Jaume Collboni has returned from New York with an idea under his arm. After meeting with Mayor Mamdani, he announced that Barcelona will have a network of affordable shops. The concern is easy to understand: in five years, the purchase of food has become nearly 30% more expensive, and for many families this item already weighs too much on the family budget. The proposal also has a certain glamour: it has been presented as a "genuinely New York experience". But what does it exactly mean to make shopping more affordable?It may be difficult for us to fill the fridge for different reasons. Perhaps in the neighborhood we do not have enough supply of fresh produce. Or perhaps we have supermarkets and shops within reach, but we cannot afford their prices. In one case, there is a lack of supply; in the other, purchasing power: having a store downstairs is useless if we cannot pay for it. Both hinder access to adequate nutrition, but they are not the same problem nor do they require the same response.The City Council's pilot project will begin in La Marina del Prat Vermell, a growing neighborhood where the commercial offer is still limited. Bringing fresh produce there responds to the first of the problems and makes sense. But the project wants to go further: it not only promises proximity, but also affordable prices. And here begins the most interesting question: what will make them so? Because lowering the price has a cost: someone has to assume it, be it the City Council, the manager, the suppliers, or a combination of all three.There is no single way to lower the cost of groceries. New York is planning five municipal supermarkets: the city covers part of the costs and requires the savings to be passed on to prices, with a discount for everyone who shops there. Istanbul, on the other hand, has for decades combined a public network of food at low prices with aid directed at families with fewer resources. In the first case, public support makes the same basket cheaper regardless of who is doing the shopping; in the second, part of the effort is concentrated on those with lower income. Each formula allocates public resources differently and does not necessarily benefit the same families.Barcelona, furthermore, does not start from zero. It has a network of municipal markets, farmers' markets, and consumer cooperatives, as well as experience with aid such as prepaid cards. It already has, therefore, instruments to act both on supply and on the purchasing power of families. The question is whether it is necessary to create a new structure or if part of the objective can be achieved by reinforcing, connecting, or reorienting those that already exist. In Marina itself, in fact, the City Council was already working to promote local commerce before the trip to New York. Looking at what other cities are doing can be useful, but the question is not where we import the idea from, but who we want to reach, with what instrument, and what problem we want to solve.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, met a few days ago with his counterpart from New York, Zohran Mamdani, on the occasion of the U20 or Urban 20, a summit of mayors from 34 G-20 cities. From the very moment of the resounding electoral victory that brought him to the mayoralty of New York, Mamdani became a global progressive icon and a kind of anti-Trump counterpower (although that is more for show than anything else), and therefore photos with him are highly prized by European left-wing leaders. Collboni got his photo with Mamdani and something more: the endorsement of the New York mayor for Mayors for Housing, an international alliance of mayors committed to promoting policies against the housing crisis, which Barcelona has already led at a European level and which now seeks to expand internationally.It cannot be said that the U20 was not productive for Collboni nor that he arrived there empty-handed. Barcelona was the only city from the Spanish state to participate and was able to contribute the regulation of rental prices, the total ban on tourist rentals, or the expropriation of vacant homes, measures that have certainly been approved (but are not being applied, or not enough, in one of the preferred cities for vulture funds and large speculators, both banking and non-banking). The Mamdani administration has, for its part, approved the freezing of rent prices for rent-controlled apartments or the creation of public supermarkets to guarantee access for poor families to basic products; Collboni committed to opening the first of these supermarkets by the year 2027 in the Barcelona neighborhood of La Marina.All of this comes to be a kind of alliance of mayors against speculation and it is very good. But it is difficult to maintain the spirit that animates the assumption of these commitments while disregarding the protests this past Sunday against the airport expansion, a great mobilization that also took place in Palma and Ibiza, where it had the dimensions of a historic demonstration. The protests are based on a clear finding: the expansions of El Prat, as well as Son Sant Joan, as well as Es Codolar are being done to increase the touristification of Barcelona, Mallorca, and Ibiza. And the increase in the touristification of Barcelona, Mallorca, and Ibiza is directly linked to the lack of control over prices and housing speculation, which is, in fact, one of the direct consequences. The fabulous extractive machine that is Aena may hide behind the need to have infrastructure that is competitive with other large international airports, but this does not take away even a bit of the seriousness of a system failure—the housing crisis—that has also acquired an international dimension and that is especially suffocating in intensely touristified zones like Catalonia (especially Barcelona) or the Balearic Islands (especially Mallorca and Ibiza). Double standards do nothing at all to alleviate this failure.

Residents of Barcelona and New York face the difficulty of living in their cities day after day. Large, open, and tourist-friendly. The high cost of housing in both urban areas also extends to the shopping basket and basic services, widening a social gap that is becoming increasingly deep and driving the working class out of the place where they had decided to forge their life project. In a meeting prior to this weekend's U20 cities summit, the mayors of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, and New York, Zohran Mamdani, agreed this Saturday that, despite being very different cities, they face a common challenge: ensuring that the success and appeal of their metropolises do not end up making them uninhabitable for Barcelonans and New Yorkers.

