“If they make me choose between the PP militancy and the interests of my city, I will always choose Badalona”, says Xavier Garcia Albiol whenever he can. Under the premise, the future mayor has woven an electoral campaign running away from partisanship, neither left, nor right, only “Badalonism”, with which he has obtained an overwhelming majority of votes and has crowned victory in all neighborhoods of the fourth Catalan city.
Symbolism has always been very present in Albiol’s campaign. Banners of various color ranges, from the red of the socialists to the purple of the commoners, have alternated messages pointing to local problems. The severe delimitation of messages in the Badalonian key has allowed him to “erase the ideological borders” without denying the militancy of the PP, which he does not hide from.
Albiol joked yesterday on Jordi Basté’s El món a RAC1 program that his counterpart Manu Reyes had copied his campaign in Castelldefels and that is why he has obtained 12 councilors, one of which has an absolute majority. “The key is to set a single priority, which in this case has been exclusively Badalona”. A strategy which, both in Badalona and Castelldefels, has given electoral results and which could be imitated by the rest of the popular electorates.
The PP, in these last municipal elections, has obtained 8.22% of the votes in Catalonia and 196 councilors, which is why it has doubled the 4.63% of the defeat that was the result of the 2019 elections. In Badalona, the popular ones have added 55.73% of the votes, while in Castelldefels they have remained at 42.11% and 15.89% in Roda de Berà (Tarragonès), the third city where they have obtained a great result.
Apart from cleaning the electoral campaigns of partisan symbols, another of the keys of the PP has been to focus the proposals on the demands of the residents. “We must have the intelligence to know how to read what the citizens ask of us”, he affirmed.
For the Popular Party, in Catalonia, now that the electoral improvement has been guaranteed, consolidation and territorial implantation are essential, as, for example, the entry into contention of the former councilor from Badalón, Miguel Jurado, who has obtained two councillors, or the three added in Sant Adrià de Besòs and the two reunited in Mataró. An example of what the party proposes as “the reconstruction of the PP in Catalonia”.
