The Generalitat has just announced a historic legal change to facilitate the legalization of urbanizations like Santa Maria de l'Avall. While this was being negotiated behind closed doors, they tried to hastily impose a ruinous project on us. The mandatory question is: Why did they lie to us by omission?

Just a few days ago, the press echoed news that radically changes the playing field for our urbanization: the Government will promote a legal change to make the requirements for City Councils more flexible when legalizing urbanizations. You can read the full news in El Periódico (or download it in PDF here if it appears behind a paywall).

In practice, this means that the Generalitat finally recognizes that the same services and the same urban model (Passeig de Gràcia) cannot be demanded of an urbanization surrounded by forest. Avenues are opening up for more logical, sustainable, and, above all, infinitely cheaper solutions for the neighbors. But the real "bombshell" is not the news itself, but what lies behind it.

The City Council's complicit silence

A legislative change of this caliber is not improvised over a weekend. It requires months, and even years, of prior negotiations between the Generalitat and the affected municipalities, including ours.

That is to say: the Corbera City Council knew perfectly well that this avenue was open and under negotiation.

However, let's go back to the last extraordinary assembly. In that moment of maximum tension, with anguished neighbors debating how to face a disproportionate 13 million euro project, no one from the City Council opened their mouth to inform us of this lifeline.

Knowing that the law was going to change in our favor, the moral, ethical, and political obligation of the council was to apply an immediate moratorium to the 13M€ project and notify the neighbors. Instead, they opted for silence, pushing us towards an unbearable financial abyss. Who benefits from this concealment? Certainly not the neighbors.

And where does our Board of Delegates stand?

Following the indisputable absolute majority of the neighbors rejecting the official project, we expected the Board of Delegates to take note, wipe the slate clean, and begin exploring these new avenues (such as bio-purifiers and the Government's new facilities).

To the surprise and perplexity of many, in the follow-up meetings it seems that there are still attempts to revive the 13 million zombie project, ignoring the clear mandate of the polls and ignoring this new legal scenario that favors us so much.

It is time to demand accountability

Hiding from an entire urbanization that a legal lifesaver is brewing in order to try to slip them a multimillion-dollar bill is, at the very least, a historic disloyalty to Santa Maria de l'Avall. We cannot allow them to continue treating us as second-class citizens or as a simple ATM.

  1. We demand the definitive halt of any procedure related to the 13M€ project.
  2. We demand total transparency regarding the communications between the City Council and the Generalitat regarding this new law.
  3. We demand that the Board complies with what was voted and defends the economic interests of the neighbors, not the hidden agendas of the council.

If the current Board does not feel capable of standing up to this disloyalty and leading this new scenario that is opening up to us, perhaps it is time to make way for representatives who will.