The relays in mayoralties put controversial projects in check

There are city projects that arouse strong controversies. Some have been fundamental for the mayors until now and are threatened by the changes at the head of the town halls that will take place next Saturday. The connection of the Barcelona tram through the Diagonal is the best known case. Ada Colau has defended her tooth and nail in the two terms in which she has governed.

After many studies and a strong political battle, he managed to get the construction of the first phase started, which he executes in agreement with the Generalitat. But, if Xavier Trias takes over the baton – he is the one with the best chances – the second phase could be paralyzed since the Junts candidate has said actively and passively that he will not complete the connection between Verdaguer and Francesc Macià. Although we will have to see how the political agreements that he would need to govern come into play, since he only has 11 of the 41 councillors. This is not the only case, there are other examples of affected projects in Girona, Tarragona, Lleida, Sant Cugat del Vallès and Badalona that are explained below.

Back to the Barcelona tram, the works to extend the Trambesòs from Glòries to Verdaguer are advancing at full speed. This same week, experts in the field from different parts of the world who attended the public transport summit held in the Catalan capital visited the works to take note of the urban integration that is being carried out. The forecast is for the works to be completed at the beginning of next year so that the section enters into service in March. The drafting of the project for the second and last phase, from Verdaguer to Francesc Macià, which would make possible the integration with the Trambaix, is already being done.

The idea of ​​the outgoing municipal government was to be able to start the works as soon as the ones now in progress were finished. But Trias said no way. His opposition to this project is known and, in the event that he becomes mayor again, he will have no choice but to accept the phase that is being carried out, but he can leave the slope in the air, which is the one that it really makes sense. The circumstance occurs that Damià Calvet, number five on his electoral list, signed the works that are being undertaken when he was Minister of Territories. And he has always been in favor of completing the project, an issue on which he has avoided speaking out since he became part of the Junts candidacy for City Hall.

What does Trias propose for the section of the Diagonal that would be left without a tram? Reform the avenue following the model applied between Francesc Macià and the Cinc d’Oros, which was the one he promoted when he was mayor and which he inaugurated in March 2015, shortly before the elections he lost and opened the Colau stage. The mayor of Junts always argues that his predecessor in office, the socialist Jordi Hereu, held a citizen consultation in 2010 on the transformation of the avenue in which two options were raised in which there was a tram and a third, which was the most voted, which defended not executing any of them. On this result, which he interprets as a no to the tram, he bases himself not to implement this transport system there.

The other candidate who still has options to govern, the socialist Jaume Collboni, at the beginning of the campaign was in favor of stopping the works for a term to give the residents of the Eixample a rest after so many months of cuts for work, but later rectified and promised to maintain the planned plan, supported by the metropolitan mayors who also defend the connection of Trambaix and Trambesòs.

While the tram is a matter that comes from afar, the green axes of the Eixample have been the stellar urban performance of Colau’s last term. The creation of it as an evolution of the superblocks has had supporters and detractors who have also raised their voices within the municipal plenary session. In the last sessions of the mandate, the group of the mayoress, BComú, was left defending them alone. The rest, with greater or lesser intensity, have rejected them, including the PSC, a partner in the government, which announced, in the event that its candidate Collboni was mayor, a break to evaluate them and see how and when more are done.

Colau planned to convert one out of every three streets in the district into pedestrian streets, as has been done in the first phase with Consell de Cent, Comte Borrell, Bruc and Girona. But Collboni already said that he would not go down this path and, instead, would bet on recovering 30 interior blocks.

Junts has also been very critical of this performance in recent times. During the electoral campaign, Trias promised to carry out an audit of the superblocks and green axes in his first year in government if he wins the mayoralty. In his opinion, in addition to perverting the spirit with which Ildefons Cerdà designed the Eixample, they create problems. His intention is to paralyze the projects that are planned immediately “to rethink them rigorously, with dialogue and always seeking the maximum possible agreement.”

