More than the song by Oques Grasses that bets on sending everything "to hell" or the two by Manel that always play before Esquerra's acts, what has animated the Esquerra campaign these last two days are the words of the secretary of organization and mayor of JxCat for Badalona, David Torrents, who stated on Tuesday that he prefers a town hall run by Xavier García Albiol (PP) than by Àlex Montornès (ERC). Raül Romeva, deputy secretary of the Republicans, has fueled this Thursday the idea that Junts is not only willing, in his opinion, to favor PSC governments, but also to ally with the PP. "There are people who confuse and are not clear with whom to agree, then they retract but in that way...". And Pere Aragonès has asked to concentrate the vote in ERC in the face of "the doubts generated" by Torrents' words for hypothetical pacts with the PP.
“We will not accept lessons of coherence or convictions from those who, due to sectarianism, would be willing to let a populist mayor pass before having a Republican mayor. The progressive, independence and republican vote must concentrate all the electoral will on the candidacy of Montornès”, the President of the Generalitat underlined. An argument along the lines of the one presented by Laura Vilagrà, Minister of the Presidency, present at the event, who has opted for a left-wing alliance.
Àlex Montornès is the candidate for mayor of Badalona for ERC. He is in the government team of the socialist mayor Rubén Guijarro, who took over the mayoralty in November 2021 by evicting Albiol with a motion of no confidence that up to five forces supported.
Montornès, this time, has erected his party as the candidacy of the "useful vote" to stop Albiol, and has also thrown Torrents in the face of his words. He has done so by referring to the slogan of the Junts, "M'hi deixo la pell" ("I leave my skin") and assuring that Esquerra will obtain the mayoralty, much as some who said they would leave their skin, which they have left It's credibility."
Another motto that has received criticism is from Albiol. But the one from 2015. The PP candidate opted for posters with “Cleaning Badalona” as a hook. The opposition went for the jugular for considering it xenophobic. "We have also come to clean up... to clean up fascism for the bloody time," Romeva exclaimed.
In the social field for the municipality, Montornès has promised to lower the external consultations of Can Ruti to the Can Llamas site, to hire 300 workers "who are currently missing from the City Council", and to invest 50 million euros to fix libraries, schools and sports equipment and one million euros to help families pay for the school canteen. Likewise, he has stressed that he will work with the Generalitat to guarantee that the L1 metro reaches Pompeu Fabra and that the tram reaches the Rodalies station.
Esquerra's offensive this Thursday has been against the PP, but it does not abandon the daily scuffle with the PSC. Oriol Junqueras's party has covered all fronts this time and before Parliament, Congress and the Senate to denounce that the State "wants to appropriate" the entire margin of deficit in Europe, despite the fact that, according to ERC, the management of the services falls on the Generalitat and the town halls.
The Republicans personalize in the PSOE, but also in the PSC. They assure that they are carrying out "financial suffocation both in Catalonia, with a zero deficit", and in municipal institutions, "forcing them to have a surplus" starting next year. It is something that Junqueras criticized on Tuesday. Now ERC formalizes the black-on-white complaint. The party considers this situation "unacceptable" because the town halls have to make a "great effort to restrict while the State reserves as much margin as possible." Therefore, and according to the reasons of the republican formation, "every vote for the socialist party serves for the Spanish government to deprive the municipalities of their resources."
ERC calculates that with this measure, approved in April through the budgetary stability and sustainability law, more than 3,500 million euros per year of the surplus of the municipalities would be blocked.
