Ernest Maragall He announced this Friday that he is leaving Barcelona City Council, from which he will say goodbye in December. At 80 years old, he has dedicated almost his entire professional career to the council. First as a coach from the 1960s, then as a close collaborator of his brother Pasqual, within the PSC, and later in the ranks of ERC. He was also secretary and ‘counsellor’ of the Generalitat, still in the socialist orbit.
The replacement of Alfred Bosch
Ernest Maragall It goes by surprise, at least relative. They say that the rest of the ERC councilors did not know that he was going to say goodbye in the plenary session this Friday. But it is still a way to close a period similar to how it began. Because by relative surprise, he became mayor of ERC in Barcelona. It was a decision by the party leadership, which announced it in September 2018, when the municipal elections were seven months away. The surprise was relative because there was a rumor that Alfred Bosch He did not convince the party as mayor, but it seemed too late for change.
The electoral victory without a prize
The replacement, as indicated by the result at the polls in May 2019, was a success. Maragall won the municipal elections, something unprecedented since the recovery of democracy after Franco, and the former mayor’s brother set out to become mayor. However, there was an outcome that was also unprecedented: for the first time, the winner of the municipal elections in the Catalan capital did not become mayor. Ada Colau, thanks to the support of Manuel Valls, reissued the position.
Far from entrenching oneself in an anger that could be sensed, Maragall and his group collaborated almost from the first moment with the minority government made up of Barcelona en Comú and the PSC. Colau, in that second term, was able to approve by majority the four budgets, all the fiscal ordinances and the relevant projects that he brought to the plenary session, and in almost all cases the support of the Republicans was decisive for this. ERC opted for a collaborative opposition, proposed measures, from the tourist surcharge to the Amazon tax. The feeling is that this attitude did not have a return. When the ‘former councilor’ tried to distance himself from the Colau government, in 2021, the republican leadership forced him to support the city budgets, against which he had voted in commission. He did it with an abstention.
The causes that can be pointed out as decisive for Maragall’s goodbye are several. One is the electoral result of last May 28, when ERC lost half of its representation, from 10 to five councilors. Yes, it could be argued that perhaps he did not lose them because he supported the government so much, that the fact that the Junts candidate was Xavier Trias and not Elsa Artadi It was lethal for the Republicans. But the fact is that the result was very bad, as Elisenda Alamany emphasized on November 10, who in principle will begin 2024 as the new president of the group. Another cause: At 80 years old, Maragall was not a candidate to be mayor again. He had the option of being deputy mayor of a tripartite government with the PSC and Barcelona en Comú.
Consequences for negotiation
It will soon be possible to see what consequences Maragall’s goodbye has for a hypothetical negotiation between ERC and Socialists and Comuns to form a government. One thesis is that his departure would facilitate the agreement, due to the distance that exists between Maragall and the mayor, Jaume Collboni and because Maragall linked his future to that of Xavier Trias last June, when they agreed on a coalition government that never took office. in view of the fact that Barcelona en Comú and the PP invested Collboni.