Jaume Collboni was inaugurated this Saturday as the new mayor of Barcelona with the vote of 23 councillors, from the PSC, the Comuns and the PP, two above the absolute majority. After a hiatus of 12 years, Barcelona once again has a PSC mayor. Collboni, as Ada Colau four years ago, it was not at the top of the most voted list. And Collboni, like Colau eight years ago, or twelve Xavier Trias it does so without having agreed with any other group on a program and a government team. From today he has the strength of the mayor’s rod which, with the local government law, is great, but with the precariousness of not having a stable majority and that in many matters it will not be able to be the one that has invested it. The formula has been complex and elaborate. Demonstrates Collboni’s political skill and his team that they must continue to deploy throughout the legislature so that it is not a bumpy mandate. That is why it is important that the new mayor comply with what he said at his inauguration: must be the mayor of all. The last months of Trias, already at the dawn of the ‘procés’, and the years of Colau have been mandates that have sought more confrontation than the construction of a common project. On too many occasions, Colau has wanted to defend good ideas and projects with a spirit of revenge against certain sectors or groups. That was the change that the citizens of Barcelona voted for and that Collboni must know how to interpret. Trias has presented him almost as a pendulum and, despite his good nature, he has possibly missed the shot. Ernest Maragall gave the impression that he was the partner for something else, who hardly had the chances of making the necessary majorities. Collboni arrives, then, to open a new time in forms, so that the neighborhoods and groups that have felt the council as their own over the years, continue to do so, and so that those who have felt singled out and excluded despite their contribution to the city feel the mayor again as an ally, since the independence of political power. That is Collboni’s main challenge and the way to achieve the majorities needed by his government and his city, as long as the hidden pacts of the investiture do not disable him for it, which would be fatal.
Barcelona must continue to look to the future and turn the page on these years of lack of leadership and project. And it should not do so as some defended, returning to the agenda and ways of doing things from the 90s. The fight against climate change, social cohesion in the face of the tensions of being a global capital, the will to be a metropolitan, Catalan, Spanish leader and European, sustainable mobility, affordable housing, quality employment, rational use of public space must be made compatible with the creation of wealth, with respect for minorities, with fair and progressive taxation.
Collboni starts with more uncertainties than certainties, with more weaknesses than strengths, but it has the opportunity to open a new time, which it can do if it does not have mortgages to repay and if it is aware that the trust of many, councilors and citizens, has not yet been earned. She has the opportunity, his opportunity, that many have wanted to take away from her, even in her own training. But he is the mayor and he has to think more about how he wants to leave office and the city, than how he has received them.