Today, at the meeting of the bilateral Generalitat-Town Hall commission to be held at the town hall, the municipal government of Barcelona will request the Catalan government's help to minimize, as far as possible, the negative effects of the recovery of tourism massive in the city, which is expected to be final this coming summer.
At the meeting, which will be chaired by the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, and the Minister of the Presidency, Laura Vilagrà, the municipal officials will ask those of the Generalitat, which is responsible for passenger transport regulations, to regulate practically until the prohibition pedicab activity. Likewise, they will raise to an institutional level the proposal made last week by Mayor Colau to set up a table with the presence of the City Council, the Generalitat and the Port of Barcelona to study the possibility of limiting, along the lines imposed by the Balearic authorities, the number of cruise passengers making a stopover in the city.
These two requests are the main novelties on the agenda of a forum for debate and decision between the Generalitat and the City Council that has not met for a year, in June 2022, shortly after Pere Aragonès was sworn in as president. Outside of this meeting, at the next security meeting, the two administrations are expected to assess the growing security needs that, at the gates of summer, are posed by the avalanche of visitors – and with them habitual criminals – and the very intense public space.
The meeting between the Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat takes place at a time when relations between the two administrations present an unequal balance, with good harmony in some areas but with the classic disagreements in matters such as housing and a tension that has gone increase in recent months in areas such as education.
In the interview published by La Vanguardia last Sunday, Ada Colau lamented the breaches of a series of commitments made by Pere Aragonès with the mayor on May 27 last year at the institutional meeting they held after the arrival of the ERC leader at the Presidency of the Generalitat.
The City Council, as the mayor made clear, is especially upset with the Generalitat for the low production of public housing in the city, which Ada Colau estimated at just 30 units in contrast to the 2,300 of municipal authorship that systematically appear in the accounts that it presents the Consistory. In the aforementioned interview, Colau also complained about the Generalitat's lack of investment in school facilities in Barcelona and pointed out that, although the Catalan administration is competent in this matter, the City Council is forced to make up for its miserliness by contributing 9 of every 10 euros. However, it does not seem that the City Council is going to include this demand today, which is already running through the channels of the Consorci d'Educació, in its grievance memorial. According to municipal sources, he will instead express his concern about the deterioration of the relationship between the department headed by Minister Josep González Cambray and the educational community.
At the meeting that will take place at the City Hall, the two governments will review the impact of the Next Generation European recovery funds in Barcelona. The City Council budgeted for this year 150 million euros of income from this extraordinary contribution. Most of this money, around 140 million euros, has already been approved at this time, a circumstance that the Consistory attributes in part to the effective management of the funds by the Spanish Government. Projects such as the Ciutadella del Coneixement or the transformation of the Tres Chimeneas del Besòs, which have the green light on both sides of Plaça Sant Jaume, are among those that will benefit from this source of community funding, which will also represent an important boost to housing rehabilitation.
Contrary to what happens in housing matters, in other aspects of political management the relationship between Barcelona City Council and the Generalitat has been developing smoothly for months. This is what is happening, for example, in the field of infrastructure, with the resumption of work on the central section of L9 of the metro, paralyzed for many years, or with the agreement between both parties that has allowed the start of the Tram connection through Diagonal Avenue.
Other reasons for discord between the two main Catalan institutions that in the past caused not a few disputes currently live in a situation of absolute calm. According to the latest report, dated February 28, the Generalitat's debt pending collection by the City Council is at very reasonable levels, a total of 32.93 million euros.
The reactivation of the bilateral commission is one of the commitments assumed by Pere Aragonès and Ada Colau at the meeting a year ago. That first contact between the two highest representatives of the Generalitat and the City Council put an end to a period of disagreements and disagreements, which coincided with the presidency of Quim Torra. Previously, the Mayor of Barcelona, as she herself has acknowledged on more than one occasion, maintained a very cordial relationship with President Carles Puigdemont. In that first interview, Ada Colau and Pere Aragonès agreed to point out the lack of public housing, the need to have affordable rental flats and the management of evictions as urgent issues. The urgency remains the same.
