Chanted as "mayor, mayor!", Xavier Trias appeared this Sunday at his electoral headquarters with the vote count practically closed, visibly satisfied, to thank the support received and announce that a new stage is opening in Barcelona, which he wants to be the of the agreement. The satisfaction was not for less. His return to municipal politics, announced last December, has been endorsed by the people of Barcelona. The former mayor and Junts candidate has prevailed at the polls. He has done it by the minimum but he has achieved his objective: to win the elections and from that position to recover the mayoralty that he lost in 2015. The narrow margin of victory – some 17,000 votes separated him from the socialist Jaume Collboni and Ada Colau, of BComú– has not diminished its shine. Everyone was expecting a very tight result and finishing first is of special value.
The future group of Trias will have eleven councilors in the municipal plenary session, six more than those of Junts in the previous term, in which it was the fourth force. It is a small advantage since the PSC will have ten and BComú, nine, according to the provisional results. With these numbers it does not seem likely –although it is not impossible– a combination that prevents the veteran post-convergent politician from taking over the mayoral rod again. The only alternative would be an alliance between socialists, commoners and ERC, which has been in fourth position with five councilors.
"I said that I was running to win the elections and be mayor of Barcelona, and I will be mayor of Barcelona," Trias said, acknowledging how close the results have been. “We are aware of what we have had and that of the other groups – he added -. My congratulations to them. They will have a mayor, if they want, who will collaborate closely with everyone and who will try to make Barcelona the best”. The mayor has promised to work to "manage government" and dedicate himself fully to "everyone's city and not one against the other" so that "from different positions we can see how we are capable of collaborating."
This was the fifth time that Trias aspired to take over the mayoralty of Barcelona. He already tried with CiU in 2003 and 2007, without success. The third time, in 2011, he succeeded and put an end to 32 years of first socialist mayors. But in the next election, that of 2015, he lost to Colau. In the 2019 elections he did not appear. The candidacy, now under the name of Junts, was headed by Joaquim Forn, then imprisoned by the process, who was in fifth position, fourth after the Ciudadanos division and the Manuel Valls group.
The mayor of Junts has attended this electoral appointment with a candidacy of a markedly personal nature, in which the name of the party has not appeared but his own (Trias per Barcelona). His intention was to broaden the voter base as much as possible in lands not cultivated by independence that perhaps are in tune with the old CiU and even with other sensibilities. His list has had the support of PDECat, Democrates and Moviment d'Esquerres (MES), to which he has thanked for their trust. "Only by adding will we be strong to change things", he stressed. To all this he has added the value of his work when he was mayor, who during the campaign has opposed Colau's eight years, most of the time with the socialists. Thus, in the campaign he has defended a change that in a way means resuming the project that was interrupted in 2015.
