Twenty-four hours from the start of the plenary session of the Barcelona City Council in which the new mayor of the city will be elected, it is difficult not to remember those days that followed from the electoral night of the municipal elections in 2019 until that day in which the new Barcelona City Hall. They were very intense days. Ada Colau had lost the elections and needed three favorable votes for her investiture, which would finally come from Barcelona pel Canvi, the formation led by French Prime Minister Manuel Valls.
Valls had two objectives: The first was to stop the ERC independentistas, led by Ernest Maragall, winner of the elections; and the second, that Colau did govern, was supervised by Jaume Collboni’s PSC. The yes to Colau therefore entailed the condition that the Socialists would control the management of the mayoress, Janet Sanz, Jordi Martí and the rest of the commons.
Four years later, Colau leaves the mayor’s office, and a large part of the Barcelona citizenry has recovered their breath. She, insatiable and desperate, advocated earlier this week a pact with three of the left that would have allowed her to continue in her position, yes, on a rotating basis with Collboni and Maragall. PSC and ERC did not accept it.
These last elections were won by the under dog, as the Anglos would say, the candidate won who, placed in a discreet position, knew how to do things in such a way that he got more councilors against all odds. And that under dog was Xavier Trias.
A few days ago, in this same space, the theory was developed that Trías had won because he knew how to capture the anti-Colau discontent and because he focused his entire campaign and strategy on the simple idea of ??Colau, go away.
Without developing any spectacular program, without gaining the support of the majority, without having been a great mayor at the time, Trías won because he did what very few politicians know how to do: listen to the citizen.
Tomorrow, Barcelona will have a new mayor, but the citizens, the true masters of the city, still do not know who he will be or what Barcelona will have in the next four years.
It is not yet known for sure if the fiasco of the Via Augusta will be reversed; if the works on the Diagonal tram will be stopped; if the pedestrian islands will be stopped; how the collapse of north-south traffic will be solved; if transportation rates will be lowered; how to act in the face of insecurity; if the city will be cleaned from top to bottom; or if more housing will be built…
It’s been a couple of weeks, almost three, since Colau lost and Trias won. And since then the pools and the combinations to find out who will be mayor have occupied the municipal information center. We’ll see what happens.
But what has become clear in the debates and negotiations these days is that the citizens have once again become silent witnesses, stone statues, subjects that no longer matter.
The political agenda of the parties, and not precisely their projects for the city of Barcelona, ??has been the epicenter of speculation and of all conversations. They have entered the game not just Barcelona, ??but the independence movement, what they will say in Madrid, populism or what effect the Barcelona pacts will have in the general elections next month.
Politicians don’t learn. To those who already have their votes, they go about their business and forget why they have voted for them.
This circumstance occurs because politicians and their parties have survived for decades without listening to the citizens and because, despite making that serious mistake, there they are, collecting public salaries. And we could say the same of the majority of the autonomous deputies or the deputies in Congress.
The parties’ agenda and many times the personal agenda of politicians, are above citizen interest and public service.
It was smart that Trias listened to the citizens during the campaign, but once they cast their vote, the people of Barcelona have once again been forgotten. Nobody knows one hundred percent what can happen tomorrow, and not knowing what will happen is, in reality, the demonstration that politicians and not citizens are at the center of everything. Public service is not entrenched. Service and public are two words that in Barcelona, ??Catalan and Spanish politics do not usually go together.
