The mayoress of Valencia, María José Catalá, will shortly appoint Rita Barberá as "posthumous honorary mayor" of the city that she governed for 24 years. It was an electoral commitment from Catalá, which this Friday announced the start of the procedures with the approval of the proposal in the Local Government Board.
Along with the title that will be granted to Barberá, who died in 2016, the Bridge of Flowers will also bear his name. The structure, inaugurated in December 2002, is the work of engineer Manuel Biedma and was a proposal always linked to the former mayor, whose maintenance with natural flowers was not without controversy due to its high cost.
"Citizens ask for recognition of the woman who was mayor of the city for so many years and who transformed the city of Valencia", declared Catalá, for whom the appointment will be "an act of justice and democratic memory of this city, which must be of everyone and not just a 'little parcel' of the left (...) It has not had it and it is unfair, it is also a gesture that as a companion we also owe it", declared the first mayor of Valencia, who collects the baton from Barberá as the second popular mayoress of the capital of the Turia. Likewise, Catalá recalled that he previously asked the Government of the Rialto, "but they did not want to do it."
María José Catalá has also explained that the start of the procedures coincides in time with the anniversary of the birth of the former mayor, who next Sunday, July 16, would have turned 75. "It is good and fair that the mayors of Valencia have recognition in their city," Catalá has defended.
The historic mayoress of Valencia and territorial senator for the Valencian Community since July 2015, died in November 2016 in a hotel in Madrid, two days after her last public appearance, when she had to go to testify before the Supreme Court as a investigated for an alleged crime of money laundering in the municipal group of the PP in the Valencia City Council in the framework of 'Operation Taula', derived from the 'Imelsa case'.
