The decision of the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) municipal group in Barcelona to back Ada Colau's budget a few months before the municipal elections is, if nothing else, a risky move by mayoral candidate Ernest Maragall. Although the decision comes after Colau's party had given its own support to the yet-to-be-passed budget of the ERC-led government Catalonia under Pere Aragonès, if it now moves forward and obtains the indispensable agreement with the Socialists (PSC) and Salvador Illa, it is clear that Maragall's generosity is a compromising move in electoral terms. There is not long to go until the elections on May 28th and Maragall thus loses one of the cards that he will surely end up needing if he wants to appear as the other side of the coin to that shown by the two mandates of Colau in Barcelona and her city management during the last eight years.
Furthermore, Colau will, once again, get the city budget passed with a large majority, because, naturally, as well as the support of ERC, there must be added that of its partner in government, the PSC led by Jaume Collboni, with the question mark hanging over just what the citizens of Barcelona will make of the discourses that will be heard in the campaign, when no one will want to appear as the crutch that holds up Barcelona en Comú. Part of this problem is already afflicting the PSC, which is not able to surge forward in the polls as it hoped a few months ago, because its role has been blurred by being part of the government team. It is difficult to know what the Socialists actually have in their record beyond their differentiated arguments on issues such as airport expansion, over which ERC and the Comuns are closer than the Comuns and the PSC.
Ernest Maragall can make the argument that, even though he won the elections and Colau took the mayoralty, he has prioritized the interests of Barcelona over those of his party. It is certainly a possible narrative. But in the case of such polarization in the city, and with the entry into the campaign of former mayor Xavier Trias as a Junts candidate, he also runs the risk of ceding all protagonism to Trias in that sector of the city where he wants to turn a page as quickly as possible on what the last eight years have meant for the city of Barcelona. In the end, the dilemma is this: how do the different candidates behave with the regard to the frontier spaces they have with one another? And here, some of the cards are on the table: Colau will not agree with Trias in any of the possible post-election scenarios and Trias will not agree with Colau either. Collboni and Maragall locate themselves in the middle, able to stretch out in one direction or the other, which can either play in their favour or very much against them. It will depend on how the four contending candidates behave, and on the type of campaign that takes place.
It is, in this scenario, surely, where Ernest Maragall and Colau are thinking more about reaching an understanding if the numbers allow it, and the same should be said of Collboni and Trias. Undoubtedly, an electoral scenario that could have been implemented in 2019 and which in the municipal elections of 2023 opens up wide with the presence of the former mayor in the electoral contest. It is in this situation that Maragall is able to consider that the electoral boost he has most within reach is not won by competing with Trias, but with Colau. In fact, Oriol Junqueras's strategy in the cities of the metropolitan belt is to aim directly at weakening the Comuns rather than the Socialists, with his eyes set on the provincial administration, the Diputació. Decisions like that to put Gabriel Rufián as top of the Santa Coloma de Gramenet list, and other party heavyweights leading candidacies, have this reading fundamentally, rather than conquering mayoralties that today seem unattainable for ERC.