The new mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, repeated during the electoral campaign that he wanted to be the heir to the management tradition of the socialist mayors who preceded him (Narcís Serra, Pasqual Maragall, Joan Clos and Jordi Hereu) until they lost in 2011. the elections and handed over the mayoral baton to the convergent Xavier Trias. Collboni is being faithful to that purpose and reproduces performances by his predecessors, especially Maragall.
Last week he announced that every month he would move his activity as mayor to one of the ten districts of Barcelona. This initiative that has been baptized as L'alcalde a prop Teu (The mayor near you) began in Sant Martí and consists of arranging street visits with the entities and moving all the usual meetings that it has to the Casa Gran in the square Sant Jaume. Some wrong-thinking mind has suggested that this temporary displacement of the mayor's office is done to escape the hell of reaching Plaza Sant Jaume due to the eternal works on Via Laietana. The majority of councilors use the official car and suffer the same ordeal as the rest of us to go to the office.
But let's go back to tradition. The approach of the mayor to the citizens is an update of what Pasqual Maragall did during his mandate at the City Council. The Olympic mayor would stay one or two nights at a neighbor's house in the neighborhoods and live with them to learn first-hand about their problems and concerns. These meetings were held without lights or stenographers, but they allowed the mayor to take the emotional temperature of the people of Barcelona.
In the same line of recovering old ideas of the socialist mayors of Barcelona, Collboni has rescued metropolitan governance in recent days. Once again it was Pasqual Maragall who tried to go further in this matter until the president of the Generalitat at the time, Jordi Pujol, clipped his wings and dissolved the Metropolitan Corporation of Barcelona. The trigger was the announcement that this corporation would have an anthem and a flag. Pujol saw a dangerous counterpower for the Generalitat and cut his losses. That was in 1987. Now, over the years and with municipal experience, there is a broad consensus that there must be greater coordination in the management of the metropolitan region.
In this sense, Collboni raised the issue again when he stated that the governance of the Barcelona area must involve the transfer of powers from the municipalities and the Generalitat itself to the metropolitan entity. That is the key and, at the same time, the main obstacle that has never been overcome. Which mayor or which president of the Generalitat will give up part of his power? The answer to this question is found in the silence of the metropolitan mayors, most of them socialists like Collboni, after the proposal of the mayor of Barcelona last week. History repeats itself.
