Barcelona en Comú is to vote "no" to the budget proposed by Barcelona mayor Jaume Collboni for the Catalan capital and could thus leave the Catalan Socialist (PSC) municipal leader facing a confidence vote, after a party decision this Tuesday. The plenum of the Comuns decided to reject the budget that the PSC will present to the municipal plenary session this Friday. The membership of the party led by Ada Colau linked their stand to Collboni's maintenance up till now of a "blockade on forming a left-wing majority government" in the city, as they explained on X. "Barcelona does not want a government that looks to the right, it needs a government capable of promoting future policies", they responded.
The "no" of the Comuns leaves Collboni's budget without enough votes to pass, with three days left before the public accounts face the council vote. At present the Socialist leader only has the ten votes from his own group and five from the Republican Left (ERC), a total of fifteen, far from the minimum 21 he needs to get the budget approved. All this means that the mayor is set to lose the vote, which would head him towards the strategy of linking the passing of the budget to a confidence question.
The party membership of the alternative-left Comuns, who governed Barcelona city for eight years until last May, had to position themselves on the following question: "In the event that the PSC maintains its refusal to agree on a progressive government before the municipal plenary on March 22nd, do you support the decision to vote against the municipal budget of 2024?". The response was that 165 members favoured saying "no" to the public account, five were against and five votes were null, so they have "massively ruled out giving a blank cheque to the PSC government budget". In the same statement, Barcelona en Comú emphasized that it does not agree with the Socialists asking opposition groups to pass the budget "without first being able to talk about policies and which city model they are backing".
Collboni has never closed the door to a municipal government with the Comuns, but maintained that first he needed to get his budget approved and then deal with the issue of a government agreement. He has three days to change his mind and reach an agreement with Colau, if he does not want the Comuns to stage a re-run of its action in the Catalan Parliament. Just a week ago Jessica Albiach's Comuns deputies in Parliament already said "no" to another set of accounts agreed between the PSC and the ERC, those of president Pere Aragonès, a decision that ended with the calling of a new election in Catalonia.