The Barcelona City Council begins this Sunday a six-day institutional mission through Eastern Europe that will take Mayor Jaume Collboni (PSC) to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Poland, and Ukraine. In Kiev, the delegation will coincide on Thursday with the one sent by the Generalitat, headed by president Salvador Illa. Collboni will meet with his counterparts from the capitals he visits, on a trip with a marked social character.
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The main objective of both visits is to jointly convey the solidarity of Catalonia and Barcelona with Ukraine after four years of Russian invasion. But beyond the diplomatic meetings, Collboni’s agenda includes visits to social and civil protection projects, attention to vulnerable groups, and the defense of LGTBI rights. In fact, the second deputy mayor, Maria Eugènia Gay, accompanies him on the delegation.
Collboni will sign a new Memorandum of Understanding with the mayor of the Ukrainian capital, Vitaliy Klitschko, and will officially deliver vehicles and firefighting equipment donated by the City Council to the State Emergency Service of Ukraine. The Catalan capital, during these more than four years of Russian invasion, had already sent there, among other things, fire trucks and electric generators intended to maintain essential services.
The leader of the Barcelona City Council will also meet with the mayor of the city of Kharkiv, Ihor Terekhov, and with Sister Lucía Caram, whose humanitarian network works on the ground. He will visit civil protection systems, shelters affected by recent drone attacks, and will make a floral offering at the Kiev Heroes Memorial Complex.
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The first stop of the trip, this Sunday and Monday, is Sarajevo. Collboni will highlight the special relationship existing between both cities, when in 1995, after the siege, then-mayor Pasqual Maragall turned the Bosnian city into District 11. The City Council leader will meet with his counterpart Samir Avdic, representatives of the Canton, and will visit the Safe House, a project funded with Barcelona’s support for the care of women victims of violence.
Afterwards, the delegation will visit Warsaw. There they will meet with the mayor, Rafał Trzaskowski, to visit social housing developments, one of the priority axes of his mandate. The mayor will also participate as a speaker at the Impact Leading Minds forum, focused on security and the future of the European space, and will hold a meeting with the Campaign Against Homophobia association.
With this tour, Barcelona reaffirms its active role in city diplomacy and its commitment to peace, betting on international cooperation with concrete projects. In addition, it shows its support for states that want to join the European Union.
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