Junts is a young party, with a fairly veteran leadership. It is not a bad indicator. Unlike the young Podemos and Ciudadanos when they emerged at the Spanish level, this political space was born with a clear precedent, Convergència, and with an important territorial base. Now, despite this original reality, the party will pass a new of its periodic litmus tests in the municipal elections of 28-M, which always seem to be life or death.
The gaze has focused a lot on Barcelona, ​​a certain classic in Catalan politics, but not very adjusted to the reality of the converging political space. If Jordi Pujol knew how to build an idea (and a reality) of the movement-party (and of the country) it was largely due to how he knew how to consolidate a discourse and some levers of power that went beyond the Barcelona metropolitan reality.
Now, Junts has Barcelona as a municipal spearhead, because the option of making Xavier Trias the new mayor and the possibility of assuming the leadership of a power institution such as the City Council of the capital can mark the next few years of the life of a force politics in constant upheaval since it was born, often due to external factors, but also due to internal factors.
The referendum that decided to abandon the Government left many associates on the street and deeply disoriented, but it also short-circuited (or, at least, left them in an uncertain standby) many political careers, not only in the front row, but (even more importantly) in the sottogoberno. The PSC and CiU, in Catalonia, had always taken special care with this “closet background” which provides essential solidity and makes a difference.
Now, the Barcelona machinery can be a certain substitute for that, but above all the success or failure in large, medium or small town halls throughout the country will greatly mark Junts’ future options. Not only because of the share of management and municipal power that it may or may not assume, but, above all, because of the mosaic of shared and territorial leadership that these elections can draw.
The step of the PDECat of not presenting itself in Barcelona as such and of integrating a name like Joana Ortega into the Trias list is one of those that marks (at the same time that it reflects) a line of regroupment in a political space that will live in the next municipal elections an important before and after. In the PDECat there are few resisters (the last ones in the Philippines) to the recomposition of the convergent space around Junts, and there have been tiny escapes towards its rival party in the independence camp. Indicative.
Once again, against all odds, the expectations placed by the mainstream in this space seem to have been surpassed. Now it remains to be seen if this is true, if it is known how to culminate and if it is known how to manage the fruit. But, with a more redefined and municipally rearmed party, with a squad of new territorial leaders, he could stop making everything fall on the shoulders of Jordi Turull and his team, while reinforcing it.
