The loss of the mayoralty of Barcelona, ??the bastion of the commons in Catalonia, has been the worst news for the left-wing conglomerate headed by Ada Colau because defeat entails the loss of a forged and sustained leadership in the Catalan capital. So regardless of the vital and political future of the former mayor, the commoners are aware that, depending on their vital decision, they are presented in the medium term with the challenge of returning “the winning and overcoming character” that Colau gave to the party.
“With the loss of the Barcelona mayor’s office, the dilemma of how to reorganize and refound the space is established,” admits a source close to the leader of Sumar, Yolanda Díaz, who counts on the commons as staunch allies of her project to be the first female president of Spain. But the July electoral appointment allows them to postpone the debate: “It is a reflection that we have to have, but not now, but from September,” postponed a leader. Now they will give everything to maintain the coalition government with the PSOE, where “we only have one ministry”, they recall, that of Universities in charge of Joan Subirats.
It is common for a party to push its own candidate, who has not done well, to step aside in order to appoint a new leader, but in the case at hand, the candidate personified the party and the party currently suffers from comparable leadership.
“The future will be set by her,” says another leader of the commons, who warns that “there will be Ada for a while” because “there is no one in the party right now capable of getting 20% ??of the votes” in an election, like Colau did on 28-M in Barcelona.
The future of the former mayor is unknown. After closing the doors of Congress herself and taking it for granted, also in the party, that she will not be in opposition for four years, the only sure thing is that she “will be fully involved” in the general election campaign and that she will persist so that BComú enter the municipal government of Jaume Collboni. In the long term, in the party they would not want him to go home, so there is speculation about an international position or even a try in the next Catalan elections. “She has always said no, but if she decided, I think no one would see it badly,” says another leader with an institutional position. But there are also those who see many drawbacks to this path because it would mean displacing another of the leaders that has emerged strongly, that of Jéssica Albiach.
“If Colau leaves, Albiach, the parliamentarians, the mayors, Ernest Urtasun… will gain strength,” they point out in Sumar. But the former mayor continues to be one of the three coordinators of Catalunya en Comú, along with Albiach and Candela López, whose mandate expires in two and a half years. Organically they count on it despite the defeat in Barcelona because “there has been no internal response” and “it is not an amortized leadership” but “the most active role of the commons”, they remark.
What nobody wants is to see Colau acting as a shadow leader, as Pablo Iglesias does in Podemos. “We have had enough of this,” all those consulted agree.
The commons made “a commitment to diversify” power with Colau, Albiach and Candela, but there are many authoritative voices who believe that “Albiach has the capacity to unite” the different sensibilities of the left-wing galaxy. They acknowledge him “having stood up” in difficult times and being “very well valued internally”, both by those close to Colau, the people of the old ICV, and by Podemos. Albiach “has consolidated” in a short time and “has a good relationship with the different sensibilities of the organization”, they corroborate.
But the process that opens in the commons in the post-Colau era must take into account the changes that are already taking place within it and those generated by the general elections. After the municipal ones, the cadres of the party that drink from the old ICV have gained internal weight. Although locals and strangers from the extinct ecosocialist formation confirm that there is no premeditated strategy but rather an organic and political residue that remains under the wave of Colau and Podemos that engulfed everything in 2017, there are those who “worry about this image.” “It is not something organized but it is something that is being installed” and with which “we lose plurality”, warns another source, who is committed to “being intelligent” to maintain the representation of the different sensibilities that coexist in the commons.
