The political course has started very altered. This hectic climate contrasts with the oasis in which Barcelona lives politically after the change in the mayor's office. Mayor Jaume Collboni will reach his first hundred days in office next Monday, just when the Mercè festivities end. His first summer has been placid despite the small minority of government that he has solved with the appointment of commissioners to alleviate the work of his ten councilors. The ship works thanks to the presidential system that grants the mayor great executive power and waiting for one of the crucial moments of the mandate: the approval, or not, of fiscal ordinances and budgets.
Collboni knows that it is essential to obtain the support of other political groups and that this agreement for municipal accounts can condition a stable government pact for the entire legislature. The mayor has three options. The first and most difficult is to try variable geometry and agree with both. It is the least viable because the groups that aspire to form a government will not allow it. The second and third options are antagonistic. On one side is the winner of the elections, Xavier Trias, who with his 11 councilors would allow Collboni to gain the absolute majority (21) and ensure a peaceful mandate. The former mayor is willing to close a governance pact to prevent the former mayor and leader of BComú, Ada Colau, from re-entering the city government. The same thing happens with Colau, who has already warned Collboni that he will not support him in the budgets if he does not first close a government agreement with her and leave Trias in the opposition. Both Trias and Colau do not want to leave the City Council until the alliance that governs Barcelona for these four years is clarified. The problem with an agreement with the commons is that its nine councilors are insufficient to achieve an absolute majority and would need the five ERC councilors who agreed with Trias on an investiture agreement, which ultimately failed. That is, the mayor would have to recover the tripartite that already governed the city in the past.
However, there are at least three issues that condition the Barcelona pact. The first is the eventual agreement for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez and the role played by the City Council portfolio. For this reason, Collboni insists on agreeing on budgets first and then talking about stable agreements. This way he gains time to see how the political picture looks. The second issue is in the upcoming Catalan elections where the PSC aspires to win again and in which it has ERC as its main rival, especially in Barcelona and the metropolitan area. And the third is skin and substance due to the bad relationship between PSC and Comuns after the last municipal mandate that contrasts with the proximity with the Trias group in key aspects for the city of an economic and growth nature. The coin is in the air.
