In order to govern Barcelona, it will be essential to weave alliances and it is quite likely that the sum of two political formations will not be sufficient to achieve the absolute majority, which in the Catalan capital's City Council is fixed at 21 of the 41 councilors that the people of Barcelona will elect on 28 may Given this perspective, La Vanguardia and Public Affairs Experts make available to users of this newspaper's website a new interactive tool that allows them to predict the outcome of the next elections and, from there, establish the sums in order to define possible pacts of government
The interactive allows you to combine the bets on the possible results of the candidates of the political formations who, according to the surveys published since the beginning of this year by the different media, have options to exceed the threshold of 5% of the votes cast and , consequently, obtain representation in the municipal plenum that will be constituted after the elections. To be able to participate with more knowledge of the cause in this game of alliances, some reference values have been included with the average of the polls that have been published since January 1. Specifically, these polls assign 10 councilors to the candidacy headed by the ex-mayor of Barcelona, Xavier Trias, the same as number one on the PSC list, Jaume Collboni. Then, following on their heels, the polls place the current mayoress and BComú candidate, Ada Colau, with 9 councillors. A little further from the first place appears the mayoral candidate for Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya and winner of votes in the 2019 local elections, Ernest Maragall, with 7 councilors. Always according to the average of the published surveys, the fifth formation that would obtain representation in the City Council would be the Popular Party, with 3 councilors. Short of 5% and getting into the Consistory would be the CUP, which in this case would place its first two candidates in the municipal plenum.
With these benchmark results, no combination of two candidates would obtain an absolute majority of 21 councillors. The one that would be closest is the sum of Junts and the PSC, which would be just one councilor from the mark. The re-edition of the governing pact of the current mandate between socialists and commons would add 19 councillors, one more than at present.
If the predictions made by the polls are fulfilled, to govern with an absolute majority for the next four years the city of Barcelona would need an alliance of three formations. Discarding the options without any ideological affinity, the clearest in this sense would be the one formed by the PSC, BComú and ERC, which would add a total of 26 of the 41 councilors in play.
