Colau puts the 'burned' councilors of the City Council on the lists to Congress

Three of the most questioned councilors in the Barcelona City Council hold starting positions on the Sumar list of 23-J. Among the five first numbers are Gerardo Pisarello, Gala Pin and Eloi Badia. All of them left a trail of controversies and a bitter taste to the residents of the city of Barcelona during their time as municipes. From number 4 appears the secretary of the Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, unrelated to municipal politics, but who had to find accommodation on the lists of some province to compensate for her dedication to the party.

Thus, of the first five positions, three are leaders close to Ada Colau. What's more: the abandonment of the head of the list, Jaume Asens, who in 2019 already eroded the municipal government, peppered with various controversies, has implied the entry of two other local leaders also questioned.

Number 2 on the lists is Gerardo Pisarello (in 2019 he had run as number 3), whose role as first deputy mayor during Colau's first term was highly criticized. In addition to his harsh ways with the opposition, his contempt for everything that did not agree with the ideology of the commons and his absence from plenary sessions or from key commissions earned him not a few criticisms and an aura of a surly politician.. Pisarello was the one who promoted the removal of monarchical symbols from public spaces in Barcelona (the removal of the bust of the King from the plenary hall was famous), his determination to prevent the Spanish flag from being hung in the consistory or the claim that the Central government cedes the Via Laietana Police Headquarters to install a “museum of torture” there.

One of his first initiatives as soon as he was elected first deputy mayor was to have his wife, Vanesa Valiño, hired as a consultant by the City Council. Valiño was Colau's companion at the DESC Observatory, the entity in which Pisarello also collaborated.. Under the mandates of the commons, the entity has received more than 250,000 euros in municipal public subsidies.

a suspicious trip

In 2018, Pisarello traveled to Uruguay and Argentina in the middle of August. It was a supposed work trip. He met former President Pepe Mújica, had some meetings and then ended up in his country, Argentina, where he met the president of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, visited Esma (the Navy school, where thousands of people were tortured during the dictatorship) and had a meeting with jurists who denounced the crimes of Francoism. Later, he visited the San Lorenzo de Almagro and nothing else. In his account, he posted a photo of him with his children at the door of his family home, where he stayed for a couple more weeks.. “Working for Barcelona? What it seems is that he is on paid vacation ”, they reproached him from the opposition. The trip cost the municipal coffers 10,500 euros and that because the return ticket was paid for by the University of Rosario.

Number 3 on the En Comú Podem lists is held, on this occasion, by Gala Pin, a former squatter who during her tenure earned the animosity of groups, unions and neighbors given her radical position on citizen issues. Pin did not repeat in the municipal lists of 2019 due to the controversy unleashed by his behavior. She is a close friend of Ada Colau (they both shared work at the DESC Observatory and at the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages, PAH) and she has been seen with her in recent months on walks through different neighborhoods of the city.. One of his last controversies was photographing himself, almost at the end of last year, with a baby carriage in front of a graffiti that read “Mom, I'm fine.”. The phrase had been written about the Palau Centelles, considered a historical heritage of the city.

Pin did not bite his tongue during his last term: “Definitely, Collboni is a complete fool and lives in the year 1995… What a cross!”. The socialist had asked to expand the El Prat airport to gain intercontinental connectivity, attract companies and create employment. Pin added: “The only thing I ask is that they touch us with intelligent politicians, please. Even when they are adversaries. Or, above all, when they are not. That hollow politicians are an unbearable and dangerous cross (no one would celebrate a divorce with the space of the socialists more than I)”. At that time, Collboni was first deputy mayor and supported the municipal government of Colau with his votes.

“Inquisitive Attitudes”

Gala Pin became councilor for Ciutat Vella, the toughest district in the city and where she was squatted. He battled against tourist apartments, described visitors as a “swarm of locusts”, suspended licenses related to the sector and leisure as soon as he took office.. She lived through the hard days of the manteros, roaming freely while she asked for work permits and papers.. The restaurateurs and neighbors accused her of “inquisitive attitudes, arbitrary decisions and lack of sensitivity and courage, of making the workers and their families suffer” when she decided to restrict the terraces in the neighborhood. The associations accused him of having removed tables and chairs “and their place has been taken by abandoned tablecloths and bicycles”. Of more than 100 written allegations, he only answered a dozen and, even so, they accused: “He does not answer anything that is asked”.

After leaving through the false door of the consistory in 2019, Gala Pin went on to work for the Goteo Foundation, an entity that had received subsidies of 287,000 euros from the City Council. The ethics committee of the consistory rejected that action and defined it as “a flagrant case of revolving doors”. After breaking the scandal, he assured that he had never participated in the granting of the subsidies, but he resigned from the job.

The plugged-in girlfriend

The third candidate linked to Barcelona City Council is Eloi Badia, who until his incorporation was one of the managers of Engineering Without Borders (ESF), one of the entities that has received subsidies and municipal public contracts. These concessions are being judicially investigated. Badia placed his girlfriend, Tatiana Guerrero, as a consultant for more than 51,000 euros (currently receiving more than 56,000).

Badia has several complaints pending resolution. One of them is as a consequence of the management at the head of the public company TERSA, investigated for releasing carcinogenic substances into the atmosphere.. After years of turning a deaf ear to neighborhood and environmental platforms, the court admitted a lawsuit against Badia and senior officials of the public company in 2022.

Among his initiatives we can point out the intention of setting up a public funeral home or that of municipalizing water management. In fact, Badia was in charge of Barcelona Cemeteries when a block of 144 niches in the Montjuïc cemetery collapsed in 2017. The municipal management ended with complaints from the relatives of the deceased, which were rejected by the judge, and with the indignation of the families for having mixed the remains of the deceased.

On the other hand, his work at the head of ESF also had a lot to do with water, since one of the entities with which he collaborated was Aigua és Vida, a civic platform that advocates for public management. This involvement led him to a merciless war with Agbar, which is the company that manages the water in the demarcation of the Barcelona metropolitan area until the year 2047.. Colau and Badia deployed a veritable arsenal of accusations against Agbar. There was fake news and a dirty war by the City Council against the company, until the Supreme Court endorsed the terms of the current management contract.

Badia was also involved in the implementation of the Low Emission Zone (ZBE), aimed at restricting traffic and reducing pollution.. In March 2022, the High Court of Justice struck down the LEZ. And there is a pending complaint from neighbors for an ecological crime by allocating a green area in Vallcarca to the construction of two blocks of houses. His management at the head of the Municipal Institute of Parks and Gardens is not without controversy: after several complaints of sexual harassment against two workers, which ended in a judicial conviction, Badia promoted the protagonist to the category.