Jaume Collboni: from questioned candidate of the PSC to mayor of Barcelona to the third attempt without winning an election

Even without an electoral victory on 28-M, with 10 councilors out of the 41 that make up the Barcelona City Council and with an investiture in extremis, Jaume Collboni can now say that “the third time's a charm” is real.

After the dismal result in the 2015 municipal elections (four councilors) and the insufficient recovery in 2019 (eight), the socialist mayor in the elections of May 28 picked up his long-awaited command rod yesterday when everything seemed ready for Xavier Trias to , the candidate for Junts per Catalunya, recovered it after having lost it eight years ago, also at that time to his surprise, at the hands of the then newcomer to politics Ada Colau.

Collboni, who reconquered the Mayor's Office 12 years later for the PSC, which had governed the city for 32 uninterrupted years until 2011, now begins a term with an opposition that triples the mayors of his group. Hence, in his first speech he left “the doors open to all councilors except the extreme right [for the two representatives of Vox].”

Governing with that squalid minority seems to be a difficult path, but for now the new mayor wants to savor the triumph achieved at the last minute behind the scenes. Obtaining the baton allows him to make up for a bad start as leader of the socialist ranks in the Consistory in 2015, when the PSC obtained the worst mark in its history in Barcelona. They were bad times for the party, out of place in the first years of the process. But it was Collboni's own particular story that had started off on the wrong foot a year earlier, with the shadow of a punch during the primaries to choose a candidate due to the controversial massive participation of members of the Pakistani community who brought with them today's ballot. mayor.

It is also a new compensation for the so-called Blackberry generation, the young socialist leaders who grew up politically in the offices of the tripartite governments of Pasqual Maragall and José Montilla and who, despite being called upon to lead the PSC in the past decade, saw that possibility in a few years. The Collboni mayor's office now gives luster to the triumphs that, little by little, that batch has been able to exhibit, with the presidency of the Congress of Deputies of Meritxell Batet, the absolute majority of Núria Parlon in Santa Coloma de Gramenet (Barcelona) or the access of several of them to high executive positions in the central Administration or in companies with state participation since the arrival of Pedro Sánchez to the Government.

A trained lawyer, his oratory ability has allowed him to climb the rungs since he first began his career in trade unionism (where he was chief of staff for Pepe Álvarez, the eternal general secretary of the UGT in Catalonia and, from 2016, throughout Spain) and later in politics, with the entry into the socialist ranks at the age of 25. With Pere Navarro at the head of the PSC, Collboni, who was a deputy and deputy spokesperson in Parliament, was appointed communication secretary and party spokesperson in December 2011, a position he held until 2014 and which coincided with the first years of the sovereignist process , which he caught with the foot changed to the formation.

Pressure on Salvador Illa

The name of the socialist candidate for the 2023 municipal elections had become in the middle of last year one of the main topics of conversation in the Barcelona cenacles. One of the names that appeared in the pools was that of the first secretary, Salvador Illa. The also head of the opposition in the Catalan Chamber received pressure from economic and business sectors that asked him to change his face at the head of the list and even to present himself to repeat the Illa effect of the 2021 regional elections. The objective was to oust Colau and a better letter of introduction was needed than to be the number two mayoress in the local government and having been fifth and third in the two previous electoral appointments.

Despite the fact that some voices from within the party also shared this questioning, Illa resisted. Both have been united by a strong bond of friendship and collaboration for years. The leader of the PSC was Collboni's chief of staff between 2014 and 2016 and, that same year, with the incorporation of the Socialists into the Executive of Barcelona en Comú, he was appointed manager of Business, Culture and Innovation of the City Council, the department that Collboni led as second deputy mayor during the coalition year, truncated by the decision of the commons, in November 2017, to expel the PSC for the PSOE's support for the application of article 155 of the Constitution in Catalonia.

Since the pre-campaign of 28-M, in which he suddenly resigned at the end of January as first deputy mayor to focus on his candidacy, Collboni had been playing a balancing game to sell himself as an alternative to Colau's city model, with who had shared Government for more than five years in the last two terms.

Now, without the company of his former partners, he can present himself as the business-friendly mayor of post-pandemic Barcelona, with tourism active again, the Mobile World Congress established in the city for the next few years and the America's Cup sailing as reverie of a new Olympic spirit.