The President of the Government and Secretary General of the PSOE has a clear bet ahead of Sunday's elections: Barcelona. Therefore, it is understood that Pedro Sánchez closed the electoral campaign in the Catalan capital yesterday, unlike his most important rival, PP leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who did so in Madrid. The president's bet is to win the mayor's office now occupied by Ada Colau, Yolanda Díaz's main front-runner as a presidential candidate, and, in this way, revalidate the management of a "difficult" legislature due to the pandemic and the war of Ukraine, but marked by intense social management and the so-called reunion agenda in Catalonia.
With these credentials, Sánchez took to the stage of his last rally, at the Vall d'Hebron pavilion, in front of 4,000 people and with the candidate for Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, the former president of the Government José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and the leader of the PSC, Salvador Illa. While the leader of Sumar did the same with Colau in Sant Martí.
"The Spanish right and pro-independence are converging on the repeal. Some want to return to the Spain of 2013, the Spain of cuts and precariousness", said Sánchez with reference to the previous PP Government; "others want to return to the Catalonia of 2017, the Catalonia of discord and division", he reprimanded the pro-independence parties; but "in the middle we are the majority who want to advance in employment, rights and coexistence", he proclaimed. And he asked for the vote of this majority. "Let's not forget the pandemic or now the war", he recalled after proclaiming that "voting for the PSOE is voting for the social shield against adversity".
In a local tone, the head of the Executive asked to concentrate the progressive vote "in the only party that can regain the power of Barcelona", the PSC, "with Collboni as the next mayor", he harangued.
A Collboni who seeks the mayorship with the support of the legacy of the socialist mayors that the city has had. "The PSC gave the best years to Barcelona, we have never failed, we will follow the example and make Barcelona great once again with a mayor who governs for everyone, with the ability to dream of great events and at the same time take care of the neighborhoods" , he proclaimed.
The socialist mayor considers the main enemy of Sunday to be abstention, although he also sent a message to the other two candidates competing for victory. "Neither Colau nor Trias, now it's time to turn the page and open a new stage", said Collboni, who vindicated himself as "the true left" and boasted of the acronym of the PSC: "The leaders of my party are here, I I don't do like Mr. Trias, who hides the star when the elections come and says he's not from Junts, but campaigns with Borràs and Puigdemont".
Illa and Zapatero also reinforced Sánchez's message in Barcelona. The first praised the "useful policy", which in his opinion the president has undertaken at the head of the Government, which "got us out of the pandemic", he recalled, and which has allowed "to open a new stage in Catalonia , of dialogue, of coexistence, of harmony". And the former president remarked on Sánchez's "courage, courage and conviction" to "pacify Catalonia", and reprimanded Feijóo for the "void of proposals" during the campaign: "Let it not happen to him like Casado... Let him get to the generals", he warned him.
