The play in three acts written by Ada Colau to hold on to the mayorship of Barcelona is about to reach its conclusion. Although she won't be able to breath free until this Saturday when the result of the vote in the city council is announced, and she needs to get 21 votes, Colau has made her last move to come out victorious: she's pulled up her sleeves so that BComú supporters will vote for her as mayor in a government with PSC (and the support of Manuel Valls, which she always hides), in preference to an executive headed by Ernest Maragall, the winner of the election, and with BComú keeping 50% of the government positions for itself. The play which started with shutting out Maragall with the excuse that he was going to put the city at the service of the independence movement and continued with an offer for a three-way government between ERC and PSC, which was nothing more than playing to the gallery, since the latter party was never going to accept it, has seen its final act in the defence of the mayorship to its membership as something normal and natural and hiding that Valls has wormed himself, literally, all the way in.
In the current political world, politicians are often victims more of what they say than what they do. The contortions to get what they want can be infinite. But then their words are repeated time and time again. Time doesn't pass for them. From this Thursday, we'll have to save her proclamation of why she was presenting her candidacy for reelection: "We don't have to renounce three votes gifted [to us], without conditions and which we haven't gone looking for". Those are the votes from Valls, from Ciudadanos, precisely the same day we've learnt that the Andalusian government (of PP, Cs and Vox) will set aside 100,000 euros to attack the Catalan government's policy of linguistic immersion in schools. Moving close to Ciudadanos has these effects: it's very difficult to come out of it unblemished when the fan of hate is switched on.
Votes gifted, without conditions and which she hasn't gone looking for. If one of the three things she gave as irrefutable facts weren't true, she should resign immediately. But the thing is, in due course, when they fight, we'll find out they were all lies. They weren't gifted to her, they've paid a tariff and they went to look for them. Ernest Maragall said in the last few hours that, in his negotiations with Colau, everyone showed their true colours. ERC's candidate for mayor isn't right about that. It's been some time since the mayor of Barcelona showed she's not up to the task of the office she holds and that her political principles don't come ahead of her personal interest. She's not the only one to have done so, nor will she be the last, but there are some lessons she won't now be able to give them.