The new mayor of Barcelona, ??Jaume Collboni, repeated during the electoral campaign that he wanted to be the heir to the management tradition of the socialist mayors who preceded him (Narcís Serra, Pasqual Maragall, Joan Clos and Jordi Hereu) until 2011 they lost the elections and handed over the mayoralty to the convergent Xavier Trias. Collboni is being faithful to this purpose and reproduces performances of his predecessors, especially Pasqual Maragall.
Last week he announced that every month he would move his activity as mayor to one of the ten districts of Barcelona. This initiative, which he has named “The mayor near you”, began in Sant Martí and consists of arranging street visits with the entities and moving all the regular meetings that he has to the Casa Gran in Plaça Sant Jaume . Some ill-thought-out mind has suggested that this temporary displacement of the mayor’s office is done to escape the hell that means reaching Plaça Sant Jaume due to the eternal works on Via Laietana. Most councilors use the official car and suffer the same viacrucis as the rest of the mortals to go to the office.
But let’s go back to tradition. The mayor’s approach to citizens is an update of what Pasqual Maragall did during his mandate at the City Council. The Olympic mayor would stay for a night or two at a neighbor’s house in the neighborhoods and live there to learn firsthand about their problems and concerns. These meetings were held without lights or stenographers, but they allowed the mayor to take the mental temperature of the people of Barcelona.
In the same line of recovering old ideas of the socialist mayors of Barcelona, ??Collboni has rescued the metropolitan governance in recent days. Again it was Pasqual Maragall who tried to get further in this matter until the president of the Generalitat at the time, Jordi Pujol, clipped his wings and dissolved the Metropolitan Corporation of Barcelona. The trigger was the announcement that that corporation would have an anthem and a flag. Pujol saw a dangerous counter-power for the Generalitat and cut it dry. That was in 1987. Now, after the years and with municipal experience, there is a broad consensus that more coordination is needed in the management of the metropolitan region.
In this sense, Collboni mentioned the beast again when he stated that the governance of the Barcelona area must go through the transfer of powers from the municipalities and the Generalitat itself to the metropolitan body. This is the key and, at the same time, the main reef that has never been saved. Which mayor or president of the Generalitat will cede part of their power? The answer to this question can be found in the silence of the metropolitan mayors, most of them socialists like Collboni, after the proposal of the mayor of Barcelona last week. History repeats itself.
