Applying a heavy hand does not seem to the taste of the new mayor of Barcelona, ??at least from a lexical point of view. Jaume Collboni prefers to spin thin. He has been insisting for days that his main goal for this mandate is to “fix the city”. And the truth is that this very Catalan expression does not have an exact translation. When it comes to tidying up, we think about ordering with good taste, in harmony. The expression put order has harsher connotations.
But at the end of the day, the ways to achieve one thing or another are more or less the same. Mayor Collboni is ready to make a qualitative leap in safety, cleanliness and care of public space. It is aware that data is as important as the impressions of each citizen. And that one of the reasons for Ada Colau’s defeat was the discouragement of many people.
And in some way, chance and the calendar make this Friday’s popular Sant Joan celebrations the first litmus test of this era that the new mayor intends to usher in. “This festival is the gateway to a summer season that is expected to be complicated – said yesterday Albert Batlle, the renewed deputy mayor of Security of this city, in the presentation of the municipal device intended to guarantee the coexistence of citizens shortest night of the year–. It is very likely that we will have a tense and intense summer, characterized by the massive arrival of visitors. We will have to manage this flow of people. The City Council’s priority will be to fight against multi-recidivism and street vending”. The departure of the commons from the executive facilitates this subtle change of tone in the municipal discourse. Colau and his ilk never liked targeting street vendors without a permit. When they did it was reluctantly. And Collboni, on the other hand, when he looks back, one of his main reasons for pride is having banished bike taxis. Few thought he would make it.
Firecracker night is not what it used to be in terms of revelry and excess. The forecast is that around 60,000 people will approach the city’s beaches. At other times this record exceeded 100,000. But these last few weeks the Catalan capital is just recovering the number of visitors before the pandemic, and the never-desired effects of these increases have been hovering over the daily coexistence of the most central neighborhoods for weeks. We are talking about crowded streets, friends of the stranger, a saturated public space, street vendors without a permit, terraces with unauthorized tables, uncivil and loud drunks, urine and noise… .
Batlle was also the security officer in charge of these preparations in recent years, and the truth is that the special device designed for this Friday night is very similar to the previous ones. More than 400 officers of the Urban Guard, some in uniform and others in plainclothes. They will pay special attention to tinners’ warehouses and clandestine parties. The drones, which always make a fuss, will furrow the sky. The safe itineraries will be reinforced, so that no one spoils the party back home, on the way to public transport. Once again the purple dots will lend their help. Access to the Barceloneta neighborhood will be restricted so that comings and goings from the beach do not upset the neighbors. The beach bars will be forced to close at the usual time, around three in the morning, and on top of that they will not be able to hold special parties, just like last year. Alcohol and narcotics controls will ensure safety on particularly busy roads. That Saint John falls on a Friday will cause many to leave the city and others to come.
And at the end of the day, as is traditional, municipal and regional police will proceed to evacuate the beaches so they can clean them before the bathers arrive. More than 1,200 cleaning workers and around 600 vehicles will be dedicated to it. 5,000 bins and 56 additional containers will also be deployed.
