With four months to go before the elections in the city of Barcelona, the figures that we published this Sunday on the opinions of citizens of the Catalan capital on Ada Colau's attempt to gain a third term as mayor are very illuminating: 84.4% are against it. Such figures are unprecedented among politicians currently active and are complemented by the fact that 64.4% express little or no confidence in the mayor, and only 13.0% declare themselves in favour of her returning to power. The city government between Barcelona en Comú (BComú) and the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) also gets a fail grade with 3.86 out of 10, and only voters for the former party give it a narrow pass mark of 5.35 while Socialist voters give the thumbs-down, with a 3.02.
These are findings from the second installment of a survey for ElNacional.cat carried out by the Feedback Institute, directed by professor Jordi Sauret, and whose first part, published on Friday, showed how the 2019 electoral map of Barcelona has been blown apart following the arrival on the scene of ex-mayor Xavier Trias, who is in first place in terms of voter support, ahead of Jaume Collboni, Ada Colau and Ernest Maragall, who make up the group of front runners. Between first and fourth place, there is a difference of four or five councillors elected and a little more than seven per cent of the vote won. On Sunday night, another mayoral survey, in this case by Gesop for El Periódico, gives results that are practically identical, which shows that, at the moment, the electoral photograph is very clear.
Although there are almost four months to go and, in recent appointments with the ballot boxes, the electorate has shown great volatility this far in advance, everything points to the fact that in the elections in May one of the key variables will be the ability to capitalize on the desire for change among the residents of Barcelona, after eight years in which many things have not worked out well and the discomfort is significant. 77.1% consider that Barcelona is worse off today and only 15.4% believe that it has improved. The most negative assessments are given in the districts of Sarrià-Sant Gervasi, Gràcia and Ciutat Vella.
And the main problems that Barcelona has, according to the survey, are the cleanliness of streets (a problem for 78.8%) and the law and order situation (which is poor for 56.7% of voters). These two problems are far ahead of the others: traffic management and organization (37.2%), city maintenance (17.2%), public transport (13%), access to housing (12.6%) and the circulation of bicycles and scooters (11.7%). Dirtiness and law and order issues are two problems that are frequent in any city and Barcelona is no exception. But, for example, in Madrid's ranking of concerns, cleanliness (28.9%) is second after traffic and law and order issues are fifth, to the point that they are only important to 11.3% of Madrid residents. These percentages are far removed from those in Barcelona.
In short: we are heading for an election in which the management carried out over these four years will not help those who have been in charge, because the desire for change is more than evident. Whoever positions themselves best as an alternative to the deterioration that the city has experienced, will win the contest.