In the heat of the fight to achieve the mayoralty of Barcelona and to win control of the narrative of whether Ernest Maragall or Ada Colau should be mayor and what pact would be preferred by the people of Barcelona, ElNacional.cat has published the first survey in the media following the 26th May, produced by the company Feedback. All the signals are quite clear and strong: a coalition between Esquerra Republicana and Barcelona en Comú is the easy favourite (54.1%), ahead of the 35.3% who would prefer an agreement between Barcelona en Comú, PSC and Ciudadanos. And, most strikingly: more than 75% of those who say they voted for En Comú ten days ago now reject the idea of Ada Colau holding on to the mayoralty with Ciudadanos' votes.
The mayor's silence with respect to her preferences seems to sit badly in the opinion of her voters, and that's despite her media troupe not stopping speaking out repeatedly and in the majority in favour of unseating Ernest Maragall with an alliance as difficult to explain as it is hard to swallow for the left-wing electorate. This gives rise to the only dilemma possible: is it worth crossing the red lines her voters say they have to hold onto the mayoralty at any price? It's a question which only Ada Colau can answer today and which is seeing the party's moorings groan, not just with its base but also internally, within the walls. The whispers are that not everything is smooth sailing in the organisation over what strategy to pursue and that the internal differences are significant.
More normal is the support from Ciudadanos' voters to Manuel Valls' suggestion to give his "free votes" to Colau since, beyond the words, the true adversary of Albert Rivera's party is the independence movement and not En Comú. Moreover, Rivera could present it in Madrid as a victory of his having prevented a leader from Esquerra Republicana from being mayor of Barcelona following the strategy being pursued in the Spanish capital by the leader of PSC, Miquel Iceta, and the prime minister himself, Pedro Sánchez. PSOE's leader and his political guru Ivan Redondo believe that a weaker Esquerra will make things easier for them during the legislature than if it ends up consolidating the important municipal power it was afforded by the ballot boxes on 26th May.
The Feedback survey has two other conclusions: in terms of the preferences of Barcelona residents between Maragall and Colau, the first also takes it, something that hadn't happened during the campaign and which has to be put down to voters' respect for the result. Secondly, that 16% of voters now say they would change their votes from the 26th May. Among them, the highest percentages are from those who voted for CUP or Jordi Graupera's Barcelona és Capital. In the first case, it's one in five and in the second one in four. People like to be with the winners, something which the parties often forget.