2023-05-27 15:23:25
NJust recently, hundreds of thousands demonstrated on the boulevards of Barcelona for secession from Spain. But this Sunday, local elections are being held there for the first time in a long time, in which only the problems of Spain’s second largest city are at stake and no longer a separate state.
Almost bashfully, the old poster with the inscription “Puigdemont, our President” sometimes still appears at events of the “Junts” party. Unlike in the past, even the former Catalan prime minister, who fled to Brussels, is staying out of the election campaign. Not only will there be local elections across the country on Sunday, Spaniards will also elect the parliaments in 12 of the 17 regions.
In Barcelona, independence no longer works. That’s why the candidate from Puigdemont’s Junts party is now fighting for cleaner and safer streets. Xavier Trias, who was mayor from 2013 to 2015, promises that Barcelona will again play under him in the “Champions League” of metropolises such as New York, Paris or Amsterdam. “The mayor of Barcelona doesn’t go out on the balcony and proclaim independence,” the 76-year-old candidate clarified in a recent interview.
Ernest Maragall of the separatist left Republicans promises social housing instead of a new independence referendum.
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Image: EPA
Catalonia’s secession is not specifically mentioned in his more than 170-page election manifesto. Trias even dropped the party logo of Junts, the spearhead of the separatists in Catalonia. He preferred to use the slogan “Trias per Barcelona” (Trias for Barcelona).
Former Catalan interior minister Joaquin Forn ran in the last local elections. He had to lead his campaign out of prison; a few months later he was sentenced to a long prison term for helping to organize the illegal independence referendum in 2017.
Pandemic and inflation pushed conflict into the background
Since then, however, many advocates of a state of their own have grown tired and have other worries. Barcelona is a seismograph for that. First the pandemic hit the city, which thrives on its foreign visitors, hard, then came inflation.
All of this pushed the Catalonia conflict, which once almost tore Spain apart, more and more into the background. “Independence is no longer an issue. Catalan society has opened a new chapter,” says Oriol Bartomeuus. “It’s about the old issues like security, traffic and tourism: normality is back,” says the political scientist from the “Universidad Autónoma” in Barcelona.
An example of this is the candidate for the moderate Separatist Left Republicans (ERC), Ernest Maragall. He is trying to mobilize voters with new social housing and the fight against the right-wing populist Vox party instead of demanding a new referendum. Four years ago, Maragall had received the most votes and almost became Barcelona’s first separatist mayor.
But that triumph was prevented at the time by former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls, whose family has Catalan roots. He was elected to the city council with a right-wing liberal party alliance and helped the left-wing alternative mayor Ada Colau to get re-elected. A little later, Valls withdrew from Catalan local politics.
For the now 80-year-old Maragall, according to the polls, it does not look as if he will repeat the success of four years ago. Xavier Trias, incumbent Colau and socialist Jaume Collboni have overtaken his ERC party and are almost level in the polls.
Colau is fighting for her third term, which her previous coalition partner Collboni wants to prevent. The socialist received support from Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez in Barcelona on Friday. He is hoping for a tailwind before the parliamentary elections at the end of the year.
In 2021, the Catalan Socialists (PSC) became the strongest party in the regional elections, but they lacked political partners for a governing majority. Some separatists are also eyeing the national election. “Some of them are hoping for a coalition of the conservative People’s Party (PP) and the right-wing populist Vox party,” says political scientist Oriol Bartomeuus. Because the old confrontation with a government with the extreme right could give new impetus to the independence movement.
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