President Montilla already warned in 2007 of public disaffection, at the time he was referring to Catalonia towards Spain. The full spectacle of the inauguration of the mayor of Barcelona last Saturday paid off the disaffection, this time in relation to politics in general. The string of statements by various politicians about what they would never do and then did without blushing is very long. Of all the statements contradicted by subsequent action, the most serious seems to me to be the one that said that the program and Barcelona would be the primary consideration in any decision.
The reality is that we have seen the logic of power live. What is the program in which the Popular Party and the Commons agree with the PSC? It seems to be blocking the passage of Xavier Trias' "quantum independence", in the words of Enric Juliana, and which was clearly proposed in an editorial of El Mundo on June 17. What is the political calculation behind it? Daniel Sirera has asked that the commons not govern in Barcelona, but he must not ignore that a minimal strategic analysis makes good the statement of Ada Colau in the plenum that his votes were a "poisoned gift" for the PSC, which cannot be govern Barcelona with ten councilors and that Jaume Collboni will have to seek his support sooner or later. In fact, the first statements of the new mayor go in this direction.
It seems that the PP values the votes it can win in the rest of Spain on 23-J much more than the ones it can lose in Catalonia among Trias voters, and in addition it may think that by voting for the PSC for the mayor's office it makes a State policy that distances him from the association with Vox. The PSOE also seeks to compensate for the electoral attrition due to pacts with peripheral nationalists, although the PSC may lose support in Catalonia among the moderate Catalanists, and the electoral message of containment of the PP allied with Vox is blurred. The commons seek survival.
Four weeks ago in these same plains, I made the (admittedly innocent) request that Barcelona not be a currency for the governments of Spain or Catalonia. The fact that political and media influences from outside the city have conditioned the process of electing the mayor of Barcelona is not good news for at least two reasons. The first is that programmatic affinities have not been key in the constitution of the mayor's office. I don't think anyone can say that the distance between the programs of Collboni and Trias was greater than between PSC, PP and communes, for example, in key aspects such as the airport and urban planning. Barcelona needs a clear program and a strong government to face the fundamental challenges it faces. Given what we have seen, it is difficult to think how a stable city government can be put together given the mistrust generated.
The second reason is that the result will contribute to polarization since Trias represented an opportunity to moderate the pro-independence camp in Catalonia in general and Junts in particular. The Junts i Esquerra pact in the City Council sought to disable a possible left-wing tripartite government even as it reactivated bloc politics.
Time will tell if the PSC has made a master move or a strategic mistake. In any case, Mayor Collboni has the responsibility to move Barcelona forward taking into account the will of the citizens expressed at the polls, and we hope that he will get it right.
