After months and months of intense pre-campaigning, the real thing is here: at midnight as Thursday became Friday, the campaign for the May 28th municipal elections - as well as autonomous community elections in 12 Spanish regions - began with the pasting up of posters for the difference candidates in cities and towns. Never before has a municipal battle like that of Barcelona been so widely observed and the future of the Catalan capital analyzed in what will undoubtedly be an exceptional election to undo the entry into a black hole of a once-open, cosmopolitan city, a creator of wealth and proud of its triple status as the country's capital, cultural engine and model of opportunities.
At a time when the hegemonic parties are tending towards decline and the electoral forecasts are increasingly volatile, the municipal elections of Catalonia must, essentially, provide answers to these four questions: who will be capable to picking up the exceptionally poor balance left by mayor Ada Colau (BComú), who has no comparison with any of her predecessors? Will the predictable strengthening of the PSC, both in its strongholds in the Barcelona conurbation, and in the rest of the territory, be able to provide a solution to structural deficits like that of Rodalies or will it instead be a punishment? Will ERC pay for the Catalan government's management errors - such as the drought or the civl service exams - and will there be wear and tear on its brand and setbacks compared to 2019? Will Junts fail in its attempt to sell, at the same time, both moderation and radicalism, government management and its departure from the Catalan executive? Which of them will be more weighed down by burdens than the lift they can generate in their wings?
Out of all of this, some rough outlines can be seen at the start of the campaign, whose details will need to be filled in during the more than two weeks that remain until May 28th. Of all the municipal elections that have been held in Barcelona, these ones bear a certain similarity only to those of 2011, a moment when, without reaching the extreme situation of today, there was also an urge in the city to bring down the curtain on the period of PSC mayors, which had began in 1979, and to correct the exhaustion of the project, which in that mandate was focused on Jordi Hereu and the public opposition to one of his flagship projects: the tramway along the Diagonal. Since you have to learn from everything, the Socialist candidate, Jaume Collboni, has distanced himself from that proposal twelve years later and moved over to the position of Xavier Trias, who then as now has opposed the tramway connection along the Avinguda Diagonal.
The most important factors in the pre-campaign in Barcelona have been: the entry of Xavier Trias into the battle for the mayor's office; the titanic struggle of the PSC to avoid being identified with Colau, with whom it has governed for eight years; the mayor's remarkable level of resistance, according to the polls; and the fact that Ernest Maragall is fighting to avoid becoming irrelevant. With the campaign already underway, the high level of 'don't knows' and the crossover between electoral spaces, the days remaining until May 28th will undoubtedly be crucial. No one is guaranteed victory and the possible combinations of governance for the city are varied and of very different signs. There is, moreover, the precedent from 2019, when political pacts trampled on the results, and it does not matter that some of those who cooked up that recipe have regretted it over time. They were not the ones harmed, but rather, it was the city, which today is at the crossroads of aspiring to be a great capital once again or getting lost in the path of nostalgia for a past that is no longer present, and much less, future.