Dolors Sabater is to be the Catalan presidential candidate for the CUP party and the Guanyem Catalunya electoral grouping, who will contest the Catalan elections on 14th February together. This Thursday, the members of the two left-wing pro-independence political groups ratified the decision, and the new alliance revealed key names on its candidature for the 2021 elections.
Sabater will be accompanied by Carles Riera and Eulàlia Reguant in Barcelona. By territories, Laia Estrada will be the candidate in Tarragona; Pau Juvillà, for Lleida and Dani Cornellà for Girona.
"The CUP and Guanyem Catalunya are embarking on this path together today, with great enthusiasm for the agreements they have reached and convinced that the best option for the country is to start a new cycle," the two parties said in a statement.
Who is Dolors Sabater?
While the left-wing CUP (Popular Unity Candidature) has been well-known as a key and radical player in pro-independence politics since it first gained a Catalan parliamentary presence in 2012, Dolors Sabater has charted a distinct course through Catalan left-wing politics, centred specifically on the complexities of Catalonia's fourth largest city, Badalona.
With a long trajectory in social movements, activism, and environmentalism, Sabater ran in the 2015 municipal elections in Badalona as head of the list for Guanyem Badalona En Comú, a coalition that had the explicit support of the CUP, Podemos and Procés Constituent. The alliance won five city councillors, and was the second-largest political force on the council, behind the Popular Party (PP) of Xavier Garcia Albiol, which obtained 10. Yet Sabater ended up as mayor by building a delicate coalition of left-wing and pro-independence support.
Dolors Sabater at her investiture as Mayor of Badalona / EFE
Three years later, Sabater lost a vote of no-confidence (after the municipal budget failed to pass) which removed her from the mayoralty and led to the Catalan Socialist (PSC) leader Àlex Pastor being installed as the new mayor of the city, with the support of the PP and Ciudadanos. In fact, Sabater had lost the support of the PSC due to her defence of the Catalan independence process.
In the highly-fragmented electoral situation in the metropolitan area city, Sabater's candidacy in the 2019 municipal elections, formed by Guanyem Badalona and the Republican Left (ERC), won seven councillors to finish second behind Albiol's PP. To avoid the PP candidate from returning to the mayoralty he had held till 2015, Sabater facilitated the re-election of the PSC's Pastor as mayor.
However, there was yet another plot twist, when Pastor resigned following a drunk-driving incident in early 2020 during Covid lockdown. Due to disagreements between Guanyem, PSC and ERC, Sabater did not obtain the necessary majority to become mayor again, and Albiol returned to the mayoralty. Thus, Sabater is currently the leader of the opposition in the metropolitan city.