“The appearance of Xavier Trias The polls have not changed much. There was four games separated by a few points and that is still so. What happens is that, before the irruption of the ex-mayor, the battle was between ERC and the PSC, with Junts and Colau more off the hook, fighting for third place. And now those who are in tow are the republicans and the socialists“. This is the urgent diagnosis that, although pronounced by an ERC leader, can be extended to the PSC, which also admits that the arrival of the Junts candidate on the scene has shaken some approaches. Given this, both parties calibrate and they track among the like-minded who can be the ‘number two’ of their lists in search of a coup de effect.
Go ahead, the obsession with ‘number two’ on the lists has an American resonance that the parties themselves disdain. Given that in Barcelona there has not been a vice mayorto date, and that, if there is one in June, it will be from a party other than that of the mayor, the idea of electoral ‘ticket’ loses force.
There is secrecy about who will be the ‘number two’ of ERC. While waiting for the ‘white blackbird’, two names opt for the position: the councilor Elisenda Alamany -it already was in 2019- and the Government delegate in Madrid, Esther Capella. Esquerra is looking for an independent and well-known enough for her leap into politics “to be news for herself and not for being ‘number two’ on a list” and that she can challenge Trias for the center space.
While waiting for the ‘white blackbird’, two names opt for the position: Elisenda Alamany and Ester Capella
There are several voices from ERC, for example, that try to minimize the importance of who will occupy that second place on the ballot and prefer to think in terms of the list, of the 41 names and, above all, of top 10. Be that as it may, the Republicans have an arduous task ahead of them, which is to return to Ernest Maragall to the primacy of the most voted, as in 2019. For this, a choral list is wanted, with several weighty names that convey the ability to govern. And that, also, they attend to the different profiles that ERC has, which imagines itself as a ‘catch all party’that is to say, the party with more borders and that, therefore, can receive a more eclectic electorate.
A similar profile, that of a ‘number two’ who transmits the seduction capacity of the PSC, is what the candidacy of Jaume Collboni, although in this case the names that are being considered are not newcomers to politics. In the pools the name of Maria Eugenia Gay, the current government delegate in Catalonia. But, as in the case of the Republicans, there are other options, it is not tied and it is not ruled out that it ends up being again Laia Bonetthird deputy mayor in Barcelona, who repeats in second place.
The only signing that has transpired for now is that of the former leader of Catalonia. Yes, it is Pot, Luis Rabellwhich socialist sources point out is expected to occupy fifth place on the list, while the deputy mayor for security, albert batlle, is outlined to repeat again in the third. Barcelona’s socialist federation will approve the list at the end of March, a confection that Collboni is making with his closest team and in conjunction with Salvador Illa.
Maria Eugènia Gay, the current Government delegate in Catalonia, appears in the PSC pools, but there are other options and it is not ruled out that Laia Bonet repeats
Trias–Colau polarization
This electoral contest will not be marked by the independence movement. The management of Ada Colau, both for admirers and detractors, covers everything. In addition, the profile chosen by Junts, that of Triasis the least irredeemable that the post-convergent space presents in years, whose ‘number two’ is confirmed: Neus Munte. Another thing is that the pro-independence voter, among the three parties that nest in Parliament (ERC, Junts and the CUP) ends up making a useful vote. “We have to get to the campaign ahead of Trias“, conjures up a Republican who fears that this vote will fall on Junts.
The PSC sees just in the scenario of breaking the blocks an opportunity for Collboni to cherish the mayoralty in this third try. Unlike four years ago, it now has no short-circuited agreements with ERC or Junts. Neither Trias nor Maragall have made explicit this time a veto that did mark the 2019 campaign and that led the Comuns to choose between the ERC and the PSC. The socialist mayor and until a month ago ‘number two’ in the municipal government demands that a “new stage” to leave behind the mayor’s office of Colau, despite the fact that the socialists have managed side by side with the Comuns throughout the mandate.
Collboni’s decision to resign from the position in the consistory four months before the elections responds to the strategy of disassociating himself from the work of the mayoress from which the Socialists disagree. But it will be necessary to see if the voter accepts or not that he can be an alternative to Colau having governed with her. In the opinion of the PSC, the one who cannot be is Trias, of whom the contradictions what it means to try to sell moderation and stability being Laura Borras the president of Juntas.
Being an alternative without frontal opposition
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The big problem for ERC is that in this municipal mandate, and in fact in the two of the leader of the Comuns, it has not wanted to carry out a frontal opposition. “We have had almost no opposition, they have made it easy for us from day one,” say sources from the Socialists, pointing out precisely that weak flank that they see in ERC.
Maragall’s ‘sense of the city’ has failed. Without Trias everything was going well. Left-wing voters who have grown disenchanted with the mayoress had the PSC or ERC as a refuge. They could not vote for Colau and the city would not fall into the old ways that this electorate rejects. Now with Trias, who unites the anti-Colau vote around himthis electorate is tempted to, too, go to the useful vote, that is, choose the Barcelona En Comú ballot. So the levers that they manage in the ERC control center are the pro-independence and the social or city model, while in the PSC the ones that sell to Collboni are activated as the order option -as antagonism to Colau- non-independence -against Junts- and in favor of public-private collaboration, large infrastructures and large-scale events.