Barcelona’s first deputy mayor, Jaume Collboni, has attacked the newly appointed ERC candidate in the Catalan capital, Ernest Maragall, criticizing that “the only thing he wants to be is the delegate of the Generalitat in Barcelona” and attacking his veteranism in politics.
“Mr. Maragall today is proclaimed candidate of Mr. Aragonès in Barcelona. In fact, the only thing he intends to be is the delegate of the Generalitat in Barcelona”, Collboni snapped this Saturday at the extraordinary council of mayors of the PSC.
For the socialist leader, “who really rules” in ERC in Barcelona is the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, since Maragall has been “disappeared for three years” and has changed his position on the latest municipal budgets because for him “Barcelona is political currency at the service of independence interests”.
Along these lines, he has criticized the fact that he has been in politics for “50 years”. “I have discounted how many times I have seen Ernest Maragall on an electoral list. Today we will be able to know what he can offer us for the next four years, that he has not been able to do in the 50 years that he has been in politics”, the first deputy mayor has ironized.
The socialist politician has also had words for Ada Colau, whom he has accused of “precipitating the municipal campaign”, which he considers “a mistake”, and of “tense the political climate”.
Collboni has defended that it is necessary to “govern until the end” of the mandate and be focused “on solutions and not on elections”, which will be held next year.
A little over a week ago, Colau reported that he will run for a third term in the City Council of the Catalan capital, and his number two in the municipal government has defended that this announcement has to do with the fact that “electoral nerves make you lose your cool and common sense.” “In the coming months, will she be mayor or candidate?” She asked herself. “We must provide stability and security, not allow Barcelona to lose a year because of electoral nerves,” she added.
In this context, Collboni explained that the PSC will not support the use plan proposed by the municipal government in the Eixample (an initiative of the commons), seeing it as “hasty and without rigor or debate”.
After Collboni, the first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, took the floor, highlighting -in a veiled allusion to Colau- the wealth generated by tourism: “How quickly some people forget the images of the empty city”, he said.
In line with what Collboni expressed, he added that in 2023 “there will be elections and some are excessively concerned.”
