The 2019 municipal elections placed Esquerra as the first force in all of Catalonia in terms of votes and councillors. 820,000 votes that translated into some 3,100 representatives who helped form 360 mayors, their record. With the bar so high, Republicans believe that a consolidation of those results would be enough to celebrate. But there are always nuances: similar numbers on May 28 without options for Ernest Maragall to lead the Barcelona City Council, without being first again in Lleida, or evidencing that the mayoralty of Pau Ricomà in Tarragona was a flash in a day, it could be judged as a remarkable step back.
The Republicans this Friday have finished the campaign with ample doses of optimism, with frequent cries of “independence” from the attendees in the La Paloma room, in Barcelona. “They want to come and nail the pike of victory, put the pike in Flanders and there is a hidden candidate: Pedro Sánchez,” Pere Aragonès said of the Socialists very graphically this Friday. Maragall has also overflowed with positivism: “Are you tired?, they ask me. I’m tired? I have no right to be tired! (…) I would campaign for another monthâ€.
ERC has closed the campaign this Friday. It opened with Oriol Junqueras tearing up the script, which said that the focus of the attacks should be the PSC. Some creaky Rodalies – “the great shame of the Government and the PSC-PSOE†– had to favor the story of the Republicans to continue scratching votes in the metropolitan area of ​​Barcelona with Gabriel Rufián as a visible face and stiletto. They point ways, in this area. But the president of Esquerra surprised even his colleagues in the leadership of the party and that day he charged strongly against Junts, through Xavier Trias: “He hides his name and his list is full of those who left the Government in the summer of 2017 and to the people of Cataloniaâ€.
The attack on the Socialists did not change for the rest of the campaign – Marta Vilalta, deputy secretary general, on Friday reproached the PSOE for trying to “punch punches and dirty tricksâ€, but the party cadres adopted the Junqueras line. The reason? Criticizing a Junts each time, in the opinion of the Republicans, more convergent with Trias as the banner is an indirect way of attracting the left-wing socialist voter who suffers from hives at the memory of the CDC.
Esquerra has carried out one of its most intense campaigns. Republicans are very proud of door to door. According to reports, they have knocked on 550,000 doors in 320 municipalities. Some 3,000 volunteers have participated, but also candidates, the candidates themselves and visible faces of the formation. They hope that all this effort will bear fruit at the polls, as Pere Aragonès has expressed: “It has been an intense campaign in which we have discovered a vote-buying scandal, we have brought the political debate to people’s homes. While wills have been bought and the democratic game has been perverted, we have brought the decisions home to the people. It’s up to us to reciprocate.”
