The return of Xavier Trias to the first political line could not be more triumphant. Eight years after being surprisingly removed from the mayoralty of Barcelona, the Junts candidate – the pro-independence brand that he has hidden throughout the electoral campaign – has confirmed the good vibes that accompanied the announcement of his return last December and has imposed by more than 17,000 votes on the socialist Jaume Collboni and the current mayoress, Ada Colau.
Trias undoes the triple tie that all the polls indicated, although the minimal difference over his opponents in the number of councilors obtained does not guarantee that he will still recover the command rod of the city on June 17.
Today begins the second round of the elections, the one that is disputed in the offices, and the experience of four years ago, when a maneuver carried out by the former French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, concocted by the PSC, snatched victory from the Republican Ernest Maragall reached at the polls and allowed Ada Colau to revalidate the position, advises not to take anything for granted.
The 11 councilors obtained by Xavier Trias place him on the exit ramp of this decisive turn in first position. Adding its 11 councilors to the 10 of the PSC, it would reach an absolute majority. Only a pact between socialists, commoners and republicans would prevent him from accessing the mayoralty again.
"I will be mayor of Barcelona", has proclaimed the winner of the elections, the first to appear before the media and the militancy -coup de effect manual-, knowing that in the event that in the coming weeks it is not possible to build an alternative of all against him will be invested in his position as head of the most voted list.
But the PSC, as Collboni has announced amid the cries of "mayor, mayor" from the socialist militants, "does not give up anything." The PSC candidate, arguing that "Barcelona needs to open a stage of progress and stability", has hinted at the possibility of that tripartite left with Republicans and commoners that was not possible in the previous term.
Collboni's warning has gained force minutes later. Colau, although she has affirmed that "it has been a pride to be mayor of Barcelona for eight years" (it sounded like this is as far as we have come), she has then invoked a left-wing pact to continue developing progressive policies. “We added 24 – she has reminded her – including in that arithmetic the party that she left without the mayoralty four years ago.
For the Socialists, who had placed a large part of their aspirations to save these elections in Spain as a whole in a victory in Barcelona and who were fully confident of recovering the hegemony lost twelve years ago, the result is little known, especially if one compares the behavior of the PSC in the capital with that of most of the main Catalan cities. It could have been worse: the end of the ballot was not for the faint of heart, with the Socialists seeing how the commons were cutting them vote by vote in a recount in which a seat was at stake that could alter the correlation of forces. Finally, the balance has been decided in favor of the PSC by only 141 votes difference that have allowed it to leave the result of the Collboni-Colau duel in a tight 10 to 9.
Election day confirms, on the other hand, the bad moment of ERC, a formation that has not made profitable the fact of governing alone in the Generalitat, quite the opposite. Ernest Maragall has paid dearly for this erosion of the party and sees his current presence on the City Council reduced by half. Still, the choice of the next mayor is in his hands.
The 28-M elections in Barcelona, as in the rest of Catalonia, confirm that Ciudadanos is history and that the brand that emerged from its split, Valents, does not fill the void left by the orange party. For the PP, the results of these elections represent an improvement after four years ago they were about to stay out of the City Council. However, the irruption of Vox, which enters the City Council for the first time with two councilors, pours water into the wine of the party of the popular, which with these results will hardly be decisive as was its claim.
Unlike Vox, the CUP, for the second time in a row, is incapable of breaking the 5% barrier and will have to wait another four years to try to return to Barcelona City Council.
