The leader of the ERC in the Barcelona City Council, the veteran politician Ernest Margall, surprisingly announced this Friday, after a four-hour plenary session and at the end of a proposal to restore the Via Laietana police station as a center of historical memory, his intention to leave the council in December . “Notice my resignation from the office of the city council,” demanded Republican Mayor Jaume Collboni, who chairs the plenary session. “December will be my last plenary session,” he concluded before the First Mayor, who admitted: “I don’t know what will be done in these cases. Should we open a round of interventions?”
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This Friday’s announcement comes 13 days after the number two Republican, Elisenda Alamany, said that Maragall would not retain the four-year term on the council and that she would be her successor. “He will not remain at the helm of the municipal group for these four years and the reins will be taken over by the next person on the list, which is me,” he explained. Some words also came as a surprise, although the party tried to ensure that its leader’s departure was not news. Maragall won the 2019 elections in the Catalan capital, sharing lower house seats with former mayor Ada Colau, who relied on the votes of the PSC and Manuel Valls to wrest the mayor’s office from her.
The uncertainty about whether Collboni will involve partners
Maragall is leaving at the age of 80, despite claiming before and after local elections in May that he would remain on the city council for the entire term, whether in government or in opposition. The departure of the experienced politician from institutional life coincides with the moment in which, after the inauguration of Pedro Sánchez, Mayor Collboni must decide whether to involve partners in his government or continue to run the city alone, since only 10 out of 41 councilors available. If he ends up creating partners, the socialist will prefer to rely on COMMONS and ERC, and Maragall’s departure will free up the community group’s decision-making.
So far, Alamany has been very critical of Collboni’s leadership, which sees the right trend and has chosen to remain in the opposition, where it has rejected several socialist initiatives. “Political voting” is number two, which is self-critical after losing half of the seats in the elections last May. But the party leadership will also have something to say, and even more so when it has just elected a new leadership in the Barcelona Federation, the result of an official candidacy that won by a narrow margin.
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The Republican, who also has an extensive career with the PSC acronym (under the socialist acronym he was a councilor in Barcelona and an adviser in the tripartite government), has explained that his decision was “strictly personal, conscientious and voluntary and a …” only reason: Barcelona.” At the ERC he was a member of parliament, MEP and also a government councilor and city councilor in Barcelona.
Following Maragall’s announcement, his community group assured that he “will work tirelessly for Barcelona from a position away from the political front, like the majority of citizens do.” The resignation will be formalized in the plenary session scheduled for December 22nd. Rosa Suriñach, who was already a councilor in the last months of the last electoral term, will take her place as councilor.
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