For decades, when socio-vergència was in operation, the electoral distribution of the Catalan territory was not under discussion: the PSC ruled the metropolitan area (with some post-communist mayor’s office) and CiU had its strongholds in the rerepaís regions, with exceptions in some important cities, case of socialist mayors of Girona and Lleida. Pujolismo was choked by the metropolitan space, once called the red belt, and that made Jordi Pujol, in 1987, with an absolute majority in Parliament, destroy the Metropolitan Corporation of Barcelona, ??which he saw as a counterpower to the Generalitat in the hands of the adversaries. They were times of pujolismo and maragallismo, and ERC painted little.

One of the most innovative approaches to the nationalist/sovereignty space came from the Republicans when they pointed out that one of their strategic objectives was to grow in metropolitan municipalities, questioning socialist hegemony. The bet seemed destined to fail. How dare some independentistas ask the citizens of Catalonia for a vote where Catalan nationalism was almost invisible? In the local elections of 2011, the ERC brand achieved a discreet 5.2% in the metropolitan belt, but in those of 2019 the fruits of the long work that its militants and cadres have done were collected: 19.8% was reached, data that gives Junqueras’s party the status of the second most populous political force in Catalonia. The key: social discourse and listening to the street. And have the waist to exploit the failures of a PSC installed in excess of confidence.

In the May elections, ERC wants to give another twist. The election of the Republican spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, as mayor of Santa Coloma de Gramenet must be interpreted within this strategy. His candidacy transcends the local sphere and embodies the metropolitan vocation of the independence movement that today governs the Generalitat and influences Madrid. Surpassing the vote percentage of four years ago in the red belt is not easy for ERC, but it has never been better than now to gain positions. On Aragonès’s agenda, metropolitan municipalities are a priority, with visits that seek contact with neighborhood and social entities. Show waist also among those who do not vote for him.

Last February, Xavier Trias made public his self-criticism of the metropolitan perspective that Pujolismo had had and stated that you have to play decisively in that environment. Some Junts strategists trust that the Trias campaign will help his candidates in the first Barcelona belt. In 2019, the metropolitan vote for Junts was 10.17%, and in several cities it did not obtain a single councilor. We will see. But this pending issue of CiU cannot be approved by Junts overnight, and even less from the opposition and trying to put their head in the dog-faced duel that the PSC and ERC are going to star in.