The unilateral decision by the mayor of Barcelona, Ada Colau, to shut down the city council's relations with Israel and temporarily suspend the twinning agreement with Tel Aviv will be put to a special plenary session that is to take place within a period of fifteen days - that is, with a margin until the end of this month - with a single point on the agenda, to discuss the re-establishment of relations with Tel Aviv. This Monday, four municipal groups, those of Junts, Ciudadanos, the PP and Valents, plus the single non-affiliated councillor, formed a common front, successfully reaching the required quorum of a quarter of the full council, to demand the special meeting.
In fact, it was already expected that the suspension of the twinning arrangement with Tel Aviv, decided by the mayor's decree, would be discussed at the ordinary council session for the month of February, which will take place on the 24th, at the initiative of the PSC, as well as in a committee meeting this Wednesday (the Presidency, Citizens' Rights, Participation and Security and Prevention committee), where several proposals have been tabled, but now Colau will have no choice but to call an extraordinary council meeting, which according to the calendar, could coincide with the ordinary one on Friday 24th - since extraordinary meetings are usually convened, if possible, on the same day as the ordinary plenaries.
At the origin of the issue is Colau's decision to suspend twin city ties with the Israeli city without going through the plenary, even though the collective Prou impunitat ("Enough Impunity"), which is campaigning for the breaking of ties with Tel Aviv over Israel's human rights abuses, specifically asked for the issue to be put to the full council. With respect to this, the general rejection by the rest of the council groups represented should be noted. In any case, Colau will not be able to prevent the matter from now reaching this special full meeting, which already has the four groups who called it favouring the re-establishment of relations with the state of Israel and the twinning of Barcelona with Tel Aviv and Gaza. Therefore, the key will be the positions of the PSC and ERC, which in recent days have questioned Colau's unilateralism.
"Serious mistake by mayor Colau"
As the signatories justify in their letter, the request for the meeting came in response to the unilateral decision of the mayor, in an action via decree last Wednesday, to temporarily suspend the twinning of Barcelona with the cities of Tel-Aviv and Gaza and break off relations with the state of Israel. In the opinion of Jordi Martí Galbis, the spokesperson for the Junts group, "we are faced with a serious error by mayor Colau and her government, and with an issue that once again highlights the internal breakdown suffered by the executive, with a new division between Comuns and Socialists" - the two parties that have formed the city government for most of the last eight years. According to Martí Galbis, "Mayor Colau's decision is a political statement with few or no practical consequences".