The mayor of Badalona, Xavier García Albiol, announced in May 2024 – a year after achieving an absolute majority – the hiring of a manager in the City Council: Jofre Clofent. The councilor assured that the hiring of this law graduate and expert in public procurement was essential to “modernize the structure and functioning” of the City Council. Albiol took advantage of the appointment to criticize the coalitions that preceded him in the mayoralty and whose terms were intermittent: “It cannot be that an administration with more than a thousand workers does not have a person responsible for ensuring that the City Council is agile in providing services. Two years later – and eight months before the next municipal elections – Clofent has submitted his resignation.
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The departure of the star signing of the PP mayor, as La Vanguardia has reported, was by mutual agreement. Clofent, in fact, has been the first manager in the democratic history of the City Council and his departure comes precisely at the time when Albiol’s administration is receiving the most criticism for low budget execution, procurement problems (the staff is less than half a thousand and there are difficulties retaining personnel) and long payment terms to suppliers.
In the last plenary session, the opposition criticized that during the first half of 2026 only 27% of the ordinary budget had been executed and only 4.5% of the planned investments. Something that contrasts with an increase of 100 million euros in the municipal treasury reaching 442 million euros.
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But the biggest criticism Albiol receives is for the payment period to suppliers. The PSC has denounced that the City Council has an average payment period of 169.90 days, a figure that places Badalona among the large Spanish municipalities that take the longest to pay their bills.
The months prior to the elections in Badalona are coinciding with changes in the municipal structure. Clofent’s departure is not the only one. In July, the City Council dismissed Joan Francès as director of the Badalona Museum. In spring, Xavier Casanovas left the general management of Badalona Comunicació to join Betevé.