Antoni Falgueras, master vintner, will be the herald of La Mercè 2026. This was announced this Wednesday by the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, during the presentation of the first novelties of the city's main festival. During the speech, the herald will be accompanied by his daughter, Meritxell Falgueras, a prestigious communicator and sommelier. The mayor highlighted the Falgueras family's career as a reference in wine culture and their roots in Barcelona. The master vintner will be in charge of kicking off a festival that will feature a poster designed by visual artist Cinta Vidal as its image.

There are words that everyone knows will make headlines, and for that very reason they are spoken. This is the case of the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, with the phrase "We don't want this riffraff in our city", referring to organized gangs using firearms to kill each other. Folk sounds energetic. It is a quintessential example of the end of politically correct language and is the type of expression that the far-right has plundered on the streets to convey a firmness close to the death penalty and to empathize with frightened voters. It is the language that a part of the left has been adopting so as not to be left behind when it began to admit, too late, that public security policies were left-wing, because the rich right could always afford private security.

Almost a decade after the ambitious project to convert the central nave of the Can Batlló industrial complex into a large agora open to neighbors and the sole headquarters of all Barcelona's archives was presented, the municipal government has taken a step forward to unblock a long-claimed infrastructure. "With this announcement, what we have had to wait for so many years, we make it happen. Work begins in the first quarter of next year," highlighted the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni.

The mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, has withdrawn in extremis from the agenda of this Friday's plenary session a proposal for a "productivity bonus" in salary matters. The bonus was aimed at 800 City Council officials who hold the category of “command”, a position characterized by organizing and being in charge of other municipal workers. "They not only manage processes, but also articulate the organization," assures the document detailing the characteristics of this new bonus. The objective, according to the council, is to value the work of the 800 commanders and could mean an increase of up to 5% of the base salary, regardless of what the worker previously earned.

I am writing these lines from a cafe, in Barcelona, the kind that has wifi and where they don't judge you if you write for a while (and they also don't want to serve you toast with alvoexpat). There's a driver who has left his car in a no-parking zone to quickly go buy something at L'Ametller. He didn't realize that by leaving it on that corner, he's blocking the bus, which is stuck in the middle of the road. The chaos is phenomenal. And lulled by the sound of horns, I hear, on El matí de Catalunya Ràdio, the mayor of Barcelona. He says he will eliminate the service of I am therefore calling on all users, especially tourists, who use them. There is very, very little time left and the rate of fines cannot be reduced! The service must continue to be a disaster until 2027. You must rent bikes and park them wherever you feel like it (or wherever your ramen is), as you have been doing. You must rent bikes and abandon them in the middle of the sidewalk, because you're too lazy to park them where they belong and you prefer to get a fine that you won't pay. You must hurry across pedestrian crossings, trying to run over any grandmother crossing with her walker. You must ring your bell, with pleased hysteria, in the Francesc Macià lane, when someone crosses your path with the noble and extravagant intention of catching a taxi from the stand and hasn't brought – to avoid stepping on your sacred path – Doraemon's gorrocòpter

Not long ago, one of those shared bicycles that many tourists use to get around Barcelona and that they usually park anywhere spent almost 36 hours parked right in Plaça Sant Jaume, in front of the City Hall. Perhaps it was then that the mayor, Jaume Collboni, matured the announcement he made this Thursday morning on the microphones of Catalunya Ràdio: the Catalan capital will not renew the licenses with which the companies of this service called bicisharing operate. On January 1st, therefore, these vehicles will no longer be able to circulate in the city.

I don't know if the two Tanzanian priests and the two Filipinos who make up the Augustinian community in Barcelona will tell Leo XIV, when he visits the church of Sant Agustí in the Raval on June 10, that it was in that church that the Assembly of Catalonia was founded, the great coalition of anti-Franco forces in the country. It was the year 1971. Time was time. When the Catalan Church stood shoulder to shoulder with those fighting for individual and collective freedoms. When rectors sheltered striking workers and prevented the "grisos" from entering. When Comissions Obreres was founded in a parish (Sant Medir, la Bordeta, 1964), when students barricaded themselves in convents (la Caputxinada, Sarrià, 1966), or the most symbolic monastery was the chosen setting to "christen" a party that would govern Catalonia for decades (Convergència, Montserrat, 1974). It was the time of Escarré, Jubany, Cassià Maria Just, Xirinacs, Ragué, Ballarín, and many worker priests... It was a time when the Church had a better reputation than it does today. More practitioners, more religious vocations, more complicity with laypeople, more credibility, no reports of pedophilia.

In the last five years alone, demand at Estació del Nord in Barcelona has grown by 50%. And data suggests the trend will continue to rise: the City Council estimates that demand will increase by another 30% by 2030. This was explained by the Deputy Mayor and Councilor for Urbanism and Mobility, Laia Bonet, during the presentation of the renovation of this historic station in the Catalan capital, which hosts buses for international routes, between Catalonia and the rest of Spain, as well as intercity and private services.

