The president of the Esquerra Republicana municipal group in the Barcelona City Council, winner without a prize of the 2019 local elections, Ernest Maragall, said goodbye today to what has been his home for more than 50 years. He did so in the last municipal plenary session of the year and with a message of optimism for the future of the city: "I am convinced that Barcelona will know how to find the way because it has the citizens, the people, the talent and the drive." ".
The departure of Maragall from the City Council, which he joined in the seventies as a municipal technician, has had its dose of emotion. His speech was followed from the guest gallery by his relatives and political representatives of ERC, such as the Councilor for the Presidency of the Generalitat, Laura Vilagrà; and the spokespersons for ERC, Raquel Sans and Marta Vilalta.
Until yesterday, the leader of ERC in the Barcelona City Council, in his last speech in the plenary session, remembered his brother Pasqual Maragall, former mayor of Barcelona and former president of the Generalitat, whom he has placed as a reference for the best Barcelona. His brother Ernest has addressed all those who on many occasions in a purely rhetorical way claim the legacy of Pasqual Maragall to warn them that this aspiration has no consistency if "democratic governance for the metropolitan reality, today despised and denied by action or omission".
Ernest Maragall, who before joining ERC in 2018 and who previously had a long political career in the ranks of the PSC, claimed "the hard-won amnesty" in the negotiation for the investiture of Pedro Sánchez as president of the Spanish Government, and He gave duties to those who remain in the City Council, from obtaining the transfer of the Via Laietana police station to promoting measures against climate change and, above all, policies that serve to reduce economic and social inequalities.
The farewell of Ernest Maragall, who leaves the presidency of the republican group in the hands of Elisenda Alamany, has been topped with the praise that the leaders of the other political formations have dedicated to him.
"These applause say it all, Mr. Maragall," Collboni said to his former party colleague, to the man whom a maneuver orchestrated by the PSC and the former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls and the Commons removed from the mayor's office in 2019 despite having won the elections. "If at any time being in this chair in recent months I have felt vertigo, it is precisely because of the awareness of the legacy that you have left us," said the mayor.
Xavier Trias, who will soon follow in the footsteps of Ernest Maragall, recalled the agreements reached between the two and regretted that that three-way pact prevented him from becoming mayor in 2019. An experience that the former convergent mayor also suffered last June . "This has been repeated now and we have not been able to govern together, I regret it. It would have been an exciting chapter in our lives," said Trias.
Ada Colau has also expressed the "maximum respect and recognition to the republican leader. Although the leader of the commons revalidated the mayoralty in 2019 despite the victory of ERC, she has assured that she would have liked to govern with Ernest Maragall.
The popular Daniel Sirera has thanked the outgoing councilor for his always respectful attitude and the leader of Vox, Gonzalo de Oro, has wished him good luck from now on and also, although "from ideological antipodes", has expressed his I respect.
