Generalitat-City Council General Agreement to accelerate the rehabilitation of buildings at risk in Besòs-Maresme

BarcelonaThe Generalitat has assumed this Wednesday before the Barcelona City Council a commitment to the rehabilitation of buildings at risk in the Besòs-Maresme neighborhood of the Catalan capital. The meeting of the Bilateral Commission between the two institutions has served to solemnize the pact by which the Catalan executive will contribute 150 million during the next decade to recover some 4,000 poorly maintained homes in the area. An agreement that must accelerate the rehabilitation of 200 buildings in the neighborhood that until now has not progressed at the expected pace.

This Wednesday's commitment is the concretization of the agreement reached in March by the municipal government of Jaume Collboni and the group Barcelona en Comú in exchange for tax ordinances. At that time, both groups agreed to involve the Generalitat in the rehabilitation of Besòs-Maresme through the creation of a specific public entity with the participation of the City Council and the Catalan executive. This Wednesday, more details have been given about how this new entity, which will be created before the end of the year, will function.

According to the agreement signed at the Bilateral Commission, in the coming months a mixed public limited company with the majority participation of the Barcelona City Council must be created. This entity will act as a governance and coordination body to speed up the work for the rehabilitation of the neighborhood. The pact also details the contribution that each of the institutions will make: while the capital's council plans to contribute 265 million euros throughout the entire project, the Generalitat will allocate 150 million euros at a rate of 15 million annually over the next decade.

The objective of this new tool with the presence of the Government is to accelerate the regeneration of a neighborhood where hundreds of residents have been living with propping at home for more than three years, in buildings with structural damage and affected by aluminosis. In a press conference, the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, celebrated a "national operation" that addresses "a historic debt with the Besòs neighborhoods". The mayor, for his part, spoke of a "giant step in the right to stay, especially in neighborhoods that historically accumulate a deficit of investment and maintenance". "We are providing answers to families who are living in precarious conditions unworthy of a city like Barcelona," he said.

The future of La Trinitat

Although the future to be created will be specifically dedicated to Besòs-Maresme, the Government and Barcelona City Council have argued that it will also contribute to accelerating the rehabilitation of other areas with buildings in critical condition in the city, such as those in Trinitat Vella, Canyelles, and La Pau. According to both administrations, the Generalitat's contribution will allow the Catalan capital's council to reorient some of the resources it planned to allocate to Besòs-Maresme towards these other neighborhoods.