“I knew that I would ask about that, shortly after the municipal elections.” Is this the first thing she has said, she has almost blurted out, Pere Aragones in response to Jessica Albiachwho asked him if he planned to put limit to the number of cruise ships that have been docking in Barcelona for years. The issue of tourism, its control, above all, is one of the battlehorses of the campaign for the elections in the Catalan capital. And the mayor’s diversion of responsibilities Ada Colau to Aragonès and east towards state regulations, a constant in recent weeks. the Communs are now the closest thing to a preferred partner for the republicans. Since the approval of the 2023 budgets (and also previous) to the support, the only one, that the ‘president’ has for the Clarity Agreement.
The Comuns and the CUP they threw the question of the cruises in the control session of Parliament to the ‘president’, while Junts and PP chose to criticize the republican management of the drought. All this made up a ‘green’ plenary session, although obviously exposed to the maximalism that the proximity of the elections requires.
Electoralism and comfort
Aragones denounced the electoralism of the Comuns and returned to his comfort zone. “The path is not a unilateral decision of the Government, because this is not possible. The path is the one of the agreement, like the one that the mayor Ada Colau closed in 2018 with the then president of the port of Barcelona”. The ERC complaint floated in the air that just six months ago who appoints the president of the Port of Barcelona, the same ones that lead to the Ministry of Territories, after the voluntary departure of Junts.
The ‘president’ insisted on his proposal to get 75% of cruise ships that land in Barcelona waters have the port of the Catalan capital as origin or destination of their journeys. “This makes the economic return greater,” he said, before reminding both commoners and anti-capitalists that this type of tourism also generates employment, and that these forces, “on the left, should take note of it.” Finally, the Republican referred to the institutional commission for the sustainability of the port and urged the commoners not to “criminalize” cruise ships.
Albiach then accused Aragonès of “hide behind a technical space created by the president of the Port, Lluís Salvadó” and warned him that doing “nothing in the face of mass tourism makes him an accomplice”. The ‘president’ denied the biggest, the accusation of putting himself in profile to avoid the issue and reiterated that the Government “cannot prohibit the robbery of ships in the port”, not in vain this infrastructure, although it is the Generalitat who designates its manager, is owned by the State.
transfer of the Ebro
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The second ’round’ was the one of the drought. Alejandro Fernández began by attacking the “improvisation” of the Government, after the episode of drought lived 15 years ago, and the null adjudication and construction of new desalination and water treatment plants. The popular even went so far as to venture that the Government’s hidden agenda goes through the transfer of the Ebro to Barcelona.
Aragonès did not respond to this attack to the deep-rooted essences of his party and he recalled that the first measures were taken by his Government in the fall of 2021, “when nobody was talking about the drought.” To the threat of the parliamentary leader of Junts to present a law to postpone the penalty period to the town councils, under the motto “if you don’t do the job well, Parliament will do it”, ragonès held back and held out his hand to seek a consensual solution. “A consensus that was not reached because there was a party that did not want it”, in implicit reference to the PSC.