The Junts per Catalunya candidate for mayor of Barcelona, ??Xavier Trias, has become one of the party’s totems despite his 76 years and his withdrawal to a second political line a few years ago. After a series of circumstances he decided to return and the polls are favorable. He has been saying for days that he can lend a hand so that JxCat behaves like an orderly and strong party.

The convergent former mayor, in an interview with Efe, has been more specific and has demanded that his formation not “externalize” its internal discrepancies, since airing this type of issue would be, from his point of view, “big nonsense”. “We must understand that there are different sensitivities, different approaches, which we know are there, but we must know how to behave as party people, which means assuming that there are differences and being able to move forward,” he says.

Just a week ago at a municipal convention in Girona, he demanded to win a “strong and consistent” party that does not do “according to what nonsense.” Now, Trias clarifies what he meant: “Playing to throw the dishes at our heads is nonsense, it’s nonsense, this is what we don’t have to do,” he says. By way of example, Trias recalls that in Convergència i Unió “there were different sensitivities” and he was always framed in the social democratic wing of the federation, for which reason he calls for “understanding” that, within JxCat, there are “different approaches”.

It so happens that one of the conditions that Trias put to be a candidate for mayor of the Catalan capital again was that there be “order” within the party, which in its early years had been a chicken coop with a multitude of voices and dissonances. public. Now, the mayor believes that Junts “is getting organized” and that the leadership is of the opinion that he can help them “get organized.” “They believe that I help them to get ahead, to gain strength in the party,” says Trias, who does not identify with those who claim that they “do not believe in political parties.” “I believe in parties, in strong and orderly parties,” he underlines.

Last October, when the JxCat bases decided whether or not to break the Government’s coalition with ERC, Trias claimed to be “astonished” and went so far as to affirm that the departure of the Executive would be “a stumbling block” for his candidacy. Even so, he showed his commitment to the general secretary, Jordi Turull, with the party, and in December he ended up saying yes and was anointed as a candidate.

Today, Trias believes that the break in the coalition with Esquerra Republicana is “a strategic decision that time will tell if it is correct or not”, although “it is difficult to be in a Government if full trust is not generated”: “Malvivir is a problem,” he solves.

In relation to budgets, the convergent former mayor believes that “there are reasons” for JxCat “to be hurt by the way of acting” of the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès, after the agreement reached with the PSC to approve the 2023 budgets , an agreement to which Aragonès now wants to add Junts and presses for it, a maneuver that seeks to expose his former partner.

“The president of the Generalitat should have thought of it before. If he wanted the budgets to work with Junts, it makes no sense that they come to offer us to be the second course,” replies the former mayor of Barcelona.

On the other hand, Trias assures that ex-president Carles Puigdemont will not “condition” his electoral campaign for the municipal elections on May 28. “Nothing will condition me, because what he tells me is: ‘Trias, do what you want. Your obligation is to win the elections.’ He only puts one condition on me, which is that I win,” says the former mayor.

In fact, last week, at the Junts event in Girona, he showed his support for the former president. “The campaign will be Trias. And, obviously, everyone who wants to join will be welcome,” adds the former mayor.

Thus, the leader indicates that Puigdemont does not pose “any problem” for him in his campaign, since he “appreciates” him: “The only messages I have from him are: ‘Win, Trias, win'”.

One of the intentions of the former Barcelona mayor is to unite in his candidacy the entire political space of the former Convergència i Unió, now fragmented into numerous formations, and, although he presents himself under the acronym of JxCat, he will seek “the complicity of other parties and other actors”. To this end, conversations have been held with PDECat, the brand that displays the convergent legacy as its flag and in which Trias was a member until recently at the same time as Junts, despite the fact that the two parties do not allow double militancy.