The objective of the evaluation is to detect the degree of contamination, cleanliness, security, commercial activity, mobility or evolution of the price of housing attributable to these urban actions. What does not work will try to correct and could even be reversed, although he admitted that he will not back down from major works, such as that of Consell de Cent, out of respect for the residents.

Another pedestrianization currently on the air is that of the Sant Antoni ring road. After months of negotiations between residents, especially from Raval who are in favor of total pacification and those mainly from Sant Antoni who prefer the bus to return, the municipal government put on the table an intermediate solution that made those from Ciutat Vella more satisfied. . Delays, however, can thwart the initiative. If it considers it this way, the new municipal government will be able to stop the project with ease. It will be enough for him not to award the works.

The future mayor of Tarragona, Rubén Viñuales (PSC), has doubts about the layout of the TramCamp, the tram that will connect the city with Reus, Vila-seca, Cambrils and Salou, promoted by the Generalitat, which is expected to be deployed for 46 kilometers of tracks with 47 stations. The Socialist candidate, who will take over the mayoralty on Saturday, said in an interview in Diari de Tarragona that he was “the only skeptic” about this performance. His position seemed like a serious amendment, since after describing this infrastructure as “hard and invasive”, he recalled that no one had proven to him that “the critical mass that is needed exists” to carry it out.

All in all, Viñuales did not deny that the tram “could be fine”, but pointed out that, in any case, the route through Tarragona did not convince him. “And I don’t know if the green hydrogen or electric bus would be more efficient,” he said. Thus, once he is mayor, he plans to ask the Government to review the layout, at least the one that has been designed by the city of Tarragona, which is the second phase of a long-demanded project in the area.

The Generalitat announced last March that the first phase of the TramCamp – which will link the three large centers of the Costa Daurada (Cambrils, Salou and Vila-seca) – will be in service by the end of 2026. The second phase is set for 2028 , the year in which Tarragona and Reus would be interconnected in comfortable trips of between 20 and 25 minutes. The planned global investment is 543 million euros.

Controversial since its origins, the renovation of Carrer de la Creu de Girona, one of the main traffic arteries in the city center, has received more criticism than praise since its execution. Since the works were completed in 2020, which include a two-way bike lane, a parking line on the road and the reduction of two to a single lane for cars, residents and merchants on this axis have collected signatures up to two times against a reform that they consider “dangerous” and that does not solve traffic congestion problems.

Also during the campaign, the remodeling of this space was proposed by several parties such as Guanyem and PSC, formations that are now competing for mayor. Both coincide in pointing out that they will redo a work, which is less than three years old, and which cost around 300,000 euros. The candidates of both parties promised weeks ago, before 28-M, that if he became mayor, the first changes could already be seen throughout 2023.

The mayor of Guanyem, Lluc Salellas, pointed out in the campaign that “three years after the reform – which he calls “botch” – it has been shown that it does not work.” Guanyem, which during these days is in full negotiations with Junts, executors of the controversial remodeling, affirms that they will recover the proposals of different projects that the experts carried out at the time and that, together with the opinions that emerged from neighbors and merchants, they will close a new proposal.

The mayor of the PSC, Sílvia Paneque, also pledged during the campaign to adopt during the first hundred days of her mandate, the necessary actions to modify a “nonsense” and “dangerous” reform. She proposes returning the street to the similar aesthetics and mobility it had before the reform, maintaining some section of bike lane and eliminating the cordon parking strip that divides the road.

It is not the only bike lane that he plans to modify if he agrees to the position. The newly opened Pericot Avenue bike lane, which currently occupies one side of the road, would be moved to the central space of the pedestrian islet, which is currently underused.

La Paeria de Lleida will be socialist again on June 17, and the new mayor, Fèlix Larrosa, wants to paralyze some project of the outgoing government of ERC and Junts, such as the 120-bed shelter for seasonal workers and the homeless in Pardinyes. He proposes taking advantage of aid to the Generalitat shelter for centers of 40 people, near farms and rehabilitating the convent of the Josefinas.

