Until tonight there is time to collect endorsements. Just over 50 are needed to choose to lead the Esquerra Barcelona federation. About 1,040 militants are called on Friday to decide who will be at the head of one of the most influential local sections of the party: whether the team of Eva Baró, current councilor and knowledge management secretary at ERC, or the group formed around the Secretary General of Government Education, Patrícia Gomà. It is unusual for two or three projects to compete at the polls. It hadn’t happened since 2008. And they are crowded.
The two candidacies point out that on Saturday, once the winner is formally proclaimed at the party congress, they will make a pineapple. But until then, the knives are flying. Blunt, but forceful. “The other team has ended up converging sectors that have been hating each other”, says Bernat Gimeno, from Baró’s team, who also accuses his rivals of having “boycotted” the federation in recent years, which has been presided over by ex-deputy Gerard Gómez del Moral.
In addition, a letter from Robert Fabregat, another former president of the Barcelona federation, from 2015 to 2019, has rarefied the pre-campaign. Fabregat sent a letter via WhatsApp to his party contacts in which he supported Baró. Gomà’s pre-candidacy considered that the former leader had been “offensive” and “disqualifying” with Horitzó Barcelona.
Fabregat said: “I felt the duty to address you this letter to make known my support for Eva and her team, and to share the risk of returning to the past. To establish ourselves again in toxic dynamics, which fragmented and disunited us internally, against which we revealed ourselves and believed we were overcome. We cannot lose what we conquered and rebuilt from the utmost generosity and will to sum up”.
The ERC ethics commission decided that the letter falls within the “freedom of expression” and the “right of militant people to position themselves in favor of one of the candidates” and rejected to disqualify Horitzó Barcelona, ??”to whom it does not allude”.
“They got angry, they took it as a stab,” say La Barcelona de Totes, Baró’s candidacy, while stressing that the commission saw nothing in the letter. Gomà, on the other hand, insists: “It is legitimate to take a position, but she was aggressive; they are little things that happen between colleagues who get nervous and brake each other”.
More disputes: Gomà’s candidacy boasts of being formed from the ground up, while he describes Baró’s as “continuist”. He gives an example: Toni Vidal, second on Baró’s list, is the federation’s finance secretary, “and he goes with a speech of change and renewal, when he has done nothing while he has had responsibilities to do it”. says Gomà. He also accuses those of Baró of not seeing them “free enough to say that a new person is needed for the mayor’s office”. In other words, look for a replacement for Ernest Maragall, who still leads the municipal group. And in addition, he claims that Baró “causes trouble” because of her status as vice-president of a Provincial Council presided over by the PSC.
Gimeno contradicts what Gomà exposes. He does not avoid the debate on the relief of Maragall “We will have to take strategic decisions”, he says, also regarding the possibility of entering the municipal government of the socialist Jaume Collboni. “We are very far from entering it”, he says. He also rejects the “continuist” label: “Respect to whom? They have two general secretaries in their candidacy – Oriol Amorós, in the Ministry of Rights, and Gomà herself – and”, a councilor with many flying hours. “We have the support of the party’s national leadership, but they are more grassroots militancy than they are, who also have a critical vision of the leadership” chaired by Oriol Junqueras, Gimeno assures.
“We’re all Junkerists”, replies Gomà. “To say that we don’t empathize with those who have suffered repression is brutal bad faith”, and he remarks that “to say that Ernestha should leave it is not to be anti-junkerist, but to be consistent with what everyone thinks”. Nevertheless, he does not refrain from pointing out some doubt: “The national leadership never gets tired of telling us that it is neutral; if it later turns out to be untrue, I can’t say it.”
On Friday, it will be known who replaces Gómez del Moral at the head of the federation. His name was by consensus. Until his name emerged, Marina Gassol, who died recently and was a councilor in Barcelona, ??and Albert Castellanos, current Business Secretary of the Catalan Government, contested the presidency. Baró’s candidacy does declare himself a continuationist of Gassol. “But the consensus is artificial. The other sector dedicated itself to undermining the mandate”, says Gimeno.
La Barcelona de Totes has well-known public supports, such as Carme Forcadell’s express statement. The minister of the interior, Joan Ignasi Elena, is part of his team, as well as the former councilor Montse Benedí or the member of Parliament José Rodríguez. On behalf of Horitzó Barcelona there is councilor Coronas or Edu Thió, who led the group with Jordi Portabella. The team does not lack experience: Oriol Amorós presided over the federation from 2004 to 2011 and Gomà succeeded him from 2012 to 2015. The Minister of Territory, Ester Capella, supports him.
