The Coordinadora Vecinal del Besòs, before the publication of the Metropolitan Strategy of Besòs promoted by the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, is pleased that many of the proposals coincide with the agreement signed in December with the mayors of Badalona, Barcelona, Montcada or Reixac , Sant Adrià de Besòs and Santa Coloma de Gramenet and that the set of administrations is aligned in governance and the assumption of responsibility towards the territory, but they are suspicious of its execution.
Neighborhood representatives do not share the confidence in institutional agreement, nor in the co-participation of institutions in decision-making. They keep a sour memory of the Besòs Agenda approved in 2017, which was never endowed with resources so that the Consorci del Besòs could promote it.
Since 2017 and until the neighborhood movement assumed the direction of the process to unify priorities and resources from 2020, which culminated in 2022 with said agreement, five years have passed where the various supra-municipal institutions have been unable to generate agreements among themselves and direct a process with a territorial approach, an urban and social reality that exceeds the response possibilities of the majority of municipalities in the area. That is why the neighborhoods of Besòs view this announcement of investment rain with skepticism, which has not yet been reflected in the budgets of the different Administrations, although its announcement, on the other hand, may spur it to be reflected in the electoral programs.
The Metropolitan Strategy in Besòs that the AMB presented with the city councils requires an investment of 500 million euros, leaving out the border neighborhoods of the city of Barcelona inserted in the same Consortium: Besòs, Pau, Verneda or Maresme -the first of them, lacking resources from the Generalitat to proceed with its comprehensive rehabilitation-. For this reason, they ask that the reference scope include all the neighborhoods in a situation of high social vulnerability in the territory.
In addition, they require each of the Administrations to clarify what their budgetary contribution is in a common roadmap and how their requests for European funds are channeled. And as far as AMB is concerned, they require it to be more proactive with supra-municipal neighborhood organizations and channel their participation in debates on priorities. "The Baix Besos Neighborhood Coordinator is not a UTE, a tactical union to achieve social improvements, but rather a strategic union in a territory that covers five municipalities" they point out, while requesting a meeting with the President of the AMB, Ada Colau, and The Executive President, MR. Balmon, so that the recent metropolitan strategy can be explained to us and our thoughts on it can be heard, as well as the AMB's requests for European funds in this area.
