There was a time when the municipal elections in Barcelona were won with 413,000 votes. It was the year 1983 and the Spanish cities faced, on May 8, the second local elections after the restoration of democracy. On that occasion, the PSC, which presented Pasqual Maragall as head of the list for the first time, achieved a clear victory at the polls on the same day as other socialist candidates, taking advantage of the positive momentum of the overwhelming victory of Felipe González in the general elections of six months earlier, they had triumphed in most of the major Spanish capitals, including Madrid, where Professor Enrique Tierno Galván obtained an absolute majority.
The socialist victory in those elections was final. Nearly 7.7 million votes in the whole of Spain and a percentage of 43% that today is unattainable for any of the main political formations. The popular ones, with 4.57 million and 25.6% of the vote cast, were far behind. Those were times when the Socialists consolidated a firm hegemony in almost all corners of the Spanish geography.
In Barcelona, Pasqual Maragall, who was 42 years old at the time, was close to an absolute majority with close to 413,000 votes (45.8%), a figure that no one would ever come close to again. Maragall had become mayor of the Catalan capital a few months earlier, on December 2, 1982, when the incorporation of the previous mayor, Narcís Serra, into the first government of Felipe González as Defense Minister left a vacancy in the City Council of Barcelona, already involved at that time in the race to host the 1992 Olympic Games.
The harvest of Pasqual Maragall in those elections of May 8, 1983 was so copious that it pales the results obtained by the last winners of the municipal elections in Barcelona. Without going any further, the brother of the Olympic mayor, Ernest Maragall, in the last elections, held in 2019, led the list with the most votes, that of Esquerra Republicana, with just 161,000 votes, nothing more and nothing less than 156% less. than Pasqual Maragall 40 years ago.
Despite the deluge of votes, Maragall, who would be re-elected in 1987, 1991 and 1995, could not achieve an absolute majority. At that time, Barcelona chose 43 councillors, two more than today. The PSC stayed at 21, five more than those obtained by Narcís Serra four years earlier. He lacked a handful of votes to reach that absolute majority that has never been registered in municipal elections in Barcelona. The PSC prevailed in 9 of the 10 districts of the city and only that of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi opted for the CiU side.
On May 8, 1983, Pasqual Maragall defeated an illustrious candidate, Ramon Trias Fargas, head of the list of the coalition formed by Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya and Unió Democràtica de Catalunya. Trias Fargas was not a bad candidate: he was close to a quarter of a million votes – today a similar figure would be the absolute guarantee of a tremendous victory in the next municipal elections – and he improved the results of Francesc Xavier Millet by 5 councilors in 1979. La Coalición Popular de Alexandre Pedrós entered the City Council with force with 6 councilors, the same ones that a PSUC lost in low hours. The candidacy led by Jordi Solé Tura, who occupied the position that in 1979 went to Josep Miquel Abad, had to settle for only 3 councilors and 6.9% of the votes.
Clearer if possible was the socialist victory in Madrid in 1983. Four years ago the former president of the Popular Socialist Party (PSP) had risen to the mayoralty of the capital of Spain thanks to a government coalition with the Communist Party of Spain (PCE) that had condemned the Union of the Democratic Center (UCD) of Adolfo Suárez to the municipal opposition.
The old professor won 30 of the 58 seats at stake to widely defeat the right and revalidate a position with which he could not finish his term. In January 1986 the old professor died and Juan Barranco took his place at the head of the Consistory.