There is one year left until the municipal elections and only ten days until the Pope's visit to Barcelona, and the labor conflict with part of the City Council staff is growing. In fact, social workers will maintain their strike for June 9 and 10, coinciding with the pontiff's presence. This Friday, in an extraordinary plenary session requested by the Junts, Comuns, and ERC groups, Jaume Collboni's government has been left alone with Vox against opening a dialogue space with the three minority unions –CGT, Intersindical, and ABACOS, with only 3 out of the 15 members of the negotiation table–, who have called for 30 days of partial stoppages in basic social services, gender-based violence, childhood, libraries, nursery schools, social emergencies, or citizen attention.partial stoppages in basic social services, gender-based violence, childhood, libraries, nursery schools, social emergencies, or citizen attention.

Mayor Jaume Collboni (Barcelona, 1969) receives ARA when there is just one year left until the municipal elections. We talk about housing –the main problem for Barcelonians–, tourism, security, and also about the situation of the PSOE amidst the Zapatero storm.

Ten months after reaching an agreement to reduce cruise terminals, the Port and the Barcelona City Council once again have an open melon on the table. It was placed this Wednesday by the mayor, Jaume Collboni, when he defended in an interview with Betevé that he aspired for scale cruises – those that only spend a few hours in the city – to disappear completely in the coming years. This Thursday, from the Port, they have responded to the mayor, defending the importance of this type of vessel and emphasizing that eliminating them will not solve the problem of tourist overcrowding in the Catalan capital.

More pressure on cruise ships that do not have Barcelona as their home port and only make a stopover. The mayor of the Catalan capital, Jaume Collboni, announced this Wednesday that his objective is that in the coming years this type of offering does not exist in the city and that only vessels that have the Catalan capital as their home port dock in the Port of Barcelona. In an interview with Betevé, he advocated for "reducing cruise stopovers to zero" in the coming years. "We have to start making brave and very clear decisions in this regard," he said.

"What peace," says the mayor Jaume Collboni, as he enters the Documenta bookstore in Barcelona this Friday morning. Documenta bookstore in Barcelona. The Barcelona City Council has announced the first support plan for bookstores, fifteen days before Sant Jordi. The global allocation of the measure is 850,000 euros for 2026, and it is expected to continue. The mayor has been clear and direct: "Buy in bookstores, don't buy on Amazon. By buying in a small bookstore you are doing more than buying a book, you are defending a model of the city, a way of relating and that the profits stay in the neighborhood. We defend the right to stay in our neighborhoods and we help people like booksellers, our neighbors, friends, people like Èric, and not a man who has yachts sailing the Mediterranean," said Collboni. His words may recall those of Anne Hidalgo, then mayor of Paris, who said during the pandemic so that bookstores could reopen.

"What peace," says mayor Jaume Collboni, entering the Documenta bookstore in Barcelona this Friday morning. Documenta bookstore in Barcelona. The Barcelona City Council has announced the first support plan for bookstores, fifteen days before Sant Jordi. The global allocation for the measure is 850,000 euros for 2026, and it is expected to have continuity. The mayor has been clear and unambiguous: "Buy in bookstores, don't buy on Amazon. By buying in a small bookstore you are doing more than buying a book, you are defending a model of city, a way of relating and that the profits stay in the neighborhood. We defend the right to stay in the neighborhoods and we help people like booksellers, our neighbors, friends, people like Èric, and not a man who has yachts sailing the Mediterranean," said Collboni. His words may recall those of Anne Hidalgo, then mayor of Paris, who said during the pandemic for bookstores to be able to reopen.

Barcelona City Council presented its plan this Friday to "democratize" green spaces in all of the city's neighborhoods by creating 25 new green areas on previously unused land. These new zones, presented by Mayor Jaume Collboni, are part of the first package of actions under the Proximity and Interior Spaces Program—framed within the Climate Plan—an urban planning initiative that the municipal government launched in 2024 to reclaim approximately 20 hectares of green space. "These are abandoned spaces that are designated as green but hadn't been transformed, and now we're activating them so that everyone can find them close to home," explained Collboni. The mayor referred to spaces that were "disused, forgotten, and not even perceived as spaces," and which the city now wants to repurpose. "Having these spaces close to home means having climate refuges and a higher quality of life in our neighborhoods," he emphasized.

City councilor Lluís Rabell has resigned from his position on the Barcelona City Council for health reasons. (November 2023) He already took a temporary break Rabell has also stepped down from his role as a member of the municipal government for medical reasons. But this time, the leave is permanent.

The announcement by Barcelona City Council of a new literary grant for Latin American authors The event held at the Guadalajara International Book Fair (FIL) has stirred up controversy in the Catalan cultural and political world. Complaints from writers like Núria Cadenes and Melcior Comes have been joined by those from the Association of Writers in the Catalan Language (AELC), and finally, political unease: both the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) and Together for Catalonia (Junts per Catalunya) have called for its removal. For its part, the City Council's Deputy Mayor for Culture, Xavier Marcé, explained to Guadalajara that he finds it difficult "to see a controversy in this matter." According to Marcé, what should be done is to examine "the commitment to Catalan in relation to the overall initiatives and not just this specific action."