One hundred days after being inaugurated as the fifth socialist mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni is still trapped in an apparent contradiction that, although it worries him slightly, so far does not seem to rob him of too many hours of sleep. Strive from the first minute to mark differences with respect to her predecessor in office, Ada Colau, to proclaim to the four winds little less than the birth of a new era for the city but, at the same time, be very aware that if she wants governing Barcelona with a minimum of comfort – and unless the inscrutable paths of Spanish and Catalan politics guide him in another direction – he is condemned to renew the votes that united socialists and commoners in the previous mandate.
This is the paradox in which Collboni lives immersed on the eve of a double negotiation, that of the municipal budgets of 2023 and that of an almost essential expansion of the base of the most minority government in the history of the city with the addition of BComú and even from CKD.
In the interview published yesterday in La Vanguardia, Collboni assured that it is not his wish to make an entire amendment to the policies that bear the seal of Ada Colau. But the truth is that in these hundred days of mandate that are being fulfilled today, the mayor has written a long list of intentions and actions – which until now have not required the support of majorities in the plenary session – with which he has prepared a first story of change, of archiving the common cause that, more out of mutual necessity than out of conviction, he defended for four years with the commons.
Very significant, in this sense of proclaiming loudly that in Barcelona almost nothing is the same as before, is the deployment this summer of Pla Endreça. The name chosen for this campaign alone explains Collboni’s intentions at the beginning of his mandate: a safer, more civic, ultimately more orderly city, with more uniforms on the street, uniforms of the Urban Police and the police services. cleaning. Not in vain, safety and cleanliness have historically been, and continue to be today, the main demands of Barcelona residents to the City Council. And all this wrapped in a forceful and heavy-handed speech with incivility and crime that at the moment looks good on a theoretical level, but that still has to pass the cotton test.
Since he was inaugurated as mayor on June 17 with the support of the PSC and BComú and the very low interest loan of the PP votes, Collboni has been activating a strategy that he already outlined in the electoral campaign and even before, when the last January left the City Council, however, leaving the socialist councilors within the government. From one day to the next, he liquidated the so-called tactical urbanism, of which the common people are so proud, erasing with a stroke of the pen the colors painted in his day on the asphalt of Pelai Street. A declaration of intentions. Instead, he had to swallow the reform of the Sant Antoni ring road designed by the team of Ada Colau and her deputy mayor for Urban Planning, Janet Sanz, with the pretext that the new government alone of the PSC, a party that had demonstrated against that solution, there was no time to stop a project already underway.
It remains to be seen how PSC and BComú turn the page on a relationship that has never been easy and lay the foundations for a new alliance in which, from the first day, the commons and lately also the socialists consider that ERC would have a place. However, the three long months that have passed since this municipal mandate have only accentuated the differences much more than the affinities between the former partners.
In this first quarter of Barcelona’s socialist renaissance, Collboni has had plenty of time to announce important reforms, such as the continuity of the works to cover the Ronda de Dalt, and other decisions of complicated execution, such as the reduction of deadlines for the works. of redevelopment of the Rambla. Or to state that he will soon address a thorough review of the ordinance on coexistence in public spaces, another thorny issue if those sitting on the other side of the table are ordinary and Republicans. Of course, in a game of balance and counterbalances such as political alliances, an ace can always appear in the hole to overcome the resistance of the other party. Write one down for the imminent negotiation of the budgets and ordinances for next year: a twist to taxation on tourism, an activity that, now, almost everyone considers that it cannot and should not continue. growing unlimitedly.
The interview with the mayor published yesterday by this newspaper was the trigger for the statements of the municipal representatives during the Mercè celebration. BComú and ERC picked up the gauntlet thrown by Collboni in the pages of La Vanguardia and urged him to specify and materialize his proposal for a tripartite pact. In the absence of Ada Colau, councilor Jess González, on behalf of the commons, called for a three-way meeting to begin the path that, led by Jaume?Collboni, must lead to a “stable pact.” For his part, the leader of ERC, Ernest Maragall, recalled that before the investiture session in June he asked Collboni for a meeting of the three formations that make up a large majority in the City Council (24 of the 41 councilors) and that, since then, the now mayor “has not lifted a finger.”
