The Catalan socialists see a differential fact in this electoral campaign that hastens its last hours before the vote on Sunday: unlike four years ago, the central axis of debate has not been the independence process. Despite the struggle between ERC and Junts for the hegemony of this current, this time it has stayed there, and has not transcended the debate between candidates from large or small cities. On the other hand, “they have talked about what really interests the citizens”, they point out in the PSC, and the party of Salvador Illa claims its contribution to this turnaround.
Gone is “the conversation with the intention of dividing” and “it has been a long time since we had a campaign like this”, Salvador Illa assessed in an act with the candidate Jaume Collboni and the Minister of Culture and Sports and president of the PSC, Miquel Iceta, in the neighborhood of Sarrià Sant Gervasi.
The conversation in this campaign has not been about “the raca-raca”, a “novelty” that Illa hopes “has come to stay” and about which she wanted to “recognise, with great humility, the role that our training has played politics on this.”
The socialist leader has boasted that before this 28-M “the people (the candidates) feel they have the ability to do politics in an environment very different from that of four years ago.” And as for the contribution of his party to this political normalization, he has shown that it is related to the “constructive attitude” that this legislature has had and that has allowed him to braid agreements with the ERC Government such as this year’s budgets .
This achievement is, as he said, another reason to ask for a vote: “the contribution of the PSC to the debate on normal things.”
Minister Iceta has spoken along the same lines, calling for an “intelligent” vote, rather than a “useful one”, he has indicated, for Jaume Collboni, because “we need a mayor who is not mortgaged with a process that made us lose many energies.†Iceta has claimed that the PSC has “another idea on how to advance societyâ€, far from “inertia and resignationâ€.
For his part, Collboni pointed out that “the attacks and nerves” he sees in his opponents “are directly proportional to the chances that the PSC has of winning.” “We are ahead in these elections”, he boasted, but immediately afterwards, the candidate again asked for a “broad majority of support” because “we not only want to win but also to govern well and do so with as few ties as possible”. Once again, Collboni has appealed to the “usual†voters, but “also to the moderatesâ€, that is, “the opposite of the radicals and those who want the city to function wellâ€.
