A Generalitat report from Catalonia endorsed the urban planning process of the ‘Superilla’ of Consell de Cent carried out by the Barcelona City Council, cornerstone of judgment known this Thursday and that orders the dismantling of this pacification. At the request of the Prosecutor’s Office, a specialist from the Department of Territori prepared an analysis as expert evidence. The document, to which EL PERIÓDICO has had access, supports that Ada Colau’s government dispensed with the modification of the General Metropolitan Plan (PGM) to pacify Consell de Cent street.
“The figure of modifying the general urban planning would not be necessary to carry out actions on the roads that are part of the local network, as long as the maintenance of their function is guaranteed,” concludes the report delivered to the court. “Nor would the figure of the modification of the general urban planning be necessary to carry out actions on the roads [de la red viaria básica de la ciudad]as long as these actions and the approved projects do not result in a modification of the functionality of the corresponding system”, he adds.
He signs it Marta Jové, head of the Territorial Urbanism Service of the Metropolitan Area of Barcelona, and is dated December 2022. This area is part of the Territorial Services of the Territori department in Barcelona, which in December 2022 was already in the hands of ERC. Territori spokespersons confirm this Friday that the Prosecutor’s Office requested this report from them as experts unrelated to the legal process of the Superilla, which is limited to municipal powers and did not and did not have to go through any supervisory body of the Generalitat: “The Prosecutor’s Office told us He asked if we saw a modification of the PGM necessary or not to carry out this work and we said no, that we saw the processing as good”. This does not imply, the same sources clarify, a political endorsement of the Superillas project or its political management, but only an endorsement of the urban planning procedure used by Barcelona.
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The Prosecutor’s Office request was not part of the judicial process initiated by the merchants of Barcelona Oberta, which has led to the aforementioned sentence this week. It was part of the proceedings of a complaint to the Superilla presented in July 2022 by the former chief architect of the consistory Josep Antoni Acebillotwo months after the final approval of the project in the council.
This Thursday, the president of the ERC municipal group, Ernest Maragall, was in favor of appealing the sentence “immediately” and considered that “reversing consolidated urban changes” such as these works would be a “frivolous error.” However, he criticized the previous government for its management of the project: “The ruling above all shows how the Colau-Collboni government did not know how to make decisions with the participation of citizens.”