Municipal elections will be held in May 2023. The commons and its predecessor Initiative for Catalonia (IC), will have governed Barcelona for 40 of the 44 years of local democracy. When IC co-directed the city with the PSC, it never conditioned its presence in the government to the abandonment of centrality or the refusal to build the city from the sum of efforts of administration and society. Now it is the PSC that co-governs with the commons, of which it can be affirmed that never before have so few governed so much, and also in such an absolute and sectarian manner. Colau obtained only 10 councilors three years ago, going back in the revalidation of his management at the polls, and it was not even the most voted electoral list.
If in Spain it is Pedro Sánchez who decides and Podemos who poses, in Barcelona the socialists govern, but who resolves the essential questions of the city is the gesticulating and radical profile of its mayor. In the urban film, the poly small is Ada Colau from a worse municipal government, and in whose script the good cop the PSC, is the right hand of the extreme left.
It is difficult to become an alternative when Ada Colau has been endorsed and supported
There are two ways to not be in local government. One, being in the opposition, and the other, being part of it without conditioning it in a decisive or strategic way. And this is what happens when you are co-responsible for tax blows, tactical urban planning, carphobia government, the bungling of the low emission zone (ZBE), the filth of the city, the paralysis of the airport or the restrictive use plans and the prohibitions on economic activities, when not the partisan appointment of the Síndic de Greuges, or the scarcity of social housing built.
There are two large blocks of government under the direct tutelage of the PSC. One is economic promotion, where the will of Jaume Collboni does not compensate for the dissuasive effects on investors and entrepreneurs in the face of so much legal uncertainty, insolvency, bureaucracy and obstacles. The other major management area of it is the effective fight once morest crime and incivility, which continues to be a pending issue.
© Àlex Garcia
PHOTO ALEX GARCIA ADA COLAU AND JAUME COLLBONI AT THE PLENARY SESSION OF BARCELONA CITY COUNCIL 2021/05/28
In the countdown to the elections, everything points to a socialist unchecking of the mayor for electoral reasons, not for the city, but without a break in government. It is difficult to set yourself up as an alternative when she has endorsed and supported Ada Colau from your seats. After years with her, they will soon go from being silent, that is, to supporting her nonsense, to a critical loquacity to cover up so much complicity and before a primaries for the designation of candidacy that might still be uncertain.
The PSC has powerful economic engines (the CZFB or the airport) and institutional ones (the government of the AMB, the Provincial Council or Spain itself) to promote a city of momentum without being part of Barcelona and to add its initiatives from the opposition and the blockade of the excesses of Ada Colau.
I will not be the one to tell you what to do and less not being a socialist, but rather your detractor. I allow myself to make this reflection thinking regarding what is best for my city and in the conviction that it must be a capital vector to unseat the mayor with alternative majorities of government and governability, and in which the center-right must be the necessary stone angular to unseat extreme populism and at the same time guarantee that the change in the city council is not to turn the Casa Gran into an independentist house.
Barcelona must turn to centrality, rigor and good sense. It is necessary to unite the efforts of the city, different acronyms and diverse sentiments in favor of the sums for a better Barcelona that unites.
