ERC complicates Sánchez twice: erosion due to the negotiation with Collboni and a diminished potential to agree
Not only will Pedro Sánchez arrive significantly weakened at the general elections on July 23, his preferred partner, ERC, also suffered greatly from the municipal elections last Sunday.
The formation chaired by Oriol Junqueras, which came from being the force with the most votes in the 2019 local contest, left more than 302,000 votes the day before yesterday, falling from the 822,107 votes registered four years ago to 519,833.. The decline of the Republicans dragged the Catalan independence movement to lose more than 350,000 support compared to the previous municipal ones and favored the PSC to rise with a huge margin as the most supported force, with 712,949 votes, coming from its vast or absolute majorities in the main and highly populated municipalities in the Barcelona metropolitan area -those that once again make up the red belt- and in their victories in Tarragona, Lleida and Gerona.
These data alert the party that presides over the Generalitat of Catalonia and that has propped up the State Government in exchange for such relevant concessions as the approval of pardons for separatist leaders or the suppression of the crime of sedition. The trend in Catalonia is clear: the PSC was the party with the most votes in the 2021 regional elections despite the fact that Pere Aragonès ended up being sworn in as president, and the Catalan socialists endorsed their definitive recovery in the municipal elections of 28-M by repeating their victory. There is no other objective for Salvador Illa's men than to obtain a third consecutive victory, taking advantage of their bullish outlook.
The opposite direction is leading an ERC that in 2019 became the party with the most votes in Catalonia for the first time in a general election, which resulted in those 13 deputies that have been so decisive for Sánchez in the last four years. “The only guarantee to stop this wave of the Spanish right is the vote for ERC,” Junqueras said yesterday, to establish himself as the “useful vote” that continues to support an eventual socialist government. After crashing in his adventure as head of the list of the Barcelona population of Santa Coloma de Gramenet – where the ERC results only improved by one councilor – Gabriel Rufián will repeat as head of the list of the Republicans for the general elections.
But, in addition, the Republicans are in a difficult situation. Their result in Barcelona -where they went from winning to being fourth force- prevents them from leading the new municipal government, but it does not exonerate them from having to position themselves on the election of the future mayor.
ERC is being questioned by Jaume Collboni and Ada Colau to participate in a tripartite that prevents Xavier Trias from being anointed mayor of the Catalan capital despite having won victory ahead of the socialist and the leader of the commons.
“Barcelona is a progressive city that needs progressive governments,” Colau claimed yesterday in his first institutional act after the electoral results on Sunday. In her opening speech at the annual meeting of the Círculo de Economía, the still mayor assured that the challenges of the present and the future “will be better managed by a left-wing Executive”.. For this reason, the leader of Barcelona en Comú recalled that her party defends an agreement with the Socialists and the Republicans so that “the vast progressive majority of 24 councilors” prevents Trias from being mayor for the second time.
“We have no interest or willingness to offer the PSC the mayor's office,” Junqueras refuted yesterday, after learning of the electoral advance. And it is that the imminence of the general elections makes it difficult for ERC to enter into a negotiation to deprive the pro-independence candidate who won the municipal elections of the command rod and hand it over to Collboni.