It was on Thursday that everything changed in the Barcelona political balance. As the Spanish state leadership of the People's Party (PP) has revealed, the party's general coordinator, Elías Bendodo, phoned the organizing secretary of the Spanish Socialists (PSOE), Santos Cerdán, and offered him the necessary support for Jaume Collboni, their candidate for the Catalan capital's mayoralty, with the condition that Ada Colau would be left out of the city government. The PP claim that they did this out of a sense of state. The Socialists immediately denied the PP leak. They claim that when Cerdán was contacted by Bendodo, the latter was referred directly to speak with the PSC, the Catalan branch of the Socialist party.
The truth, however, is that when the mayoral D-Day arrived on Saturday, Barcelona was one of the focuses of concern in Madrid. When the election of Collboni was confirmed, after two weeks of pressure from the PSOE on the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, Socialist sources in Madrid boasted of how the final PP decision was "forced on [the PP], by badgering them into it", that "it will be good for Barcelona and will save Feijóo from new mockery in his policy of post-electoral pacts". The PSOE, with its own municipal power all around the Spanish state decimated after the May 28th local elections, needed to be able to say it had won in the Catalan capital, and the PP played the game to avoid a pro-independence city government.
Colau accepts it
And the councillors of the outgoing mayor, Ada Colau, agreed to enter into the equation. At 4pm on Saturday afternoon, an hour before the start of the council meeting to select the new mayor, the left-wing Comuns (Barcelona en Comú) announced that they would vote for the PSC candidate but would remain in opposition. Just what the PP had demanded, and thus they left the path clear for Daniel Sirera's four PP councillors to vote for Collboni, and provide the necessary alternative majority to unseat the election winner.
And all of this preceded by a hermetic silence. So much so that until early Saturday afternoon everyone took for granted the investiture as mayor of the Together for Catalonia (Junts) candidate, Xavier Trias, after closing the deal with Ernest Maragall, candidate for the other pro-independence party, the Catalan Republican Left (ERC). It was so unexpected, that even the councillor selected as temporary chair of proceedings, the PSC's Albert Batlle, when announcing the results of the vote, set off reading the text he had prepared to explain that no candidate had obtained an absolute majority and that therefore the new mayor would be the candidate most voted by Barcelona's citizens. "Given that no candidate...", he began, before realizing his error and starting again, to proclaim Jaume Collboni mayor of the city of Barcelona. While the investiture session was being held within the historical hall, the Saló de Cent, protests were heard outside in Plaça Sant Jaume, and as the vote confirmed that the 10 councillors of the PSC, the nine of the Comuns and the four from the PP had given their vote to Collboni, the protests also erupted inside the room.
"I couldn't let a separatist be mayor"
In the subsequent round of addresses by all party candidates, the PP's Daniel Sirera explained that he had kept the promise given during the campaign guaranteeing that he "would not make a separatist mayor or allow the Comuns to be in the city government." "Thirty-six before [Spain's] general election you will understand that it has not been easy", he replied.
Ada Colau provoked jeers from part of the hall when she took the floor saying that she had not known what the end result would be and that the only thing she was sure of was that the Comuns would go directly to the opposition. "Not because the PP says it, but because it was our decision," she added. She explained that her vote is not anti-independence but based on the city and revealed that yesterday the PSC proposed a pact to her that included being able to rely on the votes of the PP, a secret coalition pact, and that she had rejected it.
On behalf of ERC, Ernest Maragall manifested that an "unworthy spectacle" was once again taking place in Barcelona, an agreement against the will of the majority and which asserts the idea that any means are valid in order to hang on to power. "I believe in politics, in politics with a capital P. Decisions like the ones taken today in this room cause citizens to be alienated", warned Maragall, who told Collboni, amid applause from those present, that "the public will not tolerate this spectacle."
"They are ashamed to look at me"
But the most forceful message was from Xavier Trias, even though he admitted that "elections are like this, some win, others lose" and stressed, looking at Colau, that you need to know how to lose elegantly. The candidate praised Ernest Maragall, before denouncing that, regarding "the operation" that had just taken place, it "was the third time it has happened". He explained that in 2015, in the early days of the independence movement, "very important people in central government" had tried to destroy the then-mayor issuing fake news stories which others, referring to Colau, used against him to win the election; in 2019, he went on, they used Manuel Valls's right-wing Ciudadanos candidacy to support left-wing Colau against election winner Maragall - "Valls who was not an invention of Colau, it was an invention of Collboni, who tried everything, performing feats of magic like today, to take away the mayoralty that [Maragall] deserved", he added; and coming up to the present, he concluded that the agreement between the PSC and PP with the participation of the Comuns, does "a poor favour to the city and the country", that "they are doing the same thing again, with the same excuses" and, as he stressed, telling lies.
"There is a very serious underlying problem here, let's see if once and for all we stop these scandalous ways. We need to build a country and a city and not dedicate ourselves to provoking difficult situations that later cost dearly", warned Trias who accused the Socialists, Comuns and PP of creating "a bad ambience, an atmosphere of confrontation and a difficult situation".
Xavier Trias addresses the council after his mayoral candidacy was defeated: "The operation that has just taken place, it is the third time it has happened"
The head of the Junts list, who at no time hid his irritation at how everything had unfolded, affirmed that he was speaking with a calmness that came from having already announced that he would not serve on council if he was not mayor. "I'm going home and to hell with you all. There you are. You're doing the wrong thing and you're absolutely wrong. You're so wrong that since I got here you hardly dare look me in the face. Shame on you," he replied.
Collboni closed the meeting by assuring that the responsibility is now his as the new mayor - with a government made up of just his own ten councillors in the 41 seat city council - and he will exercise his power "with full awareness of the supports that have made it possible". Then, down to the stairway for the official photograph, where the long faces of the new councillors were the unavoidable protagonists.
