Barcelona does not know if in the first exercise of the mandate of Jaume Collboni as mayor he will have new budgets, which according to the deputy mayor’s project Jordi Valls They were to reach record figures of 3,735 million euros in spending and 777 million in investments. Before the refusal of the rest of the municipal groups to support them, the beginning of its processing was removed from the agenda. It is not an irreversible situation (it can be resolved in next month’s call, or it can even be approved until next year), nor is it uncommon, quite the opposite. But the minority government situation has also led to another movement with more immediate practical consequences, the rejection of municipal ordinances, for which there is barely eight days of margin to ensure that they can be approved and applied in 2024.
It should not be like this, but any realistic analysis forces us to recognize that there will not be a stable government formula in Barcelona City Council until the dispute is resolved. investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Government. The defense of the city’s interests should not depend on it, but it would hardly be possible to count on a party that would have derailed the investiture to shore up the municipal government team. Although even if the sum of such diverse support in Congress ends up occurring, that does not prefigure a new majority in the Plaza de Sant Jaume either: The PSC will have to choose not only from the arithmetic in Madrid but also between different models (tripartite, although with rectifications consistent with a change of center of gravity from the Comuns to the socialists, or agreement with Junts in a line of greater review of the policies of the previous mandate). An example: this Thursday the Comuns defended raising the IBI by 16% and Junts, lowering it by 2%.
Because beyond the exchange of crossed favors in Congress (or in the Parliament, with the approval of the Budgets of the Generalitat, where ERC is in a situation no less in need of external support), what it is about are concrete decisions , with palpable consequences that affect the interests of the city and with an immediate effect on the real lives of citizens. And in this sense, if the approval of the budgets can be (although it is not desirable) postponeable and adjustable to the needs, conditions and demands of the general policy, the same does not happen with the approval of the fiscal ordinances, which must enter effective January 1. Again, another practical example: not approving them would mean that the rate approved in 2019 for terraces would be in force, which would force the restaurant sector to pay 8 million euros instead of the 2 that it has been paying thanks to the current bonus to due to the pandemic or the 4.6 million euros agreed between the city council and the union. Something similar happens with the proposal to increase the surcharge on rental apartments or short-stay cruises.
We do not talk about the policies to follow during the next four years, since the undecided electoral result first and the conditions of Spanish politics, later, have imposed an extension time to define them in detail. But of the ordinary functioning of the city, which does not admit extensions, brakes or delaysand demands an exercise of responsibility now.