2023-06-18 04:39:39
It is a result in Catalonia which will, at the national level, give balm to the heart of the party of the Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez before the legislative elections of July 23. The city council of Barcelona elected a new socialist mayor on Saturday following a surprise agreement between two rival political parties.
The socialist candidate for mayor Jaume Collboni had found himself in second place after the municipal and regional elections of May 28, winning 10 of the 41 seats on the municipal council. But a few hours before the vote of this city council, the Barcelona en Comu party of the outgoing left-wing mayor, Ada Colau, announced that its nine members would support Jaume Collboni. This initiative was supported by the People’s Party (PP, conservative) which holds two seats, thus allowing Jaume Collboni to obtain a narrow majority of 21 representatives.
Collboni promises to be the “mayor of all”
Although the Socialists and the PP were fierce political rivals, the Conservative party was not keen on Xavier Trias of the independence party Junts per Catalunya becoming mayor of Barcelona again. Xavier Trias, who was between 2011 and 2015, was the favourite, his party having come out on top in the elections, with eleven seats won.
Barcelona en Comu also explained that it wanted to “avoid a Junts government that would lay a red carpet for lobbies and sectors favorable to far-right policies”. After his swearing in, Jaume Collboni, 53, for his part declared that he wanted “to be the mayor of everyone”. He therefore succeeds Ada Colau, a former housing rights activist elected to head a citizens’ platform supported by the radical left party Podemos, which notably made even more streets pedestrian-friendly and limited the opening of new hotels for trying to curb the excesses of mass tourism.
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