The fight against incivility and the care of public space are already the main priorities of Mayor Jaume Collboni’s government for this mandate. The deputy mayors of Urbanism and Security, Laia Bonet and Albert Batlle, announced this Monday that the Endreça Plan is no longer an emergency and shock measure to become the new way of proceeding for the Barcelona City Council.
The local executive plans to invest around 435 million euros in these issues over the next four years. And another fact that illustrates at least in a symbolic way the determination of the Collboni executive results from the sum of all the items in his budget proposal for the coming year with the label of the Endreça plan, which gives nothing more and nothing less than 550 million.
The City Council will no longer wait for street furniture elements to stop fulfilling their function, but will change them before they reach the foreseeable end of their useful life. We are talking about traffic lights, trash cans, banks… Last week the City Council already announced the renovation of all the trash cans in Ciutat Vella. The reference are those campaigns of previous socialist governments, such as that of Barcelona posa’t guapa.
Furthermore, behaviors that disrupt citizen coexistence will be attacked more than ever. Bonet and Batlle trust that the new civility ordinance will come into force next year, that it can be initially approved during the first half of 2024. This issue, however, the reform of the civility ordinance, seems much more thorny, blurry and uncertain.
The main opposition groups are not willing to make things easy for the socialist executive. Any support will be very expensive. This is proven by the rejection staged last week by Junts, BComú, ERC, PP and Vox of the tax ordinances and municipal budgets proposed by the socialists.
Above all, Junts and BComú want to assume government responsibilities, to demonstrate to Mayor Collboni that Barcelona cannot be governed with only ten councilors. The reform of the civility ordinance can easily get bogged down. And the care of public space, on the other hand, constitutes a somewhat mixed bag area of ??local administration that depends more on the political will of the mayor than on his ability to reach agreements with opposition groups.
The image of municipal employees erasing graffiti with their rollers will become more and more frequent. Yes, Pla Endreça has not yet managed to get the letter painters to abandon their attitude, but it did undermine to a certain extent the fatalism prevailing around so much graffiti. At least lately they delete a lot, apparently more than before. One of the burdens of Ada Colau’s government was the citizen’s impression that Barcelona was not cared for.
Mayor Collboni is very concerned about suffering similar wear and tear. It will also be common, as has been happening in recent months, to find a Guàrdia Urbana van next to the Museum of History of Catalonia, next to the Moll de la Fusta, to intimidate manteros, pedicab drivers, women who braid braids. to tourists… But the truth is that it seems much more complicated for Barcelona to soon have a new rule against incivility.
All municipal groups understand that the city has long needed another coexistence ordinance. But the negotiations are not exactly advancing at a breakneck pace. Batlle, the deputy mayor for Security, is clear that the objective of the new text must be to banish from public space once and for all urination, alcohol consumption and the street sale of counterfeit items, beer cans, mojitos. ..
Finding consensus around peeing and drinking will be relatively simple, but achieving it around street vending will be much more complicated. BComú and ERC are much more concerned that the law could criminalize poverty. They are fundamental questions. In her first term, Ada Colau commissioned Jaume Asens to reform the ordinance and they did not find a way to move it forward.
