Junts is a young party, with a rather veteran board. Not a bad indicator. Unlike what the young Podemos and Ciutadans were when they emerged in the Spanish arena, this political space was born with a clear antecedent, Convergència, and with an important territorial base. Now, despite this original reality, the party will go through a new one of its regular ordeals, which always seem like life or death, in the municipal elections of 28-M.
The focus has been very much on Barcelona, ​​a classic in Catalan politics, but poorly adjusted to the reality of the convergent political space. If Jordi Pujol knew how to build an idea (and a reality) of a movement-party (and of a country) it was largely because of how he knew how to consolidate a discourse and sources of power that went beyond the Barcelona metropolitan reality.
Now, Junts has Barcelona as the tip of the municipal spear, because the option of making Xavier Trias the new mayor and the possibility of assuming the leadership of a powerful institution such as the City Council of the capital can mark the coming years of life of a political force in constant upheaval since it was born, often due to external factors, but also due to internal factors.
The referendum that decided to leave the Government of Catalonia left many associates on the street and deeply disoriented, but it also short-circuited (or, head down, left in an uncertain standby mode) quite a few political careers, not only in the front row , but (more important and everything) to the sottogoverno. PSC and CiU, in Catalonia, had always taken special care with this “closet fund” that gives essential solidity and makes a difference.
Now the Barcelona machinery can be a certain substitute for that, but above all the success or failure of large, medium or small councils throughout the country will greatly influence Junts’ future options. Not only for the share of management and municipal power that may or may not be assumed, but above all, for the mosaic of shared and territorial leadership that these elections may draw.
The PDECat’s step of not presenting itself in Barcelona as such and of integrating a name like Joana Ortega’s into the Trias list is one of those that marks (and at the same time reflects) a line of regrouping 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 in the Philippines) to the recomposition of the converging space around Junts, and there have been tiny leaks towards their rival party within the pro-independence camp. Indicative
Again, they seem to have exceeded, against all odds, the expectations placed by the mainstream in this space. Now it remains to be seen if this really comes to fruition, if they know how to culminate and if they know how to manage the fruit. But, with a party more redefined and rearmed municipally, with an extension of new territorial leadership, it could stop making everything fall on the shoulders of Jordi Turull and his team, and at the same time it would strengthen them.
