The mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau has been fired this Friday from Barcelona City Council during the plenary session with thanks to its people, its collaborators, the municipal employees, with special mention to the cleaners, and with a harsh attack on “the elites of the city.” “What has disappointed me most about Barcelona are the provincial elites, mediocre and greedy,” he said. He has assured that “they are not at the level of a city”, which “voted for the first mayor from a humble family, without godparents and an activist career who was accompanied by a group that was an anomaly.” Colau has boasted of having achieved that Barcelona “has a city model” and of having placed issues such as tourist saturation or real estate speculation on the agenda. “With this model we had to touch privileges and elites accustomed to no one telling them anything and that began a dirty war with 20 complaints that have been archived. They have come to nothing, but the noise remains,” he lamented. Mayor Jaume Collboni has proposed that Colau be awarded the city’s Gold Medal and has given her a replica of the city’s staff.
Colau has thanked his party colleagues, City Council employees, and collaborators for their collaboration and has defended his legacy: “We have done things that they told us were impossible,” he said and cited the housing cooperatives on public land, the mediation unit to stop evictions, the call superilla and other pedestrianization and the protection of school environments. Colau has evoked his arrival at the town hall from activism and has invited the municipal secretary, Jordi Casas, to one day explain “what we looked like the day we arrived.”
The leader of the commons has highlighted that her two mandates have coincided with “a very difficult historical moment”, with the attack on La Rambla or the pandemic and has thanked the rest of the municipal groups for “everyone making an effort to show the best ”. He has not mentioned his coalition governments with Mayor Jaume Collboni, but he has told him: “You should thank us for not having the bust of the corrupt monarch behind (in the plenary hall)”, in relation to the figure that the commons removed as soon as you arrive at the town hall.
On the personal front, Colau thanked two people, his mother, Tina. For teaching her to “pursue dreams” and for her support throughout her time as mayor. And to Vanesa Valiño, with whom he has shared “activism, work (he was responsible for housing policies) and friendship” and fights against a difficult cancer. Colau, however, has not made any reference to his future.
