Next Thursday, May 2, Barcelona City Council will have the largest budgets in its history, a total of 3,807 million euros in cash, 5.9% more than in 2023. Getting to this point will not have been easy . The municipal accounts for this year will be automatically approved, with a delay of more than four months, after the majority of the opposition made the two attempts proposed by the minority government of Jaume Collboni fail, first at the end of last year and then , secondly, the month of March.
Thursday marks the deadline of 30 business days since the socialist councilor lost the question of confidence and the possibility arose for the opposition to present an alternative candidate for mayor, an option that, as expected, has not merited any consideration by the hypothetical interested parties, not a single exploratory meeting, not even an elevator conversation. And marrying the interests of Junts, BComú, PP and Vox is something that only fits into a diabolical mind. At most, the combination of antagonistic forces, such as the one that occurred in the plenary session last Friday between Junts and BComú, only serves to confirm the “loneliness” of the mayor in a merely symbolic disapproval.
Jaume Collboni breathes a sigh of relief, not because he harbored any fears about his future in the mayor's office but because of the fact that very soon, in four days, he will say goodbye to the restrictions imposed by the extension of the 2023 budget that he was forced to sign. December 28th. “We will have an availability of 3.8 billion, a budget that allocates 438 million to social policies and 944 million to investments,” recalls the mayor in conversation with La Vanguardia.
In Collboni's opinion, the eventful trajectory followed by these budgets, which have the endorsement of 15 of the 41 councilors of the City Council (10 from the PSC and 5 from ERC) shows that "there is no serious alternative." “If you block the budgets it is because you have an alternative for content and government, the most rational thing would have been to enter into the agreement,” says the first mayor. But that will soon be a thing of the past. In short, his predecessors in office, Xavier Trias and Ada Colau, also had to sometimes go through the question of trust to approve the municipal accounts.
The socialist mayor hopes that, once the Catalan elections of May 12 are over, which will be linked in the best of cases only with the European elections of June 9, the tensions that have been experienced this first year of mandate in the City Council of Barcelona to relax and “a governance dynamic is installed” that the uncertainty surrounding the future of the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, does not exactly help to pay for.
Jaume Collboni wants to refute the opposition's accusations about the lack of dialogue. He uses an internal report that reveals that during the months he has been in charge of the Consistory, 30% more initiatives and files have been approved than in the same period of the previous mandate, then with a broader government (BComú PSC) and with quite stable support from ERC.
Collboni is about to have the budgets he wanted. But has the time come to expand his government with the incorporation of a partner? The socialist mayor does not hide his belief that “the most logical thing” would be the entry of Esquerra Republicana into a coalition government, of course not before the electoral panorama becomes clear, “but I am not the one who has to decide.” The incorporation of ERC into the municipal government is, today, the only option that is on the horizon. There is no possibility of the commons of former mayor Ada Colau joining in, who since practically the minute after Jaume Collboni's investiture – which they and the PP promoted – have maintained a far from fluid relationship, at times hostile, with the socialists.
The city has become accustomed to being governed by a minority and it does not seem that this trend will be broken at any time during this term, at least in the short and medium term. Collboni does not seem bothered by this. In fact, since he became mayor he has moved with some comfort, applying the textbook formula of the minority ruler: promoting those aspects of municipal management that do not require the support of other groups – the most notable example is the Pla Endreça. , with the reinforcement of cleaning and maintenance services in public spaces – and postpone for a better time thornier issues and in which the agreement is more laborious. This is the case of the revision of the rule that obliges promoters and builders to allocate 30% of new works or major housing renovations to social apartments. The socialists included this review in the Municipal Action Program (PAM) 2023-2027 that the opposition overthrew a few days ago. They are not willing to give up in this field.
“We cannot allow ourselves to have this issue blocked because the results of the current regulations have been very poor,” says Collboni with the firm intention of putting this issue on the table when the end of the electoral cycle allows everyone to focus on the issues. local and metropolitan in nature. The 30% revision will require, the mayor of Barcelona recalls, the support of other groups and at this point no one is unaware that an alliance with the municipal group of Junts is much more viable – the future departure of Xavier Trias has not of being an obstacle – than with BComú, which in no way will renounce what was one of its measures most marked by the personal seal of Ada Colau in the first of her two terms as head of the City Council.
With the approval of the municipal budgets next Thursday, many of the projects that the socialist government had locked in the exit drawer will be able to begin galloping. "Now we are in a period of certain silence, forced by the calling of elections, but all these projects will be activated because we will already have the corresponding budget items," says the mayor. Jaume Collboni places emphasis on the chapter on investments. Maintaining the budget extension would have condemned the availability of approximately half of the resources that the approval of the new budgets will release. “Non-approval – comments the first mayor of Barcelona – would have had consequences. It is highly irresponsible to have the money and not be able to execute the investments.” Projects such as the ongoing renovation of the Rambla, the coverage of the Ronda de Dalt or one that the mayor is particularly excited about, the extension of the promenade in the Mar Bella, will benefit from the new budgets.
