For a purely statistical fact, logic dictates that some of the political parties focus part of their activity on Barcelona and its metropolitan area: 42.6% of the population of all of Catalonia is concentrated in its 36 municipalities.
The PSC has always focused on it. historically ERC put the spotlight on it once Oriol Junqueras became president of the party in 2011. Since then and until the 2019 municipal elections, the Republicans have managed to go from being the fifth force to becoming the second force, almost quintupling the number of votes: from 62,000 to 292,000. And everything points to the fact that the fight between the PSC and Esquerra for this space will be more raw in the May 28 elections.
Republicans and socialists compete in the metropolitan area for much of their aspirations for the presidency of the Generalitat. Even though its weight is electorally underrepresented, the area is a decisive voter base for defining the Parliament: there are 3.3 million people out of the 5.6 million in the province of Barcelona and the 7.7 million in Catalonia.
The socialists seem to have the wind in their face because to the favorable polls is added the trend they showed in the last municipal elections, in which the PSC restored nine absolute majorities - especially in Baix Llobregat -, a good part of which they lost due to the irruption of Cs in the most intense years of the process.
Esquerra aspires at least to repeat the remarkable results of 2019, which gave it first place in all of Catalonia. Pere Aragonès, the visible face of ERC, unlike Quim Torra, is a president with a speech that appeals more to diversity and social affairs, and not so much to essentialist nationalism. This means that, despite not being a charismatic leader, he does not cause rejection in an electorate of the metropolitan area that often (with the exception of the Catalan elections of 2017 with the triumph of Cs) flees from essentialist debates.
But Republicans see difficulties. In their ranks they are convinced that alliances have already been agreed in advance between the PSC and Junts to prevent ERC from getting some mayorships. "Tripartite? What is there is sociovergence. Look at what's been happening in Parliament lately", reasoned ERC sources while recalling that the Generalitat's budget was a "temporary agreement" and a matter of "responsibility".
There is a second derivative. The city of Barcelona is the apple of the republicans' eyes, but after coming first in the elections four years ago with Ernest Maragall, the current polls are not very hopeful. The Xavier Trias effect – which hides the Junts acronym – has impacted ERC to the point that the party has recovered references to the surname Maragall in the campaign. "Maragall more than ever" is the slogan, a nod to the government of his brother Pasqual, mayor of the PSC from 1982 to 1997. In 2019, the candidate preferred to avoid it and his campaign team preferred the name : Ernest.
All in all, Oriol Junqueras has positioned Gabriel Rufián as the tip of the spear in the metropolitan area. He is running for Santa Coloma de Gramenet, where he has no chance of wresting the mayorship from the socialist Núria Parlon. But the president of Esquerra trusts that the figure of Rufián will "act as an expansive wave" in the electorate of the 36 municipalities of the metropolitan area, despite the controversies so far surrounding his pre-campaign.
Rufián has it difficult: in 2019, of the 18 localities where the PSC won, ERC won 5, like the commons. A second position strengthened, moreover, by good results in a homogeneous way throughout the area.
"La Parlón will be cruspirà", they reply and take the PSC for granted because the candidate "does not live in Santa Coloma and does not know the needs of the residents". But the socialists are aware of the danger of what ERC intends with the Rufián strategy. Sources close to the city's mayor's office, who denounce the belligerence with which the republican municipal group has behaved since the deputy's arrival, express their dismay at this maneuver: "ERC only has Rufián as a candidate?". This attitude is also reflected in L'Hospitalet, where the Republicans have signed as a candidate the exedil of the PSC who denounced the case of the Sports Council.
But the socialist leadership is not worried, let alone what could happen in the metropolitan area. They see "excitement", as "they haven't seen in a long time" and "a lot of mobilization" in their bases.
The threat is that the drought will be used as a spear weapon. The fight will be fought even after the elections, when the pacts to govern councils and councils have to be woven. The socialists are open to "agree with everyone in favor of stability", if it can be with progressive pacts, but "sometimes progressive pacts are with Junts", they warn. In fact, the PSC values the understanding with Junts better than with ERC, "it may be because of party culture", they say, but the moderate and focused stamp of the leader, Salvador Illa, has something to do with it.
The PSC has also forged pacts with ERC that have worked, like the one in Figueres, but far from the metropolitan area.
