The PSC has taken a new step on the path it undertook a few years ago to recover the political hegemony lost at the beginning of the last decade in the city of Barcelona. The candidacy led by Salvador Illa clearly prevails in the Catalan capital and distances Junts, despite the growth of Carles Puigdemont’s candidacy, by more than 50,000 votes and more than eight percentage points, thus providing a great harvest to the barn of the winning party of these elections. Furthermore, in relation to the 2021 Parliamentary elections, in which they were already the leading political force in the Catalan capital, the socialists improved their records in all districts, including those that usually seem elusive to them.
This is the fourth time in the 14 elections to the Parliament of Catalonia held since 1980 that the PSC has emerged as the most voted force in the city, as had happened in 1999 and 2003 – the two occasions on which former mayor Pasqual Maragall headed the socialist candidacy – and in 2021, already with Salvador Illa at the helm. Traditionally, the Barcelona vote in the Catalan elections had leaned towards the nationalist side (up to eight times CiU was the hegemonic force, and in 2015 it was the broad pro-independence coalition Junts pel Sí), and we have to go back only seven years, in 2017, to find the triumph of another different party, Ciudadanos, a formation with a short and eventful life that yesterday signed the death certificate.
Even without being able to repeat the success of the municipal elections a year ago, when the Xavier Trias effect led Junts to occupy the highest step of the podium, Carles Puigdemont’s party surpasses its records from 2021. The independentistas are above the PSC in three of the city’s ten districts (Eixample, Les Corts and Gràcia), but they trail the Popular Party in Sarrià-Sant Gervasi by a handful of votes. For its part, the PSC retains the hegemony conquered three years ago in Ciutat Vella, Sants-Montjuïc, Horta-Guinardó, Nou Barris, Sant Martí and Sant Andreu. There are no color changes in the electoral map of the districts beyond that caused by the success of the PP in the territory with the highest per capita income in the city.
The PP takes a very important leap and emerges from the abyss into which it fell three years ago. From being the eighth political force in Barcelona, ??to becoming the third and growing by almost 8.5 points. The popular ones, who had just become an irrelevant force, completed a good day in most districts.
The other side of the coin is, without a doubt, Esquerra Republicana, which suffers in Barcelona a setback similar to that suffered in the rest of Catalonia and is relegated to fourth position. Although the loss of votes in the Catalan capital is somewhat lower than that of the country as a whole, the Republicans are not even spared in those districts, such as Gràcia, where they have always shown greater vigor. A period of reflection now opens for the Republicans, who, dispossessed of the Government of the Generalitat, could find in their incorporation into the municipal government of the socialist Jaume Collboni the medicine to heal from these new serious wounds that add to those suffered a year ago in local elections.
The commons are resisting better in Barcelona than in Catalonia as a whole, while the two faces of the extreme right, Vox and Aliança Catalana, fall short of the expectations generated.
