The apparent equality of forces with which the mayoral candidates face the last six days of the electoral campaign and, consequently, the serious difficulties of demographic studies to specify the winner of next Sunday's elections suggest that Barcelona will have to submit , from the night of the 28th and until the eve of the constitution of the new city councils on June 17, to a second round to determine who will govern the city in the next four years.
The decisive round will not be resolved at the polls but in the offices and not only due to programmatic coincidences, the cliché that is flowing in gush these days in the mouths of some candidates who know that coming clean and revealing their plans for the day after at such an early hour would amount to to shoot himself in the foot when not directly in the temple.
In that second round, party interests will also intervene that sometimes escape local dynamics. What it is about now, in the final week of the campaign, is reaching the negotiation to configure a government majority –or, failing that, to add the 21 votes that guarantee the mayoralty award– in the best possible position. .
The unpredictability of the forecast is proportional to the predictability of the campaign. As this has progressed, the few new features of some programs that began to be explained many months ago have been appearing. The fear of making a mistake has outweighed risky bets. In this sense, Ada Colau's is being the best example of a prudent campaign.
The leader of BComú has been satisfied with announcing proposals that give continuity to that government work that the entire fleet of fishermen who vote against Colau are trying to take to a plebiscite. More superblocks and more services, now with a municipal perspective that, if it makes its way politically and legally, will face the same obstacles as the dentist, the funeral home, the energy company or the alleged municipalization of water.
As the countdown to the elections has advanced, that announced polarization so feared by the rest of the candidates between Ada Colau and Xavier Trias – reincarnated as the nemesis of the mayoress who sent her to the opposition eight years ago – has gradually faded partially.
The polls that place Jaume Collboni in the lead have provoked the reaction of his opponents. From all against Colau it has become a crossfire in which the image of the socialist candidate appears in the target of a target with two darts that point directly to the center. One, the eternal precariousness of the Rodalies service, which the Socialists try to avoid with the argument of the million-dollar investments in progress. The other, the memory of his time in the municipal government, which allows his rivals to point out him as co-responsible for the policies promoted by Ada Colau and the mayoress to blame him, precisely, for denying part of that shared work .
That Collboni has enough numbers to be in the front line of the second round that will start next Sunday night is not only demonstrated by the growing attention paid to him by the rest of the candidates but also by the full dedication of the PSC and the PSOE to the battle of Barcelona, whose outcome will largely determine the degree of success or failure of the Catalan and Spanish socialists in these municipal and regional elections.
This strategy of throwing the rest in Barcelona is part of the election of the Catalan capital as the final scale of the campaign of the President of the Government, a Pedro Sánchez disguised these weeks as a generous magician king of politics who is distributing gifts at each rally or at term of each Council of Ministers.
Collboni has the best weapon for the definitive assault on the Barcelona mayor's office at the right time for the socialist brand in Catalonia and has not hesitated to use it.
In a campaign in which, as it was written, there is much talk about mobility, tourism, housing and security, and in which the problems of Rodalies and the occupations have crept in, very rarely has there been space for the historical memory of the process.
Xavier Trias has not granted it, knowing that waving the star with more enthusiasm and vigor than is advisable would scare away thousands of voters who trust him to evict Ada Colau from the city government. but that they would get off the car at the first independence turn. Jaume Collboni, a direct competitor of the Junts candidate for the favors of a part of the electorate that hesitates when it comes to opting for one side or the other of sociovergence, is trying.
In this fight that for a few months seems reserved for three candidates, ERC refuses to be excluded. The Republicans are trying to combat the logical discouragement caused by the polls, which have been unfavorable for them since Xavier Trias burst onto the Barcelona electoral scene at the end of last year, with a campaign with a strong presence of the Esquerra leaders. Oriol Junqueras and the president Pere Aragonès. Like Jaume Collboni and unlike Xavier Trias, Ernest Maragall has never covered the brand. Nor has Ada Colau done it, although in her case it is clear that the mark of the commons is her.
