The first secretary of the PSC, Salvador Illa, has informed the party’s executive committee that he will propose the mayoress of L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and current president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, Núria Marín, as regional senator, an appointment that must be ratified soon by the plenary session of Parliament. With this designation, Marín will not be able to repeat as president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, for which the Catalan socialists keep the mayoress of Sant Boi, Lluïsa Moret, as a candidate.
Illa’s proposal for Marín to enter the Senate comes in the middle of negotiations to renew the government of the Barcelona Provincial Council, which the Socialists intend to retain with the deputies of the commons and the support of two independent deputies attached to Junts. This designation closes the door for the mayoress of L’Hospitalet to be able to reissue the position in the event that the PSC builds the necessary majority to retain the presidency of the supra-municipal entity.
As La Vanguardia has already announced, the name of Moret as Marín’s replacement at the head of the Provincial Council has been gaining weight in recent days and in fact he is the one who leads the negotiations with the rest of the political groups for the configuration of the entity’s government. The mayoress of Sant Boi and vice-president of the Barcelona Provincial Council, also occupies one of the most important positions in the PSC, the vice-secretary for organization, and is fully trusted by Illa but little known beyond her town.
The appointment of Marín as senator responds, according to the PSC, to the desire to reinforce the team of senators with the “solid leadership” of a leader “with extensive experience in municipal management and a magnificent track record” of public service. But her appointment also responds to the prevailing need in Illa’s training to renew cadres, to make new leaders emerge. Marín, who “has been around for many years,” say PSC sources, will replace the Socialist mayoress of Balaguer, Lorena González, in the Upper House.
The mayor of L’Hospitalet without interruption since 2008, she went from presiding over the party to being elected vice-president when Illa assumed command of the PSC, and although she revalidated the victory in the second largest city in Catalonia in the last municipal elections, she lost the absolute majority that he obtained four years ago, partly due to the irruption of Vox, which took over three councilors in the Consistory. On the other hand, Moret has been mayor of Sant Boi since 2014 and was able to revalidate the absolute majority in the last elections without problems.
The case of alleged corruption that plagued her in the last legislature, which was filed by the courts, undermined the good image of the mayoress, about which party sources say that the matter also affected her personally. Even so, she ran for local elections again and continues to be a weighty position in the PSC.
