First unfavorable ruling against the green axes of the Eixample promoted at the end of the previous municipal mandate by the government headed by Ada Colau. The magistrate of the administrative contentious court number 5 of Barcelona has assessed the appeal filed by the Unió d'Eixos Comercials Turístics de Barcelona (Barcelona Oberta) against the agreement adopted by the governing commission of the Barcelona City Council on May 26 2022 of the redevelopment of Carrer Consell de Cent and has sentenced the revocation of the aforementioned agreement.
The decision, which will be appealed by the current municipal government, chaired by the socialist Jaume Collboni, "condemns the administration to return the actions to the state they were in before approval".
The ruling opens up a conflict that is difficult to resolve, as it comes at a time when the redevelopment works on Carrer Consell de Cent are practically finished, only small details are missing in some sections.
The first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, announced that the Barcelona City Council will appeal against the sentence. It is the only way to avoid major problems that can have a huge economic cost for the Consistory. In this sense, Bonetva expressed "full confidence" in the City Council's legal services, which at the time endorsed the procedure followed to approve the project, and affirmed that there are "enough arguments" to refute the decision of the magistrate. Despite this, the socialist mayor did not refrain from criticizing BComú's attitude when he reaffirmed his commitment to transformative urban planning, "but built from dialogue and consensus, not from confrontation, because the consequence it is the judicialization".
The Socialists were part of the city government when the project was approved, although they repeatedly expressed deep disagreement with it. During the campaign for the May 28 elections, the candidate Collboni warned that if he were to become mayor he would not develop new green axis projects linked to the Eixample superblock plan and announced that the green alternative it would be the recovery of new island interiors.
In the sentence, the magistrate assessed the plaintiffs' complaint in the sense that the aforementioned works in fact entail a modification of the forecasts of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) of Barcelona and that the legally established procedure for the said modification.
This circumstance, it is stated in the judge's letter, "causes the contested act to be null and void in accordance with Article 47 of Law 39/2015, because it has been completely and absolutely dispensed with of the legally established procedure". The magistrate points out that "the projected works do not respect the functionality and uses that have been granted by the PGM".
The judge affirms that the previous reason would be sufficient by itself not to enter into other considerations. However, it does, and in some way increases the intensity of the slap that was nailed to the agreement adopted at the time by the government commission. So, it refers to the lack of a report or study on possible alternatives and other economic and social studies that should be taken into account. He also criticizes the fragmentation of the work into several sections and refers to the organization of mobility. He points out that "these projects must respect the planning forecasts and at no time can they be modified by forecasts or agreements that local entities can adopt under the protection of environmental or road safety or mobility regulations". He also denounces that the green axis "ceases to fulfill the main function of the local road network".
The judge understands the allegations presented by the City Council presided over by Ada Colau, in which they argued that the works were intended to turn Consell de Cent into a pacified civic thoroughfare. However, he adds that the premise of mobility and the environment cannot imply that, in order to achieve a model of sustainable urbanism, the forecasts of a plan 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, indeed, be presented and will have to be resolved by the administrative litigation room of the Superior Court of Justice of Catalonia.
In any case, the court ruling opens up a conflict of unsuspected dimensions. The former mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, hastened to demand that Jaume Collboni's government appeal against the magistrate's decision. Through Instagram, the leader of the commons wondered if yesterday was the day of the Holy Innocents and expressed surprise. "When a court goes against common sense and the defense of the people, it has a serious problem", said Colau, who described the sentence as an act typical of "climate denialism".
In the same line, the former mayor of Urbanism, Janet Sanz, defended the legality of the project and recalled the existence of a technical report from the Generalitat that endorsed that it was not necessary to modify the Metropolitan General Plan. According to Sanz, now undoing the actions carried out in Carrer Consell de Cent "goes against common sense".
For his part, the spokesman for Trias for Barcelona, Jordi Martí i Galbis, emphasized that the court validates his group's theses against the "unilateral and sloppy urbanism of Ada Colau". "It is devastating news for the Eixample, Barcelona and the municipal coffers," said the spokesperson of 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 didn't pay attention to me. Now who pays for it?”, he wondered.
The reaction of the ERC spokesperson, Jordi Coronas, was very different, and he spoke of the effect that the sentence may have on the powers of the City Council in the field of urban planning and mobility. Coronas wondered if, given the circumstances, it would also be necessary to reverse actions such as those on Carrer Enric Granados, Portal de l'Àngel and Avinguda Gaudí.
The result of the ruling that was announced yesterday contrasts with other court rulings on the green areas 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
