It has taken a situation as scandalous as the action of the mayor of Badalona, the socialist Àlex Pastor, in breaking the coronavirus lockdown on Tuesday night, getting stopped by the Mossos d'Esquadra in the centre of Barcelona behind the wheel of a car doing zig-zags, crashing into the police vehicle while trying to brake, brandishing his status as mayor of the fourth-largest city in Catalonia, biting one of the officers carrying out the arrest and refusing to take an alcohol breath test for us to find out that for a long time he has been in no state to remain in the position he held.
Pastor was, according to this version, the useful idiot put at the head of a municipality of almost 220,000 inhabitants by the Catalan Socialists (PSC) to retain its power in the city, first, in 2018, with the help of Xavier García Albiol's Popular Party (PP) and the other party of the right, Ciudadanos (Cs), via a no-confidence vote; and, in 2019, with support from electoral lists formed by most of the other major Catalan political parties: En Comú Podem, ERC and JxCat. As broad a grouping as was necessary to snatch the mayoralty from Albiol, whose PP was the largest party in last May's elections. In less than two years, all parties have ended up, one way or another, providing a conduit for the ambition of the PSC to take the mayoralty of Badalona, although the party's position in the city has never been very strong.
It is not they, however, who are responsible for the sad spectacle of a mayor in trouble who could have caused a real disaster and who, everyone now says, has not been in a state to hold office for a long time. The PSC was, as you would expect and as all parties have denounced, completely aware of this situation. And no one, absolutely no one, did anything. Instead, the party expelled him ipso facto once the facts which they have known for a long time became public. What else could they do? Pastor had the backing of important figures who pushed him into the position, starting with PSC leader Miquel Iceta and the party's organizational secretary who is today also Spanish health minister, Salvador Illa, a position that should have given him a more complete perspective on the problem. But opening this can of worms would surely have meant that the Socialists would lose a very valuable mayoralty. And no one voluntarily relinquishes power.
In Badalona, for a long time now under different electoral brand names, there have been, like it or not, two candidacies: that of García Albiol, and that opposed to García Albiol. The first has a well-known programme for the city which is centred on the issue of immigration and the goal of the other concretion of parties has always ended up being to stop the PP leader from governing. New negotiations will now be opened between the parties to agree on a new mayor, and the most reasonable thing is for them to lead to the return of former mayor Dolors Sabaté. But Badalona is always a box of surprises. We'll see if it will be again this time.