I don't know if the same thing happens to them, but I have the feeling that none of the candidates for mayor of Barcelona consider it necessary to excite its long-suffering inhabitants. In some cases that is normal. If not look at Xavier Trias, who by presenting himself as the leader of an anti-Colau front and saying that if he doesn't win he will go back to his house, is getting better and better in the polls.
Trias has had the singular ability to appear to value his party less than a bargain shirt, which has immediately increased his chances of success and has been surprisingly celebrated by the Junts membership as a whole. As if they knew that to win Barcelona they would have to dress up Puigdemont's game in Pujol's clothes, cross their fingers and see what happens.
At this point, the only electoral loss that Mr. Bentanachs has decided to give him, that prominent ex-militant of Terra Lliure who has elevated the cuts of the Meridiana to the category of art, could only cause Trias some electoral loss; or an out-of-the-box statement from Mrs. Borràs, something that can never be completely ruled out.
Meanwhile, Ernest Maragall is overshadowed in the media by the showy activities of Willy Brandt from Santa Coloma, Gabriel Rufián, who, at the rate he is going, will leave all members of the Government in evidence. He started with Carles Campuzano and residences for the elderly, and now he seems to have set out to put an end to the eventful career of Joan Ignasi Elena.
It's strange. Perhaps the best government program for Barcelona is the one contained in the latest and excellent book by Miquel Puig (La ciutat insatisfeta. Tot el que Barcelona pot arribar ser) – one of the few municipal officials close to ERC who does not hate to the city and its inhabitants–, but it is clear that Maragall does not succeed in getting his arguments to the electorate. To date, he is limited to putting on a grumpy face, something for which he is singularly gifted, and taking a few steps that, moreover, turn out to be unsuccessful.
Like the supposed support of the intellectual world that ERC announced to great fanfare and which was never heard from again (given the proverbial speed of intellectuals to put land in the way), or the metaphysical doubts about who should be number two in your ticket, resolved erratically and with little verve.
Jaume Collboni, for his part, seems to have reached the conclusion that if he remains silent, Colau's detractors will forget that he was the faithful supporter of his mandate until not long ago. It is a tactic and sets a style. Not too promising, but style nonetheless.
Meanwhile, Colau proposes a classic Spanish-style campaign, with many dance works and inaugurating things. The mayoress seems willing to show that we Barcelonans complain about the city like Barça fans do about refereeing, that we are not in such a bad way and that she has a plan. In the latter, he is right. The least of it is that he has seen all his experiments in terms of access to housing, security and alternatives to tourist monoculture fail: at least he has managed to make it clear that he hates citizens with cars and the State of Israel, becoming, incidentally, in the unsuspected benefactor of property owners.
For sample, a button. A few days ago Colau took a tour of the Consell de Cent superblock to see the new planters and the wide central promenade. The tree holes, filled with dark earth, seemed to await the imminent arrival of limes and plane trees. The act itself was watered down electoralism, but the people seemed to like it. Especially to an acquaintance of mine, a true hawk (not to mention other birds) of the real estate sector who has several floors and a couple of business premises in one of these urban oases where prices have to increase exponentially.
A recent convert to the good news of the "green city", that meeting place of the ecological civil service with the speculators of a lifetime, those who are keeping the lion's share of the income of workers, merchants and liberal professionals. The man rubbed his hands, listened to Janet Sanz enraptured and told himself that he had just earned a peak thanks to the left of the left.
So don't doubt it, Colau will win at this rate and, given the enthusiasm of the other candidates, it won't be so strange either. Pasqual Maragall, after all, there was only one.
