Jaume Collboni was by no means assured of his election as mayor last Saturday and for this reason he appeared at the Saló de Cent, apart from with a very sad face, with two speeches, one in case he was elected and the other in case he was not. But what is clear is that since the same Saturday that he took office, he has not wasted any time and has chosen to impose a hectic pace on his management as mayor so that it is noticed that the change has arrived.
In the business world, there is a widely repeated idea that when a new executive comes to the management of a company, he should take advantage of the first 100 days to change the management model of the company, because if he does not do so, it is the company itself. the one that ends up changing him. The maxim is perhaps not very appropriate because Collboni is not new to the City Council, but he is because of the speed with which he is facing the changes. Yesterday he struck down the municipal chief architect, Xavier Matilla, who had been one of the creatives of Ada Colau’s tactical urbanism. In his place, he has appointed Maria Buhigas, who was part of Ernest Maragall’s list as an independent in 2019 and was trained in that great laboratory of ideas that is Barcelona Regional, promoted by José Antonio Acebillo. The idea expressed yesterday by the mayor himself is that Barcelona has an urbanism that is not planned with its back to the opinion of the citizens themselves and that has the consensus of the city councils of the metropolitan area. This has been one of the main criticisms that Colau’s team has received. It makes no sense to think about how Barcelona should be without having its gear or the rest of its large conurbation area. As Silvia Angulo explains well today in the pages of Vivir, the municipal government, “absorbed in the four panots of the Eixample, has almost always ignored the rest of the residents of its immediate surroundings”.
Collboni begins his journey with very little support, with only 10 councillors, but his appeals yesterday for a consensus with the people of Barcelona and also to have the neighboring municipalities are signs of a good start. Hopefully the moment of the metropolitan government will come.
