ERC Mayor for Barcelona, Ernest Maragall, upon his arrival at the party’s central rally in Cornellà.Albert Garcia
The rain forecasts this Saturday clouded one of the moments that had raised the greatest expectation of this campaign. The central meeting of Esquerra in Santa Coloma de Gramenet was convened to stage the Republican bet for a hand-to-hand fight with the Socialists for supremacy in the so-called Red Belt of Barcelona. The crime finally took place indoors, in Cornellà de Llobregat. In both cities, the PSC has historic absolute majorities and this immobility focused the attack. ERC sees a problem in the socialist mayors, while they represent value for the PSC: their pre-campaign started with a joint photo.
“The PSOE has no right to turn our cities into another farmhouse. That’s enough for gentlemen!” said Gabriel Rufián, ERC spokesman in Congress and Mayor of Santa Coloma. Only Republicans, he added, are able to “fight the absolute majority of speculation and clientelism,” as he noted, referring to the situation in Santa Coloma, governed by Núria Parlon.
This municipality and Cornellà itself, governed by the Socialists since 1987, are examples of socialist hegemony in the greater Barcelona area. There he resisted in the elections even after the debacle experienced by the Socialists after the failure of the second three-party party (2006-2011). The polls don’t seem to grasp that the political color can change there, although the ERC’s strategy of making itself visible on terrain traditionally hostile to independence theses has worked.
In the 2019 municipal elections, the party led by Oriol Junqueras won 18% of the vote in the 36 municipalities of the metropolitan area, making it the second largest force after the PSC (25%). Both improved their numbers compared to 2011, when the converged environment began to decline. A comparison with the results a decade ago is even more revealing: Esquerra had 5% of the vote and the Socialists 38%.
The outstanding issue remains the attack on the mayoral offices, an area in which the PSC is winning by 19 to four Republicans. The ERC topped the elections in the Catalan capital four years ago by achieving a historic result and being the force with the most votes. Manuel Valls’ support for Ada Colau killed that possibility. This time around, the polls are diminishing their chances of repeating that win, and a more modest result would negatively impact the formation’s eventual weight in the metro area.
That it is definitely the PSC that wins the mayoralty is a new goal of the ERC. Therefore, this Saturday, the mayor of Barcelona, Ernest Maragall, took the opportunity to warn about the “state operation” in favor of Collboni, urging Xavier Trias not to be the “necessary accomplice”. The vice-president of the government, Yolanda Díaz, also referred yesterday to the role of the PP in a possible post-election pact. Speaking in Barcelona, he warned that Alberto Núñez Feijóo would give his votes to a PSC-Triassic alliance if that meant Colau’s expulsion.
What affects most is what happens closer. Subscribe so you don’t miss anything.
subscribe to
The possibility that, to use Maragall’s words, “the rancidest socio-vergence” will triumph is seen by the ERC as a reaction by those in power to the consolidation of the party at the heart of Catalan politics. President Pere Aragonès defended his way of governing against those who “divided the country like a pie between reds and blues”. Junqueras was responsible for putting his finger on the sore spot of corruption, pointing to the distribution of power between socialists and convergents in democracy as one of its causes.
Nobody in the ERC expects Rufián to beat Parlon with 26-M. Number two in the formation, Marta Rovira, accepted in a video that the candidacy was the way to show she was serious about her commitment to conquering the formerly so-called Red Belt, where thousands of immigrants came from in the 1950s the rest of Spain and 60. Ruffian does not speak to them but to their children and grandchildren.
The PSC sees an improvement in its 2019 results as possible. The ERC’s decision to bet heavily on Santa Coloma also means that the outcome is most interesting there. Socialist leadership sources believe that Rufián has “made the circus” they expected and that interest in his candidacy lay more with the media than with citizens. Although the current result is improving (9.9% of the vote, three seats), it will not harm Parlon (50%, 17).
You can follow EL PAÍS Catalunya on Facebook and Twitteror sign up here to receive our weekly newsletter