- In milestone, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- In a first, SpaceX 'catches' megarocket booster after test flight
- Bangladeshi Hindus shrug off attack worries to celebrate festival
- Ubisoft fears assassin's hit over falling sales
- Vietnam, China hold talks on calming South China Sea tensions
- SpaceX will try to 'catch' giant Starship rocket shortly before landing
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgery: reports
- Japan's former empress Michiko discharged after surgey: reports
- 'Little Gregory' murder haunts France 40 years on
- Tariffs, tax cuts, energy: What is in Trump's economic plan?
- Amazon wants to be everything to everyone
- Jewish school in Canada hit by gunfire for second time
- With medical report Harris seeks to play health card against Trump
- China-EU EV tariff talks in Brussels end with 'major differences': Beijing
- Buried Nazi past haunts Athens on liberation anniversary
- Harris to release medical report confirming fitness for presidency: campaign
- Nobel prize a timely reminder, Hiroshima locals say
- China offers $325 bn in fiscal stimulus for ailing economy
- Small Quebec company dominates one part of NHL hockey: jerseys
- Boeing to cut 10% of workforce as it sees big Q3 loss
- Want to film in Paris? No sexism allowed
- US, European markets rise as investors weigh rates, earnings
- In Colombia, children trade plastic waste for school supplies
- JPMorgan Chase profits top estimates, bank sees 'resilient' US economy
- Little progress at key meet ahead of COP29 climate summit
- 'Party atmosphere': Skygazers treated to another aurora show
- Kyrgyzstan opens rare probe into glacier destruction
- European Mediterranean states discuss Middle East, migration
- Thunberg leads pro-Palestinian, climate protest in Milan
- Stock markets diverge before China weekend briefing
- EU questions shopping app Temu over illegal products risk
- Han Kang's books sell out in South Korea after Nobel win
- Shanghai markets sink ahead of briefing on mixed day for Asia
- Investors, analysts eye bigger China stimulus at Saturday briefing
- Musk unveils robotaxi, pledges it 'before 2027'
- At least 11 dead in Florida but Hurricane Milton not as bad as feared
- Asian markets mixed after Wall St drop, Shanghai dips before briefing
- Automaker Stellantis says CEO will retire in 2026
- Musk's promised robotaxi unveil delayed
- On US coast, wind power foes embrace 'Save the Whales' argument
- At least 10 dead in Florida after Hurricane Milton spawns tornadoes
- Internet Archive reels from 'catastrophic' cyberattack, data breach
- Wall Street stocks retreat from records on US inflation data
- Israel strikes central Beirut, killing 22
- Solar storm could impact US hurricane recovery efforts: agency
- Delta eyes Election Day travel pullback as profits climb
- Florida battered by hurricane, floods but spared 'worst-case scenario'
- UK's William and Kate in first joint public engagement since cancer treatment
- Over 200 women in legal talks with Harrods over Fayed abuse claims
- A very stiff breeze: BBC says sorry for 20,000 kph wind forecast
Barcelona mayor eyes re-election as Spain campaign starts
After eight years running City Hall, Barcelona's left-wing mayor, Ada Colau, is eyeing a third mandate on May 28, when Spain votes in local and regional elections whose outcome is unclear.
A total of 36 million people will cast their ballots to elect local leaders and mayors in 12 of Spain's 17 regions on that day, with the election campaign formally starting on Friday.
The polls are widely seen as a trial run ahead of a year-end general election, which is expected to be a tight race for the left-wing government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
In Barcelona, where Catalan separatists staged a failed independence bid in 2017, polls put Colau neck-and-neck with her two closest rivals -- Socialist candidate Jaume Collboni and Xavier Trias, a conservative nationalist and her predecessor as Barcelona mayor.
In 2015, after four years in office, Trias lost his seat to Colau, a former housing rights activist.
She was elected at the head of a citizens' platform backed by the hard-left Podemos, the junior partner in Sanchez's coalition.
The pair are once again set to face off in the polls but much has changed since 2015 in this city of 1.6 million inhabitants.
During the same elections that year, Madrid also elected another Podemos-backed candidate, Manuela Carmena, as mayor but the city has since swung firmly to the right.
- Tackling mass tourism -
Colau, who doesn't consider herself a separatist, was re-elected in 2019 thanks to support from ex-French premier Manuel Valls, himself a candidate.
He facilitated her investiture to stop the left-wing pro-independence ERC from governing the city.
Since 2015, Colau has ruled Spain's second city in a coalition with the Socialists.
But given the shifting alliances between parties, among them ERC and the hardline separatist JxCAT, the outcome of the upcoming election is far from clear.
This time, Colau is pledging to further her achievements in office, with a campaign highlighting advances in housing and transport.
On her watch, the city has created a network of green bicycle- and pedestrian-friendly routes that have reduced traffic and therefore pollution, although overall levels remain high.
Central to her policies has been a crackdown on mass tourism.
Colau has shut illegal tourist apartments and limited the number of hotel beds in a city that hit a peak of 12 million overnight visitors in 2019, municipal figures show.
"In 2015, we inherited a city... with rampant pollution, unrestrained property speculation and unbridled mass tourism, and the first thing we did was to restore order," the 49-year-old said this week.
But her critics point to rapidly rising rents in the city and say she has held back Barcelona's international development by dragging her heels over plans to expand its airport.
Such foot-dragging has not been well received in a city where tourism accounted for 12 percent of its output before the Covid pandemic.
- State of the streets -
"Barcelona is just beginning to throw off the bad reputation it earned through the city hall's policies which have been suffocating the city's very essence," said Jordi Casas, a senior figure in Catalonia's Foment del Treball business confederation.
According to the latest municipal opinion poll, the issue which most concerns Barcelona residents is the lack of security, followed by the cleanliness of its streets.
"The city has become uncomfortable and people have lost their self-respect," Trias, its 76-year-old former mayor, complained this week
When Colau was elected in 2015, "there was a desire for change from the traditional parties" and hope that her party would do things differently, says Toni Aira, an expert in political communication at Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University.
"In the end, she didn't do things so differently because she took on quite an institutional role, although she has made some changes," he told AFP, saying only the ballot would show whether those changes were enough for voters.
D.Goldberg--CPN