It's all over. Except for the most important part. After an intense two weeks, the campaign for the May 28th municipal elections in Barcelona has ended, with no clear winner. The polls place Xavier Trias (Trias for Barcelona), Jaume Collboni (PSC) and incumbent mayor Ada Colau (BComú) in a virtual dead heat at the top, with Ernest Maragall (ERC) in fourth place. Winning is obviously the goal, but the precise balance among all four - and the votes won by other parties that might win council seats, like the PP and the CUP - could be important, given the fragmented spectrum. This Friday, the candidates had their last chance to get the faithful out this Sunday and to win over the many voters who, the surveys said, were still undecided in the last days before May 28th.
Trias calls for the change
Xavier Trias filled the Jardinets de Gràcia with more than 800 people and closed his "campaign for change" by addressing all those Barcelona residents who "are against Ada Colau" - according to the polls, as he has kept repeating, three out of four of Barcelona's citizens are unhappy with the mayor. The candidate of Trias for Barcelona appealed to the "useful vote" to "turn the tide" in Barcelona and has asked for a massive vote for his candidacy this May 28th: "We have to go out to vote on Sunday. It's a day that, if you vote badly, it's four more years of misfortune, which has already happened to us. Colau and Collboni are a disaster, they are not doing well and they've made mistakes. We are the useful vote. We have to make that clear to people and so that they understand very well that, if they are against Ada Colau, they have an easy choice: to vote for Trias for Barcelona".
I have a beautiful dream, says Colau
The mayor and candidate of Barcelona en Comú in this Sunday's municipal elections, Ada Colau, closed the election campaign at the Parc de Sant Martí with a short emulation of Martin Luther King's famous speech. If the US civil rights leader proclaimed 'I have a dream', Colau closed her last speech by assuring that she also has one: "I have a beautiful dream, for Barcelona to be a world reference as a healthy, feminist, caring city, with empathy as its emblem, welcoming and just", and thus she made a last call to "vote en masse" to ensure victory at the polls and "make the dream possible". In an event that attracted around 2,000 people, according to the organizers, Colau displayed her neighbourhood and organizational pride by asserting that in the district of Sant Martí, "while other parties pay companies to put up their posters, pay bots on the internet and pay for buses, we don't, we are the common people who mobilize every day" and repeated an old phrase that she used in the 2015 campaign: "Let's not forget who we are, what we want and why we are here" and claimed successes such as the new Gabriel García Márquez library and the renovation of the La Pau public school.
Collboni's closer puts the emphasis on Spain
For the first time since 1979, when the first post-Franco municipal elections were held throughout the Spanish state, the Socialists (PSOE) have closed their electoral campaign out of Madrid and they have done so in Barcelona to support the candidacy of Jaume Collboni as a candidate for the Barcelona mayoral office. With the participation of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero and especially of Pedro Sánchez, it inevitably led to this being an event with an emphasis on Spain, with criticism directed especially towards the People's Party and its leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo. Only the mayoral candidate referred directly to his two electoral rivals, Ada Colau and Xavier Trias; while Catalan Socialist leader Salvador Illa insisted in his own speech - in a Vall d'Hebron Pavilion filled to overflowing with 4,000 people - on the importance of "useful" politics whether in Spain, Catalonia or Barcelona, which, according to him, is embodied by the Socialists in all cases. The mayors of Sabadell and Sant Boi, Marta Farrés and Lluïsa Moret, also took part in this event to demonstrate the muscle of Socialist municipalism in the cities around Barcelona.
ERC's warning about "hidden candidate" Pedro Sánchez
Ernest Maragall closed the campaign for the municipal elections where mayor Ada Colau started hers: at the La Paloma dance hall, in the Raval district. But the prospects are not the same as four years ago, when the voters made the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) the largest party in the Catalan capital. Despite everything, the Republicans sought to close ranks and to inspire. And they placed practically all their bets on polarization with the PSC, on denouncing a new state operation. The ERC candidate spoke of the "oppression" to which the Socialists want to subject Barcelona: "They don't forgive us for the 1st October referendum and that's why they're doing everything they're doing". But he went on: "It's time not to accept this oppression. They want us to be silent, they want us to be submissive, but we are not and we won't be". A message that was underlined by president Pere Aragonès, who denounced that the PSC has a "hidden candidate": Spanish PM Pedro Sánchez. The one who closed Collboni's campaign today and, yes, the one to whom Aragonès has entrusted the negotiation of a Clarity Agreement for a new referendum.
"Vote for what hurts them the most"
The third largest of the pro-independence parties, the CUP (Popular Unity Candidatures), with Basha Changue at the helm, is fighting to regain its presence on the Barcelona City Council. And that is why it has sought to run a different campaign from the rest. In some cases, this was out of necessity, since it was excluded from debates on the basis of having no current representation. But it also carried out surprise actions, and that is what happened on Friday, the last day of the campaign, when the far-left party unfurled a giant banner at Sants railway station in the Catalan capital. On one side, the face of Xavier Trias; on the other, that of Jaume Collboni. The message, against the "sociovergència" that they consider a threat: "Neither CiU nor PSC. Vote CUP. Vote for what hurts them the most." The polls have said they have a tough job to return to the council, but now it's time to see what the voters say.