The government of Mayor Jaume Collboni will toughen the sanctions for incivility in a few days, after the first week of this August. In addition, as the deputy mayors Albert Batlle and Laia Bonet assured this Wednesday, the City Council will apply new systems aimed at ensuring the payment of these fines. Urination, defacement and unbridled drunkenness under people’s windows are the great enemies to beat.
The hardening of these sanctions will be around more or less 55 percent. So that the fine for peeing in the street will go from 200 to 300 euros, and that of defacing whatever is aerosol in hand from 300 to 500. Drinking in the street will also be more expensive, 600 euros instead out of 300. Last weekend the municipal police processed some 1,600 complaints related to uncivil acts. The Socialists are also willing to pay the extra hours necessary to increase the presence of the Urban Police in the streets this summer. The agents have already received the new instructions. A few weeks ago, a reorganization of resources has allowed 107 more agents to patrol the streets.
They are the first and most showy measures of Pla Endreça, one of the great priorities of the new municipal executive in view of this mandate, a set of initiatives aimed mainly at making public space shine again and for real. We talk about much more than simply putting order in the shared space, we talk about harmony, coexistence, quality…
For some time now, many residents of Barcelona have the impression that everyone here does what they want and nothing happens, and that on top of that, streets, squares and other corners are not fully cared for. The Collboni government is determined to put an end to the large bottles, the urine in the corners, the waste scattered among the containers… with this collective discouragement that lately spreads among many.
And for this the Socialists understand that the Consistory, among many other things, has to reform the civility ordinance, that it has to review its sanctions, and also to reconsider what behaviors are truly uncivil and punishable. Fifteen decades ago, scooters barely rolled through these streets. The search for the necessary consensus for the municipal plenary session to approve this reform will be one of the great political debates this autumn. The truth is that in an agreement with the councilors of Junts it seems much easier than with those of BComú. To many ordinary people, it always seemed that toughening the fines was always more of a way of criminalizing poverty. How to deal with street vending always generated friction with the socialists.
Meanwhile, the new municipal executive will stretch the fine print of the ordinance in question. When defining the sanctions, this rule establishes forks depending on the seriousness of the infractions, and this assessment, in many cases extremely subjective, corresponds to the municipal police officer of Marras. If the urban guard in action considers that those three or four people who are drinking beer in a bank are seriously disturbing public order, he can fine them 600 euros, instead of only. 300. It seems that as of this August all penalties for drinking alcohol will be 600 euros. In this way, the municipal government can toughen the fines that it is already applying without the need to formally reform its ordinance. At least in this way, Batlle and Bonet made it clear in their appearance.
The Socialists, however, were even more cryptic when it came to clarifying how they hope to improve the payment of these fines. Since its implementation, the civility ordinance has been accompanied by a disturbing controversy, that the City Council does not collect a large part of the fines filed, that tourists and irregulars take advantage of their condition so as not to pay them with impunity. In recent years, barely 1.2 percent of the fines filed for street vending were collected. What will the Consistory do this summer that it has not done in the last fifteen years? Deputy Mayor Batlle limited himself to pointing out that they will apply new methods.
