Tomorrow, Wednesday, Barcelona City Council opens a participatory process aimed at reforming the civility ordinance. The government of Mayor Jaume Collboni thus gives citizens the opportunity to highlight which behaviors bother them the most, and also to propose what measures should be adapted to address them. Without a doubt, this initiative will become an escape valve for the idiosyncratic critical spirit of the average Barcelonan.
And surely it is also much more constructive than discussions on social networks. One of the objectives of the socialist executive for this mandate is to modify the ordinance that regulates what cannot be done in public spaces and that came into force back in 2006. Mayor Collboni hopes to have the necessary political support to approve this reform at the end of the year.
People will be able to make their contributions through the Decidim.Barcelona platform, and also in one of the three meetings that will take place this month in civic centers in Eixample, Sant Martí and Ciutat Vella. In this way, everyone will be able to advocate for toughening the fines against those who pee in the street, for forcing graffiti artists to clean up their own graffiti, for punishing those who do not know how to lower their voices while smoking outside bars. ..
And I’m sure that quite a few citizens propose reforming the system for collecting fines to ensure that uncivil tourists do not return to their countries cheaply, with their fine turned into souvenirs. The impunity of many uncivils hurts many citizens greatly. The people of Barcelona hate it when others take the rules by the watchman’s whistle.
But the truth is that it is not necessary to formulate this proposal. The City Council has been working intensively on this issue for a few months now. In fact, it is a pending issue that technicians from the City Council’s Treasury area have been studying from time to time for decades. The thing is that they haven’t found the formula yet. Collecting traffic fines is much easier.
In any case, a follow-up commission will be in charge of considering each of the citizen contributions and their incorporation into the reform of the ordinance. Here we find the Table of Entities of the Third Sector, representatives of the Administrative Police, the Federation of Neighborhood Associations, the LGTBI Council, the Women’s Council… and also entities from the restaurant, culture, of tourism…
The truth is that it is striking that the names of other alternative entities that usually group groups always affected by any regularization of the uses of public space do not appear in the list provided by the City Council, such as those of people who practice prostitution or those of street vendors without permission. Those times when the commoners invited the manteros to negotiate with the merchants in the municipal offices seem to be definitively left behind. Sources from Mayor Collboni’s government, however, maintain that all the city’s entities have opportunities to make their proposals, just as all Barcelona residents have.
