Is there an operation underway to try and oust Xavier Trias from the mayoralty of Barcelona? The public confirmation by the Catalan Socialist (PSC) candidate, Jaume Collboni, that he was not discarding anything and had even opened talks with the People's Party (PP) to be mayor, makes one think so. It would certainly be a curious investiture majority: PSC, Barcelona en Comú... and the PP. The bad ways introduced by Ada Colau four years ago when she ousted the winner of the 2019 elections, Ernest Maragall, with a political operation that included the votes of Manuel Valls, seem to have been learned. At least, during these first days since May 28th, when the victory of Xavier Trias has reversed the intentions of Jaume Collboni, who, convinced that he would win the election, proposed a campaign stating that if he finished second, he would go over to the opposition. And now these statements, already rectified on election night itself, have become waste paper.
The PP is, in the first place, surprised by this move and, in the second, stunned by this sudden and unexpected gallantry. The first to be puzzled was the president of the People's Party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who visited the annual Cercle d'Economia business conference held in Barcelona. Beyond seeing how things change when you have good results - it is only a month since the cold reception he received when he went to the Reial Club de Tennis Barcelona for a Carlos Alcaraz match - Feijóo still had echoing in his ears the words of Spanish prime minister Pedro Sánchez in the meeting he had just held with the Socialist caucus in Congress, at which he had accused the PP and Vox of creating a discourse to provoke an assault on the Congress of Deputies similar to what Donald Trump's followers did at the US Capitol: "It's no joke. This is deadly serious. They will talk about a rigged election. Some will do it. And others will say that I must be arrested as responsible for setting up this fraud. They have already done it and they will do it again. It's nothing new either. Let's stay calm and determined."
If this is Sánchez's campaign to revalidate his leadership in the elections he has just called for July 23rd, it does not seem to tie in very well with Collboni's strategy of seeking votes from the right to reach the mayor's office. Or are PP and Vox only the extreme right when you leave the city of Barcelona? Seen as coldly as possible, beyond whatever PP and Vox want to do with their Barcelona city council votes, Collboni's strategy is still ammunition for Feijóo, who could easily dismantle Pedro Sánchez's discourse right now with just a few words, by pointing out that it isn't his party imitating the bad ways of others in the Moncloa or Parliament, when the Socialists are the ones talking openly with them about nothing less a deal over the mayoralty of Barcelona.
The fact is that any version - no matter how adulterated - of giving away votes for free, will stand out as obviously as a sore thumb. Nobody gives away anything for free, least of all in politics. It was already seen with Manuel Valls and the services he provided to those who brought him to the city to present himself at the municipal offices. Those patrons then spent four years crying in the corners and cursing the deterioration of the city. It seems that learning the lesson is the hardest part and it is in the human condition. But it's quite another thing if you want to convince yourself otherwise, or, like the Comuns, seek to grab votes from anyone you can in order to hang on to the web spun over eight years in the city council, and which in desperation you don't want to lose. Even if it means scaring the right of Barcelona with siren songs about the perils of pro-independence unity.
This is a house of cards and a complete fabrication, because there is no unity - here Junts and ERC are only trying to sign the document of their disagreement - not even a possible unitary candidacy in Madrid, since the political and personal relations between the leaders of the two parties are broken, and Xavier Trias, as he has taken it upon himself to repeat, was in a candidacy called Trias for Barcelona which is formed by Junts, PDeCAT, Democrates and Moviment d'Esquerres. This protective cordon, as well as his years of experience, distance him from any political dependence, and as a sample you only need to remember that when in 2015 he could have built an alternative candidacy to unseat Colau, he went home because he had lost by one councillor and a few thousand votes. Colau, with two fewer representatives, is manoeuvring against Trias. Two different ways of being in politics and of understanding the limits of integrity and ethics in public life.