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What happened this Thursday made blood boil for members of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC). The Socialist candidate for the Barcelona mayoralty, Jaume Collboni, proclaimed himself as the "heir" of former mayor Pasqual Maragall. But the reaction of his brother, Ernest Maragall, was not long in coming. Ernest, ERC candidate for the Barcelona municipal elections said he was "saddened" and "outraged" by the instrumentalization of the legacy of his brother, Barcelona's Olympic-era mayor. And he replied: "Collboni is the heir of those who betrayed him, of those who abandoned him, of those who denied him, of those who rejected him". Much of Maragall's campaign has focused on distancing himself from the Socialists, making it clear that he will not form a government with them if he wins.

The reply was delivered at an event in the Gràcia neighbourhood. And Ernest Maragall admitted that he would have liked not to have to talk about it, because "it saddens him more than it outrages him". But it had not gone unnoticed that Collboni had proclaimed himself "heir" of the legacy, and that he had even quoted him and imitated his gestures. In contrast, the Republican candidate stood up for "the Barcelona that mayor Maragall had in mind" and said that he will try to "live up to that". But he asked for that idea of the city "not to be prostituted". 

Beyond this issue, the ERC candidate as strongly critical of what Jaume Collboni represents in these elections: "He is offering himself for the post of controller in the name of Mr Pedro Sánchez, to be the delegate of the central government in Plaça Sant Jaume". But he also launched blows against the rest of his opponents. He accused Xavier Trias of reviving an "obsolete" Ada Colau and of doing it in order "to return us to the 80s, to that Convergència that we all know what it means and what it did". And he also took aim at the current mayor, who expresses "a mixture of dogmatism and authoritarianism, who tells us what we should be like, how we should think, how we should live". For this reason, he placed himself in the middle: "Neither submission nor dogmatism".

In similar terms, the Catalan enterprise minister, Roger Torrent, warned that this Sunday at the polls "we must not take a gamble with the refoundation of any party" and that "the Catalonia of the 80s is a long way off", in reference to Xavier Trias and the now-defunct Convergència. But he also criticized that others want to "use the city as a platform to accumulate points to become minister one day", like Ada Colau, or "subordinating the results to the interests of the Spanish government", like Jaume Collboni. Against this, Torrent defended that on 28th May "the future of the city is at stake".

Everyday racism

The event this Thursday evening in Gràcia was also attended by the Catalan equality and feminism minister, Tània Verge, who spoke out against racism following the grave stadium abuse of footballer Vinícius Júnior last weekend, but which goes much further: "What happens on a football field is just one tiny expression of everyday racism. If they do this to a football player, what won't they do to a racialized person in their day-to-day life?". In this regard, the head of the equality ministry also committed to "fight" the Spanish immigration law.