Janet Sanz bids farewell to the City Council: "We must defend Barcelona"

BarcelonaPerhaps the best summary of Janet Sanz's farewell to politics in the Barcelona en Comú City Council was provided hours earlier by the Barcelona Provincial Court. On the eve of her last plenary session as a councilor, the court dismissed for the second time a lawsuit against her and former mayor Ada Colau regarding the Consell de Cent superblock. The transformation of the Eixample district and the numerous lawsuits received—and ultimately dismissed—are two of the main symbols of Sanz's time in the city council, where she will go down in history as the urban planning councilor for both of Colau's terms.

With a long and assertive speech, Sanz confirmed this Friday the step back that already announced At the end of September: leaving institutional politics. A move she justified by the need to take a more central role and seek "the necessary oxygen to think and live," and which will now lead her to work from the Catalan capital for the Metropolis network of major cities. She leaves behind a period in which she carried out projects such as the superblock, the push for the tram connection along Diagonal Avenue, the Special Urban Development Plan for Tourist Accommodation (PEUAT) – which limited the growth of hotels in the city – and the reservation of 30% social housing.

In her final address to the plenary session, Sanz praised these projects and the changes "that seemed impossible" implemented by the Barcelona en Comú party in the city. "There are things that will never be the same again," she asserted. Despite leaving institutional politics, Sanz bid farewell with a decidedly political speech in which she set tasks for the city councilors and called for a fight for housing: "We must defend Barcelona from all those who want it to be unequal and precarious," she warned, and urged them "not to be afraid of conflict." "If I've made people uncomfortable, it's because I was bringing about change," she said. Sanz used her final turn to speak to also ask Collboni for "a wish": to finally complete the tram connection along Diagonal Avenue. A project that, she said, she had to "sweat her eyes out for" and that made her experience "the best and worst of politics." "The damn tram," added ERC councilor Jordi Coronas, who was with Sanz during many of these negotiations to bring the project to fruition and who asked to be present on the inaugural journey of this connection with her.

Under the watchful eyes of fellow travelers such as former mayor Ada Colau, Minister of Culture Ernest Urtasun, the members of parliament from the En Comú Podem party Jéssica Albiach and David Cid, MEP Jaume Asens, and the Minister of the Presidency, Albert Dalmau, Sanz reminisced about her family and friends. She also spoke of her arrival in Barcelona, ​​a city she said she is in love with. "There are still those who are surprised when I tell them I wasn't born in a neighborhood of the city," Sanz pointed out, adding that if she had been born in the Catalan capital, she would have liked to have been born in Nou Barris, the district where she served as a councilor during Colau's first term.

Praise from the mayor

As is customary when a council member bids farewell to the plenary session, the political groups also offered words of appreciation for Sanz. The last to speak was the mayor himself, Jaume Collboni, who acknowledged that her time leading the city's Urban Planning department "will mark an era." "When we are sometimes accused of simply maintaining the status quo, we don't take it badly, quite the opposite, and that has been largely thanks to you," said Collboni, who also made light of Sanz's combative nature and said he didn't know if it was more difficult to work with her in government or in opposition. The speech by the first deputy mayor, Laia Bonet, was also moving. The current head of Urban Planning recalled meeting Sanz when she was teaching her Urban Planning Law, and said that even then she was a "passionate" student. "Who would have told us back then that we would end up having such intense debates in committee, in plenary sessions, and privately in this building?" said Bonet, with whom Sanz has had heated exchanges both when they were part of the governing coalition and now as the opposition. Sanz's intensity and capacity for debate weren't just for public consumption. They were also evident within his own group, as explained by Gemma Tarafa, who will now lead Barcelona en Comú in the city council. "We are fortunate to have had you by our side," she said. From the right, both Jordi Martí (Junts) and Daniel Sirera (PP) acknowledged Sanz's work despite their political differences.