With the approval, by the members of the Together for Catalonia (Junts) party, of the electoral list of Xavier Trias for mayor of Barcelona in the municipal elections of May 28th, the veteran politician, who is running for the position he previously held between 2011 and 2015, has crystallized the first reunification of the entire post-Convergent* space. In ideological terms, it is obvious that the Junts party is not synonymous with this space, as there are always party officials or members who are quick to point out that they have never been in Convergència* and even less in Unió*. And they are right. But the political operation of making the sauce in Barcelona, creating a smooth mixture from the different elements that have broken off in the successive splits of Convergència i Unió, has been carried out by Trias, and with less noise, both in public and in the heart of the party than some predicted (and, probably, also wanted).
There are four characteristics of his candidacy: first, the Trias stamp, clearly identifiable, under which he has had carte blanche and has exercised his authority over the list down to the smallest detail. Secondly, the balance between meritocracy and loyalty - Neus Munte (number 2 on the list) and Jordi Martí (3) - incorporating the faces best-known for their recent or not-so-distant periods as Catalan ministers - Victòria Alsina (4), Damià Calvet ( 5) and Ramon Tremosa (10). Thirdly, the agreement with the PDeCAT*, a party drained of lifeblood because its members from the extinct Convergència had either steadily joined Junts or had gone home, but which had the capacity to subtract a few thousand votes which - who knows - could have been the key to winning Barcelona. In fact, in the last Catalan elections of February 2021, if Junts and PDeCAT had presented themselves jointly, adding the votes each one had, they would have reached second position - after the Catalan Socialists (PSC) - instead of finishing in third place, also behind by the Republican Left (ERC).
And fourthly, the agreement with Demòcrates, the pro-independence party led by Toni Castellà, whose current Catalan MP Titón Laïlla will be ninth on the Barcelona list, and Moviment d'Esquerres, a small social democratic and pro-independence party whose representative will be in position 17. The most pro-independence flank thus has Josep Rius - closely identified with Puigdemont - in seventh position, as well as Laïlla. On the other hand, there is, in principle, no one in leading positions who is close to the president of the party, Laura Borràs, who in a few days will be the ex-speaker of Parliament after her Catalan High Court sentence and Thursday's resolution by the Central Electoral Commission. Trias publicly settled a probe on the subject by the MP Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas with a forceful response: "I need people who understand that I am number one."
Trias has therefore filled a basket with ingredients that are very much made to his measure - to some, excessively so - and without surprises, hoping to concentrate the anti-Colau vote, which the polls continue to say exists and is very high, with a list that could also pick up voters from the PSC, ERC and even People's Party and Ciudadanos supporters. Hence his insistence that he is the only candidate for mayor of Barcelona who will not, under any circumstances, support Ada Colau, but with direct nods to the Socialists and Republicans, to facilitate a hypothetical transfer of votes: if he does not win on Sunday 28th May and they are first, he will support them to reach the mayor's office.
*Translator's note: The mention of the "post-Convergent" space refers to the part of the Catalan political spectrum once occupied by the centre-right Catalan nationalist party Convergència Democràtica de Catalunya (CDC), which joined with the more conservative Unió Democràtica de Catalunya in a stable coalition, Convergència i Unió (CiU), that governed Catalonia throughout the 1980s and 90s. Subsequently, with the move to a pro-independence position and the emergence of corruption scandals, the Catalan European Democratic Party (PDeCAT) was launched to replace CDC in 2016, but this became eclipsed by Carles Puigdemont's Together for Catalonia (JxCat, or Junts), which was first a 2017 electoral candidature before becoming a party on its own.