“To prevent certain debates, they are willing to destroy the very essence of democracy.” This was the forceful statement with which the CiU Government attacked the Constitutional Court in 2014, due to its ruling against the law of non-referendary consultations with which the magistrates tried to prevent the 9-N consultation. A decade later, however, it is Junts that uses that same ruling to veto a consultation on water management in the municipality of La Garriga (Barcelona).
The controversy began in the previous legislature, after the concession that the municipality had held with the company Sorea since 1991 expired in 2021. At that time, the debate began between municipal groups about what to do with water management. First the mayor of ERC and then the current one, Meritxell Budó, of Junts in coalition with the PSC, extended the contract annually, while the situation was studied.
But in September of last year, the City Council chose to remove La Garriga from the Association of Municipalities and Entities for Public Water. A first step that in the town of 17,000 inhabitants was interpreted as a decision by the council to maintain private management.
From that moment on, parties and neighbors favorable to public management began to organize. The CUP proposed a motion in the City Council that was rejected and in the summer of this year the platform for the public water of La Garriga was established.
“The platform was born with the objective of acting through citizen means once the political route had not borne fruit,” explains Pep Terrades, member of the entity. The idea of the entity from the first day was to promote a citizen consultation, for which, in accordance with the Catalan law of popular consultations, they demanded that the City Council allow them to collect signatures to begin the participatory process.
The response from the City Council, which exhausted the maximum period to respond, could not have been more disappointing for the promoters. “They rejected our request, citing, on the one hand, a formal defect, for not attaching the model for collecting signatures,” explains Terradas.
“But we were even more surprised by the underlying argument about the ruling against the popular consultation law, under an interpretation that goes beyond what the Constitutional Court went and has not been done by any Catalan City Council to date,” he argues.
The mayor of the municipality, Meritxell Budó, from Junts, assures that it was an entirely technical response. “The legal services of the City Council are advised by those of the Barcelona Provincial Council and what was concluded is that the consultation that was requested was an endorsement and, therefore, authorizing it was outside the powers of the City Council,” explains Budó, who was also a councilor. of the presidency with Quim Torra.
What Constitutional ruling 31/2015 establishes, to which the council governed by Budó clings, is that non-referral popular consultations must be “sectoral”, that is, not directed at the entire electoral body of a municipality. An argument that sought not to make it easier for the Generalitat to use this formula to sneak a referendum on independence.
To overcome the obstacle imposed by the TC, what municipalities usually do is introduce people between 16 and 18 years old into voting. This has been the case for more than fifty municipal consultations in the last decade, although others, such as Granollers, used the same provision in 2021 to deny another consultation on public water.
The La Garriga promotion commission did not take into account the shortcut of introducing voting from the age of 16. According to him, because in consultations with the municipal secretary, he directed them in the opposite direction. But the platform assures that it would be willing to introduce this change so that they would be allowed to vote. The problem is that the Garrga City Council did not give them a deadline to correct the errors, as is usually the case.
“They were not given the procedure to change the request because, in this case, the request was impossible to amend as it was completely contrary to the law,” says the head of the municipality’s legal services.
The City Council approves the tender
While the platform tried to extend the debate on the suitability of the consultation, the government team accelerated and last week approved the tender for a new public-private water management.
“The consultation is unnecessary because from the City Council we are very clear about the model that La Garriga needs. We want a modern model, from the 21st century, that co-manages with the City Council, that modernizes the network, which right now loses up to 30% of the flow, and that incorporates electronic meters,” says Budó.
The City Council also argues that according to their calculations they would need an investment of up to five million euros to carry out the improvements they wish to introduce, a capital that they do not have and that they can obtain thanks to a new private concession for the exploitation of water in your municipality.
“It is not an issue that generates debate in the municipality,” says Budó, who also assures that other issues such as door-to-door waste collection introduced in the last legislature were controversial. “And here from door to door, no one consulted anything,” he recalls.
Appeal to the control commission and private vote
After the City Council slammed the door, the entity promoting the consultation went to the popular consultation control commission, a body dependent on the Parliament that serves to settle disputes on these issues. This body has agreed with the City Council considering that, as Budó’s team understands, the TC ruling allows the City Council to oppose the consultation they are demanding.
However, the commission agreed with the divided City Council thanks to the casting vote of the president and with a dissenting vote signed by up to three of the jurists who are members of the body.
“We consider that the City Council of La Garriga makes an extensive interpretation of the ruling,” he assures in the dissenting opinion, where it is observed that if the City Council had desired it, it could have accepted the consultation without major inconveniences “just as other popular consultations have been held.” would not endorse where the administration has not assumed the most restrictive criterion of the sentence.”
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