First unfavorable ruling against the green axes of Eixample promoted at the end of the previous municipal mandate by the government chaired by Ada Colau. The judge of the contentious administrative court number 5 of Barcelona has upheld the appeal filed by the Union of Tourist Commercial Hubs of Barcelona (Barcelona Oberta) against the agreement adopted by the government commission of Barcelona City Council on May 26, 2022 for the redevelopment of Consell de Cent street and has ruled on the revocation of said agreement.
This decision, which will be appealed by the current government, chaired by the socialist Jaume Collboni, “condemns the administration to return the actions to the state in which they were prior to its approval.”
The ruling opens a conflict that is difficult to resolve given that it comes at a time when the redevelopment works on Consell de Cent Street are practically finished, only lacking small touch-ups in some sections.
The first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, announced that the City Council will appeal the ruling. It is the only way to avoid greater evils that can entail a huge economic cost to the Consistory. In this sense, Bonet expressed her “full confidence” in the legal services of the City Council, which on her day endorsed the procedure followed to approve the project, and affirmed that there are “sufficient arguments” to refute the judge's decision. . However, the socialist deputy mayor did not refrain from veiledly criticizing BComú's attitude in betting on a transformative urbanism but built from dialogue and consensus, not from confrontation, because the consequence is judicialization."
The socialists were part of the city government when the project was approved, although they repeatedly expressed their deep disagreement with it. In the campaign for the elections on May 28, the candidate Collboni warned that if he became mayor he would not develop new green axes projects linked to the Eixample superblocks plan and announced that his green alternative would be the recovery of new interiors of apple.
In the ruling, the judge has assessed the plaintiffs' complaint in the sense that the aforementioned works in fact represent a modification of the provisions of the General Metropolitan Plan of Barcelona and that the legally established procedure for said modification has not been observed.
This circumstance, stated in the judge's writing, "gives rise to the nullity of the contested act in accordance with article 47 of law 39/2015, because the legally established procedure has been totally and absolutely dispensed with." The judge specifies that “the planned works do not respect the functionality and uses that have been granted to them by the PGM.”
The judge affirms that the previous reason alone would be sufficient to not enter into other considerations. However, she does it and somehow increases the intensity of the blow inflicted on the agreement adopted on her day by the government commission. Thus, she refers to the lack of a report or study on possible alternatives and other economic and social studies that should be taken into account. She also censures the fragmentation of the work into several sections and refers to the organization of mobility. She emphasizes that "these projects must respect the planning provisions and at no time can they be modified by provisions or agreements that local entities may adopt under the protection of environmental or road safety or mobility regulations." She also denounces that the green axis "stops fulfilling the main function of the local road network."
The judge understands the allegations presented by the City Council chaired by Ada Colau, in which it defended that the works intended to convert Consell de Cent into a pacified civic road. However, she adds that the premise of mobility and the environment cannot imply that, to achieve a sustainable urban planning model, planning provisions can be modified through an ordinary works project.
The judge gives the Barcelona City Council a period of 15 days to file an appeal that the deputy mayor Laia Bonet has already announced will, in fact, be presented and that the administrative contentious chamber of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia will have to resolve. .
In any case, the court ruling opens a conflict of unsuspected dimensions. The former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, was quick to demand that Jaume Collboni's government appeal the judge's decision. Through Instagram, the leader of the commons wondered if yesterday was the day of the Holy Innocents and expressed her surprise. “When a court goes against common sense and the defense of the people, it suffers a serious problem,” said Colau, who described the ruling as an action typical of “climate denialism.”
Along the same lines, the former deputy mayor of Urban Planning, Janet Sanz, defended the legality of her project and recalled the existence of a technical report from the Generalitat that endorsed that it was not necessary to modify the General Metropolitan Plan. According to Sanz, undoing the actions carried out on Consell de Cent Street now “goes against common sense.”
For his part, the spokesperson for Trias per Barcelona, Jordi Martí Galbis, highlighted that the court validates his group's theses against the “unilateral and botched urban planning of Ada Colau.” “It is devastating news for Eixample, Barcelona and the municipal coffers,” said the spokesperson for the main opposition group. Likewise, the leader of the popular group, Daniel Sirera, recalled that in January he already asked Colau to stop the works. "He ignored me. Now who pays for it? he asked himself.
Very different was the reaction of the ERC spokesperson, Jordi Coronas, who raised the effect that this ruling may have on the powers of the City Council in urban planning and mobility matters. Coronas wondered if, given the circumstances, actions such as those on Enric Granados Street, Portal de l'Àngel and Gaudí Avenue should also be reversed.
The result of the ruling that was announced yesterday contrasts with other judicial resolutions on the green axes of the Eixample in which the magistrates ended up endorsing the actions of the Colau government and even rejected requests for a precautionary stoppage of the works in progress.
