While the city tries to recover from this week's electoral upheavals, there are constants on the street that do not change: dirt and the palpable remains of chronic incivility, increased when the real population of Barcelona increases as a result of cheap tourism. As is mandatory, the new municipal administration must be granted the statutory grace period for the implementation of its management. In any case, there are hopeful steps from Mayor Collboni on the position that the Consistory will adopt against incivility. The mayor has the will to toughen certain aspects of the civility ordinance that he launched in 2006 – and which is now called the coexistence ordinance – so that the panorama on public roads is not so bleak.
As you must have already known, a few weeks ago Jaume Collboni visited the Guàrdia Urbana and the cleaning services, quite a declaration of intent for someone who promised to have a cleaner and safer city. And the mayor will do well to take the matter seriously and make it a non-negotiable element, even if in the future he may need to return to the fold of pacts with political forces that are not so much in favor of order in the public space. Several problems are added that, together, generate that despicable appearance of the streets with overflowing garbage containers, pavements that need a facelift more than a washdown, traces of urine and other excellences.
On the one hand, the City Council must ensure that compliance with the expensive cleaning contract is real and efficient. And, on the other hand, it will be necessary to put the bell on the cat to control more uncivil behaviors and punish them with the necessary firmness, not as is the case today. To give an example, if urinating in the street or leaving uncontrolled garbage is observed by an agent (difficult) and issues a fine, then getting the payment for that infraction is a more difficult mission to achieve seeing Carles Puigdemont giving cheers to Spain.
It is necessary to obtain that there are more fines and that these are of obligatory collection. Nationals and foreigners. A system will have to be devised so that the offender does not get off scot-free, because not stopping these behaviors only turns excess into a habit and, therefore, the extension of a form of conduct that makes the city ugly and makes it unbearable for those of us who pay taxes there.
Collboni must activate the machinery and achieve complicity with other administrations. The Generalitat will have to bet on expanding its police force in Barcelona, and it will have to recover supra-municipal control systems (Area Metropolitana, Diputación de Barcelona) so that the pressure of decorum works.
