Jaume Collboni closes eight years of Ada Colau's rudeness: Felipe VI receives a mayor of Barcelona after 17 years

The official reception of King Felipe VI to the mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, which will take place this Monday at the Albéniz Palace on Montjuïc mountain, puts an end to eight years of disrespect to the Crown by the Consistory led by Ada Colau until the past month of June.

The Monarch will meet at noon with the socialist councilor in what will be the first audience with a mayor of the Catalan capital since 2006, when Juan Carlos I received Jordi Hereu at the La Zarzuela Palace, the last member of the PSC who served as head of the municipal government until Collboni's proclamation three months ago.

The current head of the local corporation will stage, in this way, the return to normality in relations with the Royal House. However, as the first deputy mayor of the city, Collboni already exercised institutional representation during the last term on some occasions when the King visited Barcelona.. As was also usual, during the five and a half years in which the PSC formed a coalition with Barcelona en Comú (BComú), the socialist leader played the role of friendly face of the Colau Executive with the economic powers of the city, mostly uncomfortable with the former spokesperson for the Platform for People Affected by Mortgages (PAH).

Aside from those meetings, this will not be the first time that Felipe VI meets with Collboni.. One of the personal objects that attracted the most attention in the setup of his mayor's office was a photograph of an audience with the King in La Zarzuela that was not publicly disclosed.. The image also included a text dedicated by the Head of State himself. Another symbolic gesture by Collboni upon settling in the main office of the City Hall was to place the Spanish flag and that of the European Union next to the two present in the Colau stage: the Barcelona flag and the senyera flag.

After the victory of Xavier Trias (Junts) in the municipal elections of May 28, the possibility of the Mayor of Barcelona falling into the hands of the independence movement became a State issue that transcended local politics.. Curiously, two days after those elections, the King and the post-convergent candidate (former first mayor between 2011 and 2015 with CiU) coincided at the annual meeting of the Círculo de Economía, where they greeted each other and exchanged some phrases, an image that aroused many comments..

Two weeks later, Collboni (second on March 28) became mayor of the city in extremis with the support of the nine councilors of the commons (they announced their yes less than an hour before the start of the investiture plenary session) and the four from the PP, who had not revealed the meaning of their vote, after several days of speculation about the role of Daniel Sirera's municipal group in preventing Junts from governing the city. A role similar to that played by Manuel Valls, four years earlier, voting for Colau to block the way for the 2019 electoral winner, Ernest Maragall (ERC).

Colau's gestures

Colau's traditional poses at the official receptions to the King in Barcelona were not a decision she made at the beginning of her time as mayor, but rather from October 2017, with Felipe VI's speech in response to the unilateral referendum of 1-O organized by the Generalitat led by Carles Puigdemont. In fact, the image of the former activist against evictions greeting the Monarch at the Mobile World Congress had previously been used by the independence movement to penalize her by calling into question her republicanism.

However, the gestures of opposition to the Crown did occupy part of the first political initiatives of the commoners in the City Council.. With his first mandate having just begun, Colau ordered in July 2015 the removal of the bust of King Juan Carlos from the plenary hall.. The case ended up in court and a ruling forced the City Council, in March 2018, to place a portrait of Felipe VI “in a preferential and honorable place.”

In July 2021, six years after the withdrawal of the figure of the Emeritus, the Supreme Court rejected an appeal from the Barcelona municipal government and Colau placed a small image of the King (30 centimeters wide by 40 high) on one side. from the meeting room. The BComú leader complied with the court decision by wearing a mask that day with the red, yellow and purple colors of the republican flag.

Another front on which the Colau team wanted to carry out the cultural battle was the changes in the street map with the elimination of several names related to the Monarchy and the Bourbon dynasty.. Recovering old names, they were replaced in the nomenclature, among other spaces, the Juan Carlos I square, the Príncipe de Asturias and Borbón avenues and the Príncipe de Girona Gardens.

And no less notable was, in 2016, the nominal replacement of the City Council's own plenary hall, which only the five Ciudadanos councilors and the three of the PP opposed.. The name of Queen Regent, in honor of María Cristina of Habsburg-Lorraine, great-great-grandmother of Felipe VI, was renamed Carles Pi i Sunyer, mayor of Barcelona, councilor, deputy and minister during the Second Republic.