The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, during the inauguration of the remodeling of the Martorell Museum, last week. Massimiliano Minocri
Urgent and surprise call this Wednesday at Barcelona City Council.
Noon.
He left Cent and the senior staff of the Consistory.
In this scenario, Mayor Jaume Collboni has launched an order and has announced that he will put the second draft budget for this year to a vote in an extraordinary commission next Tuesday.
With the vote, the socialist seeks to force the opposition groups to make a move (supporting him or turning their backs on him) in the vote on the accounts, as a prior to a possible government alliance for the entire mandate.
With only 10 councilors in a City Council where the majority is in 21 councillors, the most logical possibilities of support are the addition of Junts (11 councillors), or with the combination of the commons (nine) and ERC (five).
In the event that the first vote goes wrong, Collboni has the option of resorting to the question of confidence: a mechanism by which he presents his accounts in plenary, and if within a month an alternative majority is not articulated to take away the mayor's office. -an unlikely option with current arithmetic-, are automatically approved.
Former mayor Ada Colau resorted to this formula twice in her first term, in 2017 and 2018.
The mayor communicated his intention last night to the municipal groups after the Ciutat de Barcelona awards ceremony and asked them to allow them to be processed "out of responsibility and coherence" in projects that all parties have supported.
“My commitment was clear: Barcelona has a Government but it does not have a budget for 2024, my decision is to move forward with the approval, approving it this Thursday in the Government commission and taking it to an extraordinary commission next Tuesday the 20th,” Collboni said.
“Barcelona cannot stop, we are taking this step to provide new budgets and not lose any opportunity for the city,” he insisted on an issue that he sees as “transcendent.”
Seven months have passed since Collboni's investiture in extremis and he has stated that he wants to decide before spring whether to incorporate partners into the government or remain in the minority.
The socialists have always said that their preference is a “progressive agreement”, which would include the commons and ERC, but the mayor himself affirms that the Republicans veto Colau's party.
Another option, which has become advanced, is a sociovergence, with Junts, the municipal group led by former mayor Xavier Trias, who is waiting for an outcome (whatever it may be), to withdraw from active politics.
Until now, both the commoners and the neoconvergents have demanded to jointly negotiate the numbers and an eventual Government.
Collboni presented his first budget in October.
Expansive accounts, which in the last decade have grown year after year and reached 3,735 million, 4% more than in 2023. The investment was also a record, 777 million euros that amounted to 905 if those of the Municipal Institute of the House.
On a more political level, in that project the socialist government squeezed the taxes linked to tourism.
But the partners with the most weight to support the bills, Junts and the commons, turned their backs on the mayor, who withdrew them before the first vote at the end of October, so as not to lose it.
The accounts were thus frozen, which led to the formality of extending those for 2023 before the end of the year.
With the extension, the city left 17% of the planned investments in the air, 117 million euros.
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