Badalona's opposition reaches agreement to pass no-confidence vote

BarcelonaThe five opposition parties in Badalona City Council reached an agreement on Wednesday night just 24 hours after the start of formal meetings to present a motion of no confidence against People's Party mayor Xavier García Albiol. Thus, on Thursday, the sixteen councillors of the Catalan Socialists' Party (PSC), Guanyem, Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC), Badalona en Comú and Together for Catalonia (JxCat) will sign the motion before the municipal secretary and on Friday the documentation is expected to be registered at the City Council. The plenary session for the investiture of the new mayor will be convened after a period of ten working days, on Monday 8 November

According to the agreement reached by the parties, the new mayor will be the socialist Rubén Guijarro, leader of the PSC, the majority opposition group. As for the configuration of the future council cabinet, the negotiation is still open between the PSC, ERC, En Comú and JxCat, after Guanyem Badalona dissociated itself. The party has nevertheless pledged to shore up the government from the opposition. In case any other opposition party also ends up left out of government, all groups have already expressed their commitment to ensure both Guijarro's investiture and the city's governability.

In a statement, Guanyem denounced that previous contacts had reached a pre-agreement with the PSC on a government structure that the Socialists have now renounced. In this sense, the spokesperson of Guanyem Badalona, Nora San Sebastian, made it clear that the current context lacks "the conditions for a coalition government with the Socialists".

Guanyem justified its refusal to enter the executive because they had agreed "with interlocutors validated by the PSC a proposal for a collegiate and shared government structure" that had been validated by its members in an assembly that lasted over four hours this Sunday and which the socialists' negotiating team went back on this Tuesday.