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sessions can be called outside these months. As well as legislating for Catalunya
within the strictures of the Statute of Autonomy, parliament also appoints the
senators who represent the Generalitat in the Spanish Senate and has the right
to initiate legislation in the Spanish Congress.
Barcelona itself is divided into ten
administrative districts
, including the
CiutatVella, Eixample, Gràcia, Sants-Montjuïc and Sarrià-Sant Gervasi.The city
is run by a mayor and 41 city councillors who are elected by each municipal
area.The seat of the city council, the
Ajuntament
, is in Plaça de Sant Jaume,
opposite the Generalitat building.
From 1980 (the first elections after autonomy) until 2003,
Catalunya
consist-
ently elected right-wing governments, led by the conservative Convergència
i Unió (CiU) president of the Generalitat,
Jordi Pujol i Soley
. The Catalan
predilection for the Right may come as a surprise in view of the past, but
Catalunya is nothing if not pragmatic, and such administrations are seen as
better able to protect Catalan business interests. The main opposition was
provided by the
Partit Socialista de Catalunya
(PSC), sister party of the
national PSOE, while other Catalan parties, such as the pro-independence
Esquerra Republicana de Catalana
(ERC) and the
CatalunyaVerds
(ICV;
Greens), have usually attracted minority support.
However, by way of contrast to conservative Catalunya,
Barcelona
itself
remains by and large a PSC socialist stronghold. Part of this is due to the city’s
industrial heritage, but it’s also in good measure the result of the large immi-
grant population from elsewhere in Spain, who are little attracted to the CiU’s
brand of Catalan nationalism. Between 1982 and 1997, the Ajuntament was led
by an incredibly popular and charismatic socialist mayor,
Pasqual Maragall i
Mira
, who took much of the credit for the hosting of the 1992 Olympic Games
and consequent reshaping of the city. However, much to the consternation of
locals, he stepped down from his post as mayor in 1997, leaving his deputy, the
little-known
Joan Clos
, to fill his shoes. Clos proved himself able and won
two more terms in 1999 and 2003, before being succeeded in 2006 by current
mayor
Jordi Hereu
, who was re-elected in May 2007.
Maragall, meanwhile, moved on to take charge of the PSC in Catalunya, and
became president after the
2003 parliamentary elections
, at the head of a
coalition that provided the first left-wing Catalan government since 1980.The
big surprise was the performance of the pro-independence ERC, under the
leadership of
Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira
, which effectively doubled its vote
from 1999 to hold the balance of power. It was not the easy alliance that it
appeared on paper, since the separatist ERC favours full Catalan independence,
not something the PSC (or the national PSOE) supports.
Prompted by the manoeuvrings of the ERC, Catalan autonomy moved to
centre stage with the overwhelming approval by parliament in September 2005
of the
Estatut
– the proposed reform of the 1979 Catalan Statute of Autonomy.
While political strands within Catalunya are convinced of the merits of some
kind of
devolution
, the reformed statute meant different things to different
parties: to the PP and conservatives, granting more regional autonomy puts
at risk the Spanish nation; to the Socialists, declaring Catalunya a “nation” is a
welcome step towards a strong federal state; while for the separatists, it’s nothing
less than a call to independence.
Not surprisingly, the stature reform caused political mayhem. A
referendum
in June 2006 approved the statue, with a 75 percent yes-vote – but turnout was
remarkably low (under fifty percent), throwing some doubt on the validity of
its mandate. Tension within the coalition government led to Maragall stepping
down and calling an early
parliamentary election in November 2006
, which
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Barcelona snapshot