Although it is just one of the hundreds of proposals that tend to be put forward in an election campaign, Jaume Collboni announced this Tuesday, in a way that can't be understood as a mere sounding board, the creation of the figure of night mayor of Barcelona. This person would be responsible for programming, coordinating and mediating the city's nighttime activity and their scope of action would be restricted to the hours between 10pm and 6am. The mayor also commented that this is not his invention and that such a role already exists in other capitals, such as New York and Paris, something that I have to admit I had no idea about.
The fact that the mayor himself has opened up the possibility that this newly created office will be filled by the leader of the party that is to be added to the governing majority of the city of Barcelona, that is, either Xavier Trias or Ada Colau, makes it even more curious. Trias has said that it won't be him because he is leaving the Barcelona council, as he has repeated on several occasions since the pact between Collboni's Catalan Socialists (PSC), Barcelona en Comú (Comuns) and the People's Party (PP) took the mayoral staff out of his hands despite the fact that he was the winner of the election last May. However, Trias, who is a wily fox and has offered to enter into a governing agreement with the PSC, has not rejected the idea, but rather, he has limited himself to pointing out that it is a difficult job for whoever ends up holding it, but that it doesn't seem too bad to him.
If Collboni turns his gaze to the left, he finds himself with the Comuns, and the spokesperson for the party, Janet Sanz, has refused to enter this debate, because she believes that Collboni's only intention is to confuse the issue and not definitively make an agreement that would allow him to go beyond the figure of 10 councillors out of 41 which is the number who form his Barcelona city government. And Sanz is close to the mark when she asserts that, better than talking about the night mayor, would be to talk about the city government during the day. Be that as it may, with the passing of the hours, it seems to me that Collboni's idea should not be disdained, and would be a way to acknowledge with a real position whichever party forms a governing majority with the Socialists to run the city.
February seems to be a more than reasonable deadline for Collboni to pluck the daisy on how he wants to lead the city in the years ahead and which partners he will choose to share the helm
In this puzzle that Collboni will have to solve sooner or later, there are also the clues offered by Ada Colau with her statements last weekend, indicating that she did not plan to join the Sumar lists in the European Parliament and would keep on exercising as a politician in Barcelona. It is, without a doubt, one more element in the jigsaw, since a Collboni-Trias tandem, if an agreement were to be reached, would not actually be as the names suggest, but rather, would feature another Junts leader at its head, since the ex-mayor will be going home; in the case of the Collboni-Colau ticket, it will not be fictitious, but real, as the former mayor is to remain present in city governance and, even if it is a long way away, will be looking at a hypothetical and future candidacy for 2027 to recover the mayoral staff of the Catalan capital. It is true that for the Socialists to be thinking about elections more than three years away is a very difficult thing, but given the electoral resistance that Colau demonstrated last May, having a platform in the city council would allow her to retain influence and votes
Whether by day or by night, with one full-time mayor or two part-time, with shared or delegated responsibilities, or however you want to approach the future of city governance, the month of February seems to be a more than reasonable deadline for Collboni to pluck the daisy on how he wants to lead the city in the years ahead and which partners he will choose to share the helm.