Barcelona mayor Jordi Hereu made an effort yesterday to justify money spent by the city council on external reports, with a long press conference where officials sought to explain the process of commissioning such documents (article in Catalan, Avui). In what has been billed as a one-off event, 198 reports were put under the spotlight after they were used by opposition parties CiU and PP to criticise the council for its allegedly extravagant policy on paying third parties to write reports. “We’ve bought knowledge that we didn’t have,” argued yesterday Ramon García-Bragado, councillor for urbanism, in defence of the almost €12 million spent on reports during 2008. However, some of the reports that were put up for examination caused bemusement amongst the journalists in attendance; for example three reports, which together cost €35,755, found that the number of peregrine falcons in the city didn’t go up between 2005 and 2007, but they did increase in 2008, while works at the Sagrada Familia threatened a pair of the birds living at the cathedral; along with another report that cost over €17,000 to discover that skateboarding is a tourist attraction here.
11/24/09 10:34 AM


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