Barcelona has a mayor, now a government is missing

Barcelona has a socialist mayor because Ada Colau and the commons decided at the last minute to protect the payroll and responsibilities of their positions of trust in the consistory and postpone their entry into the Government of Jaume Collboni until after the general elections. The mayor's office has decided on an issue as unromantic as this. Jaume Collboni already certified him as mayor, announcing that he will keep in office all the temporary staff or on secondment appointed by Ada Colau and opening the door, just 24 hours after receiving the command rod, to contemplate the possibility that the commons end up joining the government team. This being the case, it is most likely that after the Mercè festivities, with the arrival of autumn, Collboni will be able to shape his definitive Government with the integration of the commons, with or without Colau, to his project.

Before that happens, the socialists will tempt JxCAT, probably already without Xavier Trias in the consistory, to also join the municipal government. In fact, this may even be the preferred option for the PSC. The sociovergence —PSC and JxCAT (the more moderate version of this party that took shape with the list of Xavier Trias)— is the formula preferred by the patricians and economic lobbies of the city. And it is necessary to please these influential sectors, at least showing that the possibility they prefer is still alive and can become flesh after 23-J. The same leader of the socialist ranks, Salvador Illa, comments that this would be the priority scenario for his party. But it is difficult for that possibility to materialize. It would be very difficult for JxCAT to explain to its militants and voters that it ends up participating as a subaltern in the Collboni Government, having won the elections. It can happen, but it's an unlikely scenario. Only a desperate search for municipal perks in a scenario of maximum scarcity for JxCAT prevents this possibility from being completely ruled out.

What is now a reality is that Collboni wanted to rule Barcelona and he rules. And that the commons did not want to leave and have not completely left. Colau said two truths in his plenary constitution speech. That he had a secret pact with Collboni and that Barcelona cannot be governed with the 10 councilors that the PSC has. And one plus one still equals two.

This main dish needed a fancy side dish. It was the PP who served her. For Núñez Feijóo it has come in handy to sell that he has prevented the Catalan capital from remaining in independentist hands. And it is true that he has. But he knew that his voters —those of Barcelona— would not swallow an agreement that did not leave the common people out of the municipal government. He set the red line in response to that reality. And it did not raise it until it was the commoners themselves who erased it, accepting that for a time their councilors —not their positions of trust— would go over to the opposition. The pressure on the popular from some media circles, and also from Catalonia through the Catalan Civil Society entity, to checkmate Xavier Trias at any price, would have fallen on the sack for a while had it not been for the temporary exit from the scene of those of Ada Colau.

This time, although the fireworks point to a different reading, the substantive in the Barcelona code was to eliminate Colau from the equation and the accessory was sovereignty. But no one gives up two for one. And noun and accessory have ended up in Feijóo's bag. Ideal and coherent for your strategy before 23-J: scourge of separatists and reds. And with a sense of State to give the PSOE the second city in Spain in favor of the general interest. A round tale to explain at rallies.

In JxCAT and ERC, a lot of foam, like a badly poured beer. But those who think that what happened with the Barcelona mayor's office is disruptive enough to act as a catalyst for a new sovereignist renaissance, fueled by the bad mood of seeing Jaume Collboni proclaimed mayor at the last moment, when the independence movement had already digested, are mistaken. that Barcelona was in his hands. it's not going to be like that. We write it clearly and thus we save ourselves from answering so many WhatsApp messages with the same question.

In fact, the map of the municipalist power of Catalonia after the local elections gives the opposite information. Blocks no longer work and will continue to not. The councils of Lleida and Tarragona have been divided between the socialists and republicans, in other places the socialists have agreed with the junteros, and in others —Girona— the opposite has happened than in Barcelona, with the independent trident —ERC, JxCAT and the CUP disguised with other acronyms— eliminating the PSC from the equation, which had clearly won the elections. Promiscuity is once again the general norm, as before the process. The Barcelona Provincial Council, an economic resource machine for the parties, is yet to be decided. But yesterday, to make it clear what we are talking about, Xavier Trias himself was in favor of repeating the PSC-JxCAT pact of the last term in this institution, despite the fact that the Socialists denied him the mayoralty of Barcelona two days before. The narrative of Barcelona or Girona has altered the perception of the current Catalan political reality, but not reality itself. There are no more blocks. There are interests. I mean, there's politics. And the normal