Ada Colau said, in the campaign, that her Barcelona led the way, but for her, finally, the route in front of the Consistory has ended. In contrast, the mayor who deposed with the invaluable help of the State sewers, eight years ago, now has all the numbers (and all the legitimacy) to return. If there are no very strange pacts (which Pedro Sánchez helped to push away yesterday with his electoral advance), Xavier Trias will recover the mayoralty and, with him (and others), his political space can recover ground and identity.
Because, without a doubt, Salvador Illa is the national leader who comes out stronger from these elections. Undoubtedly, also, the most touched is a silent Pere Aragonès on the night of 28-M. But these two realities, a PSC that rises and an ERC that has a historic disaster, leaving more than three hundred thousand votes, coexist with another municipal post-election headline: Junts per Catalunya once again survives (more than well) its persistent gravediggers. Now, in a local sphere that is crucial when it comes to consolidating any political project.
Trias has a lot to do with it here, but also the political school of other Juntaire candidates who have triumphed in historic squares in this space. Junts has been the first force in victories in municipalities (342). And the PSC has been the most voted (23.7%), but followed by Junts (18.3%), which surpasses an ERC (17.2%) that, only four years later, loses the mayoralty of Tarragona and of Lleida, and in Barcelona it goes from being the first to being the fourth force. Rise and fall in a breath. A dynamic that, if ERC does not apply an effective and credible tourniquet, could perfectly be replicated in the upcoming Parliamentary elections. And they know it.
Partly because of the latter, a tripartite sum in Barcelona that would make the second, Jaume Collboni, mayor, against the first, Trias, is highly unlikely. It would be reckless, for ERC, to influence a Cainite dynamic. But it is also that, as if this perspective were not dissuasive enough, the call for Spanish elections in July has come to dispel doubts: How is ERC going to give the mayoralty to the Socialists against a Junts that has won, four days away? of a new appointment with the polls?
The whole of the independence movement has left at home an important bulk of their vote, due to their own and shared demerits. But although ERC has been identified as the one who has most puzzled and disappointed this voter base, Junts cannot relax either. On the contrary. It has regrouped a good part of the vote that had dispersed after the implosion of Convergència and, without a doubt, it is the brand that inherits most of its capital, but it still has a lot to recover.
And this is where the Trias style leads the way. By disposition, conciliatory and dialoguing. For the ability to build teams synonymous with good governance and political muscle. For adding diverse sensibilities, disintegrated brands, under the same umbrella. And for doing so without national resignations and without renouncing a political past that is part of the success of the present of Junts.
