Just when it seemed that Xavier García Albiol would manage to see out the rest of his term as mayor of Badalona, the appearance of his name in the so-called Pandora Papers, with power of attorney over an account in the tax haven country of Belize, has placed him halfway out the door as mayor of the third largest city in Catalonia. Although making predictions about political agreements in Badalona has become a high-risk sport, in the light of the convulsions of recent years, sheer necessity has led the Catalan Socialists (PSC) and Guanyem Badalona to bring their positions closer together, when a while back this seemed impossible - and taking the mayoralty out of Albiol's hands is almost the only option left to them.
Badalona's complex electoral arithmetic, with its own distinct distribution of voters - of the 27 city councillors, the PP has 11, the PSC 6, the left-wing coalition Guanyem Badalona 4, ERC 3, Badalona en Comú-Podem 2 and Junts 1 - led to the Socialists winning the mayoralty in an alliance against Albiol after the 2019 municipal elections. Mayor Àlex Pastor, in April 2020, during the Covid state of alarm, was arrested in Barcelona by Mossos d'Esquadra with signs of alcoholic intoxication - he even assaulted one of the officers. A few hours later, he resigned and the parties that had been capable of reaching agreement after the 2019 municipal elections were unable to repeat the pact, and Albiol, as head of the most voted candidature list, returned to the mayoral role he had already held between 2011 and 2015.
Albiol has already announced that he will not resign and will cling to the position that cost him so much to regain, with the excuse that his power of attorney in Belize existed, but that he had never used it, and that it dates back to a time in his life when he held no government or executive office of political representation. In any case, there is such a thing as political attrition, and no one comes out unscathed from a situation like this. However, the PP leader's electoral strength in Badalona is so obvious that he will not shy away from running in the next municipal elections in 2023 and turning the no-confidence motion that the PSC and Guanyem Badalona will present to his own advantage in a campaign to recover the mayoral staff.
Apart from Badalona, it is clear that the shady issue in Belize directly compromises the Popular Party and its leader Pablo Casado, who maintains an eloquent silence that is scarcely compatible with his public discourse. The Catalan PP has aligned itself with Albiol, as it is not just due to good luck that his is the only significant mayoralty which the party maintains in Catalonia, even asserting that, whether he continues as mayor or is separated from office, he will be the conservative party's candidate in 2023.
The PP is waiting for the storm to subside and praying that the opposition will not reach an accord. However, in the last few hours, after the PSC gave the green light to Rubén Guijarro on Monday to seek agreements to regain the mayoralty, everything has accelerated and only unacceptable demands by Guanyem Badalona to the Socialists seem to have any chance to derail an agreement that, for now, everyone considers an odds-on bet.