The negotiations surrounding the Barcelona City Council’s budgets have boosted relations between the city’s main political leaders. At the moment, the different councilors understand each other worse than ever. Here trust in others is on the ground.
Mayor Jaume Collboni will automatically approve his proposal for municipal accounts on May 2, after losing yesterday by a large majority the vote of confidence to which he submitted himself. Only the ERC councilors supported him, the only ones who would be more or less willing to take something with him.
The rest of the leaders have the mayor completely on board. They have no confidence in him. Xavier Trias is already tired of the strategic maneuvers, one step away from leaving Sant Jaume all at once with a resounding knock on the door. Trias stopped biting his tongue in the recent conference he delivered at the El Born cultural center. And since then he hides his discomfort less and less.
“I congratulate him for the spot – he said after the defense of the budgets made by deputy mayor Laia Bonet-. Today we are witnessing the failure of a mayor who only works to secure his seat. I had planned all this since the autumn. Not only did you not win the election, but a few months later you no longer have the support of those who invested you as mayor. It should turn red. All this is very serious. He is using tactics that have nothing to do with Barcelona’s interests.”
With Ada Colau, things are more personal. Surpassing the 300 and right votes still belongs to the ex-mayor, and also that the one who was her partner now questions her legacy. But what hurts him the most is that Jaume Collboni has ignored him, that he prefers solitude to his support. These days people close to the ex-mayor convey on the networks the idea that Collboni despises her because he is a misogynist, which is why he so often refers to Trias as mayor and Colau as councilor.
“The most surprising thing is that we reached this point when this government had two majorities to lean on, Trias and us. And in the end they only managed to articulate a minority with ERC. And on top of that, he makes me responsible for what happens here, in the Generalitat and in the State, just as he did in the previous plenary session when I had no right of reply”.
And the popular Daniel Sirera is increasingly regretting having facilitated that investiture. In the end only those from Vox seem willing to approach the PP. But Barcelona is not the plateau. Here certain attitudes isolate.
But the celebrations of the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia on May 12 and to a lesser extent, but also the European elections on June 9, will clarify the municipal horizon, mark the relations between the political parties, delimit the red lines at scale local And then in this yard they will all make their hearts strong and will be forced to understand each other in some way, because they will have no other choice and because above all it is their obligation. But they will not forget anything that is happening now.
What happens in the meantime is that the members of the opposition get along just as badly. Collboni submitted to a question of confidence because he is sure that the other groups will not be able to mount a motion of censure and an alternative candidacy for the mayor, and because in this way he can boast of fulfilling his commitments: Barcelona will have some new budgets this spring.
In truth, the mayor is following to the millimeter the road map he designed months ago, his pompous “step by step”. And just yesterday, in the final section of the corresponding extraordinary plenum, after receiving blows from all sides, after the approval of his budgets was finally on track, he insisted that his next objective is to expand the municipal executive, incorporate – there are new forces.
Those from ERC are the ones with the best chance of signing a government pact with the PSC. And this is already wearing them down. Trias, who was very forceful yesterday, said that he does not understand how the Republicans managed to seal a government pact with Juntes and after a few months sign a budget agreement with the person who broke everything.
And the commons, who got along with the republicans during the previous mandate, now consider them to be a docile sidekick at the service of the socialists. Suddenly, Junts and BComú, each in their own way, stopped seeing the republicans as ideal partners.
Fortunately, the succession of elections in the coming months will give them time to rebuild these damaged relationships. Yes, by no means is this rarity a gallery-facing imposture. It is enough to look at the tone of Trias as contained as exasperated. And also in Colau’s rough look. Seeing them now, can anyone really believe that Colau and Collboni were partners for so long? In addition, it has been a long time since Junts and BComú have been hailing their own, standing as their respective nemesis.
