The relationship between socialists and commoners in Barcelona City Council has exploded today and it will not be easy to rebuild it. The group led by former mayor Ada Colau has obtained absolutely circumstantial support from the councilors of Trias per Barcelona to approve a proposal that confirms “the paralysis” in which the city government finds itself. The proposal, a covert disapproval of the figure of the socialist mayor, has gone ahead with the votes of Comuns and Junts and the abstention of ERC, PP and Vox.
Ada Colau, in what can be interpreted as her first intervention embodying the role of councilor of the toughest opposition, has been very critical of the PSC’s solitary government, so much so that the socialists, who until now had drawn a thick veil On the repeated attacks of their former partners, they have decided to counterattack. Mayor Collboni has not done so, who has handed over the task of responding to Colau to his first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, who has accused the commoners of “boycotting the possibility of Barcelona having a left-wing government.”
Already in the plenary session in October, Barcelona en Comú tried to disapprove Collboni, but ended up giving up due to the impossibility of gaining support. Today he has achieved them, although by pure nonsense, through a bizarre communion of interests. Junts, which like the Commons aspires to become a government partner of the PSC, has voted in favor of the Commons’ proposal. He shares with them the perception of paralysis of a government that has not managed to approve the City Council’s budget for next year or a government agreement on one side or the other.
Colau has accused Collboni of doing nothing more than inaugurating projects promoted during his time as mayor and, instead, maintaining a passive attitude towards issues such as the rise in water prices, rents or public transport.
Laia Bonet’s response has been the most forceful that to date has come from the socialist ranks in the face of the attacks of the commoners. First in a very brief intervention: “With proposals like this they are boycotting the possibility of Barcelona having a left-wing government.” Then, in a second reply, she accused the former mayor and her followers of using “gratuitous aggressiveness” with an “absurd campaign of attacks” on the socialist government.
Meanwhile, the Trias per Barcelona group, through Neus Munté, has justified its favorable vote. Those from Junts agree on the final result of the diagnosis of the commons, which can be summed up in one word: “paralysis.” But they warn Ada Colau so that “she doesn’t make a mistake.” Support for the proposition is not, by any means, an endorsement of the commons but quite the opposite, a criticism of Collboni’s continuity with respect to the policies of her predecessor, “the confirmation of her failure” (that of Colau).
On the part of ERC, which today has a new leader in the person of Elisenda Alamany due to the farewell of Ernest Maragall, it has admitted that Collboni’s is a “weak government” and that it strives to dismantle the work of the commons without responding to the challenges of the people of Barcelona. But she has warned that the proposal debated and approved “is aimed at insisting on the socialists to let them enter the government.” “This is a story between the two of you,” Alamany stated as she announced the group’s withdrawal from her.
PP and Vox have also opted for abstention. The popular Daniel Sirera has compared the insistence of the common people in asking the socialists to let them enter the government with that of those children who, sitting in the back seat of the car, do not stop asking their parents throughout the trip if there is still a long way to go to get there. An attitude that the president of the popular group has called “encouraging.” Sirera reminded Collboni that the condition that the popular party set to facilitate his investiture was that the common people “not put their hand in the government” and has advised Colau that if he wants to enter the executive, he will present a motion of censure.
The leader of Vox, Gonzalo del Oro-Pulido has admitted that the BComú proposal “should have the support of everyone”, support that has been denied because “it responds to a desperate attempt to enter the government” by a party “ responsible for the current direction of Barcelona”, which has led it, among other things, to be “the paradise of drugs and squatters”.
