Secretariat

The General Secretariat of the City Council is responsible for the functions of mandatory legal advice to the City Council and the public faith of all acts and agreements that are adopted. In the exercise of these functions, the Secretariat ensures the legal correctness of the files that are submitted for approval by the municipal bodies and assumes internal legal advice with all the departments, as well as with the dependent entities in the exercise of their functions.

The General Secretariat continues to play a prominent role in public trust functions since, despite the progress in electronic administration, its intervention is necessary to draw up minutes of the sessions of different municipal bodies, to safeguard the corresponding books and to act as a notary in the formalization of contracts, agreements and similar documents processed by the City Council. The Secretariat is also responsible for the superior management of the City Council's archives and records.

The General Secretariat is the reference department for other administrations that contact the City Council with a request or request for certain information, such as the Ombudsman's Office, the Commission for the Guarantee of the Right of Access to Public Information, the Catalan Data Protection Authority, the Anti-Fraud Office, etc., and monitors and controls the appropriate response to be given to these institutions. In this sense, the Secretariat is one of the fundamental pieces of the City Council's integrity system and, among other tasks, provides legal support to the Municipal Intervention in the role of reference attributed to it by the Law regulating the Anti-Fraud Office of Catalonia.

The role played by the General Secretariat in projects financed with Next Generation funds is also noteworthy, as it assumes relevant responsibilities in the management of subprojects, through the approval of profiles and the validation and certification of the required documentation, among others. 

It is also noteworthy the role it plays in accordance with electoral regulations, since it acts as a delegate of the Zone Electoral Board in the different electoral processes. In 2024, elections were held to the Parliament of Catalonia and the European Parliament and, therefore, the General Secretariat had to carry out the corresponding functions to ensure the smooth running of the electoral processes in the municipality in close collaboration with the rest of the municipal departments and especially, with the Organization and Statistics departments.

The administrative responsibility for all these functions falls on local administration officials with national qualifications, whose legal regime is regulated in Royal Decree 128/2018, of March 16.

Its general objectives are:

• Develop the functions of legal advice and public trust, collaborating with municipal departments and entities dependent on the City Council for the correct exercise of municipal powers.
• Ensure effective compliance with the general principles of action that must guide all administrative activity, such as those of transparency, participation, effectiveness and efficiency, responsibility in public management, collaboration and, in general, legal certainty.