Cristina Farrés
02.10.2019 00:00 h.
The 60 members of the plenary session of the Cámara de Comercio de Barcelona will meet this Wednesday afternoon in the second session chaired by the pro-independence Joan Canadell. On the eve of the meeting, the Eines de País team has taken the first step to launch its consultations, an issue that has led Catalan businessmen to stir.
From the outset, because it has been launched to update the electoral census that is used in the business revitalization organization. The managers that emerged from the ANC have already announced that they considered it essential to debug the list of entrepreneurs and freelancers with the right to vote. Eines de País sought to leave the companies that moved the head office outside Catalonia without participation and expand the number of potential voters in its field. Even with company administrators without real activity, something that would be at the border of the regulations.
Census Control
Therefore, the public census period has begun and has facilitated its review for the first time through the website of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce. It will also be the public law organization the one in charge of dealing with the complaints and claims coming to them.
Opponents consider it a takeover of the electoral census. They warn that they will monitor adhesions and un-subscriptions to prevent what they understand would be a biased manipulation in their favor. All this, at the doorstep of what, according to them, is another action of independent propaganda from the Chamber of Commerce of Barcelona.
Independence propaganda
The most critical of Canadell and his team say that in the few months he has been in charge of his position, he has focused more on spreading his political stance, even before the General Council of the Chambers of Commerce of Catalonia, than on launching proposals in favor of the Catalan business. They frame in it the announcement that was made after the electoral victory that the businessmen of the Chamber would be consulted on their defense of the Catalan republic, fiscal sovereignty or if they wanted to designate King Felipe VI as persona non grata.
Eines de País warned that the first consultation would take place in October and it is considered that there is enough time for the objective to be achieved. However, the debate about the suitability of the measure and what questions should be asked has not entered in the agenda of the plenary session of the Chamber.
A plenary with equal forces
But this could be addressed in a point of the agenda that has been included which is an absolute mess: the review of “urgent issues arrived after the call of the session was processed”. Non pro-independence attendees point out that if Canadell does not take the step, they still have the possibility to raise the issue in the open questions turn.
They also remember that Eines de País no longer has a majority in the plenary. The incorporation of the Gremi d’Hotels to the last paid-for chair of the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce, advanced by Crónica Global, implies that as of this October 30 votes are from the pro-independence side and the other 30 are distributed among the candidacies of Pimec and Enric Crous (who is not in the plenary), Carles Tusquets, Ramón Masià (also without a chair) and the Catalan employers, Foment del Treball and the organization of SMEs.
Many questions can be referred to the executive council, formed only by the Eines de País team, and they are the majority in the rest of the areas in which the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce is representative. But the current situation of the plenary brings them closer to greater dialogue.
Recognition to Miquel Valls
Other issues that will be addressed in the plenary and that except for last-minute surprises will come forward is the award of the Gold Medal of Honor to Miquel Valls, the president for 17 years and who died last September. Canadell has taken into consideration the demand of Catalan businessmen to grant posthumous recognition to the executive.
On the other hand, the Barcelona Chamber of Commerce will make clear its support for the Pyrenees-Barcelona candidacy to organize the 2030 Winter Olympic Games.
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