If someone had doubts that the political blocs installed in Catalonia during the process have been shattered, a new piece of information may help to convince them. After the municipal elections of 28-M, the main pro-independence parties –ERC and JxCat– have agreed on their own more times with the PSC than with each other.
Salvador Illa's party stands as the great winner of the municipal elections, both in votes (712,992 ballots, 23.72%, 160,270 more than JxCat), and in absolute majorities (24 in total, seven more than ERC), as well as the pacts reached after the elections. Here, the socialists were clear from the beginning. "We will agree with everyone except Vox," sources from the apparatus pointed out on the same election night, when President Pere Aragonès had not yet launched his "desperate" proposal, as they described, for ERC and Junts to prioritize independence pacts in the town halls, as a first stepping stone to re-stitch the lost unit.
The PSC never believed that this was serious because after the 2019 municipal elections there were already fifty pacts between the three parties, and already in the week after 28-M some local agreements began to be closed with Junts, but also with ERC . After agreeing with the post-convergents in Roses, Dosrius or Cunit, the agreements with ERC in the Tarragona and Lleida councils fell.
"We have been generous with ERC and with Junts", ironic socialist sources after verifying that, despite what happened in the Barcelona mayor's office, the pacts of one of these two pro-independence formations with the PSC have been more common than between them. The data shows it. Those from Illa have won 19 mayoralties agreeing with Junts and another 9 with ERC; the republicans have won 19 mayoralties thanks to agreements with the PSC, for only 8 with Junts, and the post-convergents have achieved 23 mayoralties by agreeing with the socialists, for only 9 with ERC.
From the arithmetic it can be deduced that the Socialists have agreed more with Junts than with ERC.
In addition, there are pacts that the devil burdens them with, like those that are made to unseat others from the municipal government. PSC and Junts have agreed to wrest from ERC mayorships such as those of Roses, La Bisbal d'Empordà, l'Ametlla de Mar, Manlleu, Lliçà de Vall, Puigcerdà or Montgat. But the socialists have also repeated the game with ERC to displace Junts from the councils of Tortosa, Masquefa, Manresa, Móra la Nova, Móra d'Ebre, Bescanó, Cabrils, Montblanc and Tàrrega.
While waiting to regain the jewel in the municipal crown, the Barcelona Provincial Council, the magnitude of agreements such as those of the Tarragona and Lleida councils with ERC is combined with other numbers that corroborate the municipal power of the PSC. The Socialists have taken over a total of 129 mayors, including those of the three of the four provincial capitals, which allows them to manage no less than 60% of the Catalan population.
These mayoralties are far from those achieved by ERC (329) or Junts (338), but they are 40 more than those they achieved in 2019. In addition, the PSC is also part of another 48 municipal governments, with which the socialist municipal management is rises to practically 70% of the Catalan population.
In addition, those from Salvador Illa have taken over three of the four provincial capitals (Barcelona, Lleida and Tarragona) and have even expanded their domain in their traditional fiefdom, the metropolitan area of Barcelona. -21 of the 36 towns that make it up, one more than in 2019-, with absolute majorities in Sabadell, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Cornellà de Llobregat, Sant Boi, Badia del Vallès or Sant Adrià del Besòs. Although, in this area the socialists see with concern what happened in municipalities of the Baix Llobregat such as l'Hospitalet, Gavà and Viladecans, where the irruption of Vox has caused them to lose the absolute majority they had.
