This time, Ada Colau did not shed tears, as she did four years ago, as she did eight years ago, also right here, in a packed Plaça Catalunya. But he did get goosebumps.
In front of about two thousand people, at the most important meeting of these two weeks, the mayoress and mayor of BComú evoked her origins yesterday to excite her people and mobilize her bases in the face of the most contested elections in recent memory in this city, those of Sunday.
Colau talked about his grandparents, how they arrived in Barcelona fleeing the post-war miseries, how they worked in the homes of wealthy people to give their children a much better life, how they succeeded. And following this very familiar and intimate thread, he remembered and paid tribute to the efforts of so many anonymous people in this city, an effort that over the decades materialized in social changes, in job improvements, in a much better place… .
Yes, Colau, in fact, as he already did at the beginning of this electoral campaign in the La Paloma party hall, wanted to inscribe his own personal trajectory and the work of his eight years of government in this tradition so innovative that Barcelona always shone, the city that hosted the first republican women’s union, the first demonstration in Spain in defense of homosexual rights, those strikes to achieve the eight-hour working day…
Even the 15-M, that indignant movement in which he participated and with which he also propelled himself to conquer this mayorship. “Then those from the PP told us that if we wanted to change things we should run for the elections, and here we are! To continue paving the way, to continue changing things”. Because, Colau warned the public, the right and especially the ultra-right, and also pressure groups, are harassing everywhere, to return to the past, to undo what we have walked.
Commoners know how to mount this type of saraus. Vicky Peña, Bob Pop, Nacho Vegas, El Niño de la Hipoteca warmed up the audience first… At least the crowd had a great time. And then the commons Gerardo Pisarello, Laura Pérez, Jordi Martà and Janet Sanz were in charge of distributing the corresponding bursades between the adversaries of this dispute, Xavier Trias, Jaume Collboni and Ernest Maragall.
And, suddenly, while Martà was speaking, the cloudy sky was dyed red, from the smoke of a lot of pots. The squatters of the old Massana de Raval school, stubborn for weeks to boycott the commons campaign, could not miss the main meeting these days. “Sometimes, when you open a road, some want you to open it even more”, said MartÃ, holding the point, until the squatters left.
