Junts asks Barcelona to include fines for incivility in the reports on house arrest.

BarcelonaThis Wednesday, Junts (Junts for Barcelona) put forward its conditions for approving the Catalan capital's coexistence ordinance. The leader of the council members on the council, Jordi Martí Galbis, proposed a dozen measures without which, he warned, his group will not support the reform of the ordinance, one of the major projects of Jaume Collboni's government, which still has to go through the plenary session. Among their demands, Junts proposes cracking down on the street soliciting people to consume cannabis and also that penalties for incivility be included in the residence reports.

Regarding this last point, the council members demand that the new ordinance incorporate the provision of recording in the corresponding residence reports "both positive collaborations in terms of coexistence and any history of incivility." A requirement they believe should contribute to "guaranteeing accurate and rigorous information to the competent immigration authorities." That is, the State should take into account, when granting residence permits, whether the person has been fined for uncivil behavior.

This is a measure that the City Council had already implemented in the past, until Ada Colau's first government changed it in 2016. Adopting one of the 67 proposals formulated by the Municipal Immigration Council in 2014, the then Deputy Mayor for Citizen Rights, Participation, and Transparency, Jaume Asens, announced that the City Council would no longer take into account whether an immigrant requesting a residence certificate had been fined. A decision justified by saying that it penalized groups such as street vendors and prostitutes, thus forcing them to continue these types of activities.

Now, Jaume Collboni's government will have to decide whether it wants to reverse that measure in exchange for the votes of Junts, which has also raised other objections. Among them is the prohibition of municipal government conduct that "minimizes, relativizes, justifies, or whitewashes" the uncivil behavior defined in the ordinance. Martí has given as an example the fact that councilors from Ada Colau's government participated in demonstrations in support of street vendors.

In addition, Junts is also demanding that those fined for graffiti be forced to contribute to its cleanup; to develop an agreement with TMB so that the ordinance also applies within public transport; that Catalan should play a "prominent central role" in any communication campaign regarding the ordinance, and that the time limit for determining whether uncivil behavior is repeated should be extended to two years, as well as increasing penalties for violations such as graffiti, illegal street vending, and drinking in public.

The Memory of the 30%

The negotiations are inevitably reminiscent of those experienced with the reform of the 30% reserve for social housing. At that time, Junts also appeared at a press conference to present a package of measures without which it asserted it would not support the reform. Finally, the municipal government's refusal to lower the property tax by 4% caused Junts to break off negotiations and derail one of Collboni's main priorities for this term.

When asked if resuming those negotiations is possible, Martí said that Junts is willing to discuss the 30% rate as long as the municipal government "rectifies" and embraces his group's proposals. "If the government wants to open the drawer and take out this file, we will always be willing to talk about it," he said.