“It seems that the acting government is going to open the envelopes that facilitate the identification of companies that want to build the shelter. This does not oblige the City Council to continue with the procedure. With a reasoned report it stops ”, he says. And he adds: “It requires that the new government make a proposal to the Generalitat and save this contribution.”

A stranded issue is the commercial park in Torre Salses. The promoter denounced the Prosecutor’s Office to the mayor Miquel Pueyo and deposited four million for the roads before a notary. The Consistory has not used it, but Larrosa will. “I am going to look for the money and do the work. The promoters will already be understood with the Generalitat for the purposes of the commercial license ”, she affirms.

He also believes that the tender document to establish a shopping center next to the train station will be on the table. He wants to review the modification of the general urban planning plan. The future bus station is also up in the air. The Generalitat has a 44 million project with Next Generation funds. There is a drawback: “The land is not publicly owned,” Larrosa has assured.

The future mayor of Badalona, ​​Xavier Garcia Albiol, attended an event organized by Restarting on Friday, where experts discussed the social need to build homes. The popular leader regretted that in Badalona “public housing has not been built for twenty years”, so he announced that he has seven municipally owned plots to build some 240 social apartments, with priority for affordable social rent for young people. A second way will go through acquiring homes and rehabilitating them.

Similarly, the future executive from Badalona focuses one of the priorities on the construction of a new Olympic swimming pool, a project that Albiol already tried to promote in 2014 on the land of the old Focus factory, located between the neighborhoods of Bufalà and Morera. Despite a plenary agreement in 2016, until this legislature the construction has not been unraveled, with a budget of 12.5 million. A project that Albiol will give continuity to after reviewing it.

Before all this, the new municipal government must bring order to the City Council, which –as the workers themselves admit– “is in technical bankruptcy”, which prevents investing the remaining treasury, which amounts to 120 million euros. In most sections there is a lack of qualified personnel and the administrative paralysis will slow down new initiatives, such as promoting the demolition of the Mobba factory once the judicial process is finished, the urbanization of Alfons XIII avenue –a basic artery of the city– or reforming the police station of the Urban Guard, a project of 1.5 million euros.

With the recovery of the government in the hands of Junts per Sant Cugat, after the parenthesis of the tripartite mandate (ERC-PSC-CUP), there are urban projects that will be paralyzed or reconsidered.

The main one is Ragull Centre, a 10,000-square-meter plot in the Sant Francesc neighborhood and the Can Magí industrial estate, owned by Laboratorios Ferrer, where the outgoing government planned to build 118 homes (42 protected), a 1,600-square-meter supermarket and another 1,600 for commercial premises, 2,800 for equipment and 300 parking spaces. The controversy that was created in the opposition –mainly in Junts– arose from the height of the residential buildings, initially planned to be 11 floors and later lowered to eight.

The future mayor, Josep Maria Vallès (Junts), assures La Vanguardia that “Ragull Center will not be built as planned, with these very high blocks, because it goes against the city model that Mayor Aymerich already planned in 1987 and that followed Recoder, Conesa and Fortuny. You have to bet on social housing, but also lower the buildable ceiling and maintain the quality of life we ​​have ”, he underlines.

“We will find a new formula,” he announces. Junts filed a contentious-administrative appeal against the Ragull Center, which has been admitted for processing, with which Vallès believes that he has “good arguments” to stop the project.

Another of the controversial points of the tripartite and that Vallès will quarantine is the construction of the La Mirada school in the Volpelleres forest, whose works have been temporarily stopped by the courts at the request of environmentalists.

“As an opposition, we have abstained from voting, but as a government we cannot sit idly by, and until the courts decide, we are going to accompany and help these families with children in modules for too long,” Vallès affirms. “We will assume the extra cost of the catering, about 14,000 euros, we will expand the patio and create shaded areas. In parallel, we will study other possible locations or expand the Leonardo da Vinci institute ”, he assures.