the electoral cycle allows some and others to focus se in local and metropolitan issues. The 30% revision will indeed require, the mayor of Barcelona recalls, the support of other groups and at this point it is not lost on anyone that an alliance with the Junts municipal group is much more viable – the future departure of Xavier Trias must not be an obstacle – what with BComú, who will in no way give up on what was one of his measures most marked by the personal stamp of Ada Colau during the first of two mandates at the head of the City Council.
With the approval of the municipal budgets next Thursday, many of the projects that the socialist government had closed in the exit drawer will be able to start galloping. “Now we are in a period of certain silence, forced by the calling of elections, but all these projects will be activated, because we will already have the corresponding budget items”, says the mayor. Jaume Collboni emphasizes the investment chapter. The maintenance of the budget extension would have doomed to have approximately half of the resources that will be released by the approval of the new budgets. “The non-approval – comments the Barcelona club – would have had consequences. It is very irresponsible to have the money and not be able to execute the investments”. Projects such as the ongoing reform of La Rambla, the coverage of the Ronda de Dalt or one that the mayor is particularly excited about, the extension of the promenade to Mar Bella, will benefit from the new budgets.
