The judicial vicissitudes of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, its electoral regulations and its internal movements have evolved into a mess only understandable by a few specialists, almost addicted to camerology, or as the saying goes "only suitable for very coffee growers".
Partial elections are being held today to cover a loss in plenary, with the novelty that they are carried out with the electoral regulations of... 2006. Because the last regulations, the one that allowed the current governing bodies to be constituted, have been annulled by the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia with a resolution against which there is no appeal.
Today the vacancy in group 8-1, one of the so-called epigraphs, which in this case includes trade and repair companies, will be filled. Although two candidates were registered, in the end only one of them attended: Cotxes Rovira, from a businessman linked to Eines de País, the pro-independence team that has governed the Chamber since 2018.
There is no news on this front, since the vacant position was also left by a member of Eines de País (Parkdale Invest). The other candidate has preferred to resign arguing that he preferred to withdraw from a process whose legality may be called into question and there are very few months left for the next elections, scheduled in principle for next May.
The new mess is served. Just yesterday, the Staff Pavillon company returned to the fray, which has managed to annul the decree of the previous elections. He has sent two letters, addressed to the president of the institution, Mònica Roca, and to the Minister of Business, Roger Torrent, urging them to suspend today's elections and warning that “their result will be null”. Because, among other things, the 2006 regulation that is now used does not provide for the coverage of vacancies with partial elections and is not adapted to the current basic regulations.
Staff Pavillion, owned by Xavier Vallhonrat, urges Roca and Torrent to suspend "this election and any other procedure that may affect the operation and development of the cameras." Meanwhile, the Chamber argues that in today's procedure it follows the instructions of the "protective administration", that is, the Department of Business.
The Generalitat, for its part, has already published the new decree to regulate future elections. A priori, little news, except that the delegation of votes is prohibited. And the controversial figure of the auditor with the capacity to annul votes is maintained, as in the previous elections. For the most suspicious, with the aggravating circumstance that this auditor will be appointed by the Consell de Cambres and not by the Generalitat as in 2018.
In short, far from calming down, the controversy and the noise around the Chamber are amplified, when the echo of last June's plenary session still resonates when, for the first time, the big company took the floor to express its rejection of the political course, with adherence to the Consell de la República and the removal of the Bourbon crown from the institution's coat of arms.
