the president of Together for Catalonia at the Barcelona City Council, Elsa Artadi, mayor of the party confirmed in the primaries held last February, announced this Thursday to her closest circle that has decided to give up running for municipal elections to be held in May 2023, according to El Nacional and TV3.
Junts has called for an appearance by the councilor which will take place tomorrow in the town hall. Politics, according to the aforementioned media, could be considering abandoning politics.
Vice-president of the party and deputy in the Parliament, his resignation is due to personal reasons, and it arrives shortly after he redoubled his commitment to continue in the city council. Artadi won the primaries to be mayor of Junts without any opponent presenting himself.
The result of 2019
Less than a month ago, Artadi announced that he was no longer a spokesperson for Junts per Catalunya to focus on municipal life. The president of the post-convergence group had been stating since the beginning of the mandate that she would not leave the consistory, a statement that she had to defend with some vehemence because it was assumed that she would not finish the mandate when the list that she headed in 2019 only achieved five councilors , half of those obtained by Xavier Trias in 2015, when he lost the mayor’s office at the hands of Ada Colau,
Artadi was number two in the Junts candidacy in 2019, behind a symbolic mayor, Joaquim Forn, one of the politicians imprisoned for the 1-0 who announced from the Lledoners prison that he accepted the challenge of running for mayor. From the beginning, it was clear that the de facto candidate was Artadi. The result of the elections confirmed the predictions of the polls and Junts became an irrelevant group in the life of the Barcelona City Council.
the local opposition
And the life of the municipal opposition is very hard if their votes are not essential, or at least potentially useful, for making decisions that affect day to day life. If in Colau’s first term the Trias group had some relevant role, such as agreeing with the mayor on the housing plan, in the current one its five votes have no significance.
With Barcelona en Comú and the PSC as government partners, and ERC supporting the most relevant decisions from the outside, Artadi was left with the bitter role of trying to get his head out with an opposition with a harsh tone and little effect. An opposition as relevant, or as little, as that of Luz Guilarte, Eva Parera and Josep Bou, presidents of the Ciutadans, Valents and PP groups, respectively.
Despite everything, Artadi has constantly reaffirmed its municipal commitment. In October 2021, he gave a conference in which he showed his willingness to challenge Colau for the municipal command in 2023, and to recover the mayor’s office for his own. Weeks later she declared to this newspaper: “It is hard to believe that I have to repeat that I will be a candidate.” In January she prepared to face the primaries that she won without competition.
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If Artadi confirms this Friday that he does not appear, it will leave open a considerable unknown about the future of Junts in the consistory. The first is who takes over if he does not exhaust the mandate. In the group there two other councilors who once ran for mayor: Neus Munté, who won the PDeCat primaries and later saw how that victory came to nothing, and Ferran Mascarell, who was fourth on the list. If the current president leaves the position of councilor before the end of her mandate, it is to be assumed that Munté would succeed her.
But the real debate would be created about who assumes the task of facing the municipal elections that will be held on May 28, 2023. It is not exactly a tasty dish, since everything points to a pulse between BComú, ERC and the PSCwhich could contribute to Junts not improving or even worsening its 2019 result.