The City Council of Mataró (Maresme) has approved by majority an institutional statement of the municipal group En Comú Podem, criticizing the decision of the Department of Social Rights of the Generalitat to leave aside the most disadvantaged territories of the region in the program “Neighborhoods with Futur” a pilot project to promote social and urban policies. The declaration has received the favorable vote of PSC, ERC, Junts, ECP and CUP. The municipal group of Vox has voted against and the PP has abstained.
The majority of Mataró councilors consider that neighborhoods such as Santa María, Santa Anna-Tió or Cotet de Premià, Carme de Pineda de Mar and neighborhoods such as Rocafonda, Palau and Cerdanyola de Mataró, meet the typology of areas with a high risk of social exclusion. Vulnerable areas that have grown from expansive urbanization processes with serious structural problems “that receive the impacts of social and economic crises more strongly.”
The neighborhoods mentioned in the institutional declaration, in the opinion of Mataró politicians, have important social needs. Thus, they detail that the Palau neighborhood has 41.6% of the population at risk of poverty, while in the area around Cerdanyola Park it is 46% and in the southern section of the Rocafonda neighborhood it is 48.52%. Which means that almost half of the population in this area of ??Rocafonda is below 60% of the median income, or in other words “half is at risk of poverty.”
Given the situation, Mataró demands that the Generalitat promote a “new Barris Law” with the aim of reducing social inequalities. In this sense, they regret that the Catalan administration “excludes and forgets our region” that fits into this type of community intervention.
For all that, they demand that Social Rights reconsider the highly complex territories of the pilot project “Neighborhoods with Future” and include those of Maresme. That the Technical Office of Neighborhoods and Towns be created to support the drafting of projects and that the Law of Green Neighborhoods be promoted.
