After a transparent campaign regarding future pacts and choir, Comuns Sumar – the current brand of the commons, a space that today brings together the heirs of the Initiative and the PSUC with the political platform of Ada Colau in Barcelona and the Sumar movement of the Galician Yolanda Díaz – aspires to achieve a result that will make him decisive in forging a progressive Government. This time Podemos is neither part of the candidacy nor running on the sidelines.
Given the majority of surveys, which attribute them to a decline with respect to their current parliamentary representation, if they retain the eight deputies they have in the Parliament they will celebrate the result with enthusiasm.
“We are the only ones who guarantee a progressive Government. We do not hesitate,” said the presidential candidate, Jéssica Albiach, this Friday at the closing of the campaign in Cornellà de Llobregat before approximately a thousand people. It was the most attended event of the race to 12-M, in which they have held rather small format meetings, with the exception of the last rally, another in l’Hospitalet de Llobregat and a paella in El Prat.
The commons were transparent from the pre-campaign. After 12-M they want to reach an agreement with the PSC, ERC and the CUP. They are betting on entering the Government. They said it from the beginning and did not move, trying to contrast this clarity in the post-election pacts with the lack of clarity of the adversaries.
However, they did not hesitate to lash out against their possible partners on repeated occasions. “Salvador Illa does not vindicate Maragall, he vindicates Jordi Pujol; and Pere Aragonès hugs Andreu Mas-Colell”, added Albiach this Friday without going any further.
They want to agree, but not at any price. They condition entering the next Government on a massive boost to public housing policies, with the construction of 250,000 public apartments in the next 10 years through an investment of 5,000 million euros. They also proclaim a determined commitment to public health and education.
Other conditions are ruling out the construction of the Hard Rock casino in Tarragona, the expansion of the El Prat airport and the fourth beltway. At the end of the campaign they added an international factor: according to them, the next Government must break relations with Israel. This Friday in the Gavarra neighborhood Palestinian flags were seen accompanying the senyera.
The Comuns Sumar campaign was choral. The candidate was not always the protagonist of the different meetings. Other figures such as Colau herself, but also the minister Ernest Urtasun or the former deputy Jaume Asens, among others, were headliners. They especially toured the metropolitan area of ??Barcelona, ??Girona and Tarragona, finding it almost impossible to get representation in Lleida.
The constellation of protagonists – with three visits from the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz – can make recognizable a space in eternal transformation and rebranding, but it also took away a certain prominence from the candidate. According to a latest CEO, only 52% of Catalans know who Jéssica Albiach is, behind Carlos Carrizosa and light years behind Salvador Illa, Pere Aragonès and Carles Puigdemont.
Yolanda Díaz, Ada Colau, Jaume Asens, Ernest Urtasun and the number two candidate, Lluís Mijoler, supported Albiach in the last rally of the campaign. The candidate closed the path to 12-M by praising her colleagues and evoking the historical workers’ struggles of Cornellà, such as that of Laforsa. “This is the Catalonia we want!” concluded Albiach.
