The pacts of the PSOE in a national key during this legislature have ended up conditioning its electoral results in the municipal sphere. Of the six new provincial capitals in which the party has options to govern as of June 17, the date on which the city councils are constituted, four of them are in Catalonia, including Barcelona for the moment.

The concessions of the Executive of Pedro Sánchez to those convicted of the illegal independence referendum of 2017, in particular the repeal of the crime of sedition and the penal cheapening of embezzlement, have been assumed in this community as a mechanism of “deflation” of the conflict originated by the process. Outside of there, the Socialists are going to have to leave 17 consistories, among which is a square as symbolic for its initials as Seville.

In Barcelona, the winner of the May 28 elections was the Junts candidate, Xavier Trias, with 11 councillors, 10 behind an absolute majority. The representative of the PSOE and in second position after the ballot, Jaume Collboni, is trying to negotiate a left-wing tripartite with the commons of the until now mayor Ada Colau and with ERC, which has already shown its preference to facilitate the investiture of “someone who forms part of an independence party”, without for the moment having materialized in any agreement.

While their chances of recovering the Catalan capital are dissipating, the party based on Calle Ferraz in Madrid, on the other hand, has the path paved to govern in Lleida, Tarragona and Gerona, where they have been the most voted force. These three municipalities have had mayors from separatist formations for the last four years who have now suffered a notable loss of support at the polls.

What has already been confirmed is that the socialist Maider Etxebarria will be the next councilor of Vitoria after the pact sealed with the PNV in exchange for facilitating the presidency of the Guipúzcoa Provincial Council. In this way, they will leave the winner of last Sunday's elections, EH Bildu, who for the last four years has been one of Sánchez's strategic parliamentary partners without the mayor's office of the capital of the Basque Country.

And the PSOE could also conquer Palencia, where it has once again been the party with the most votes as in 2019, when an agreement between the PP and Ciudadanos left the baton of command in the orange formation, which had been the list with the third most support.. The key to the new consistory is now held by Vamos Palencia, a citizen movement “without ideology” that has launched a consultation among residents to develop a government program that will require mayoral candidates to deliver their votes.

Losses

The possible incorporations to the list of local power of the socialists do not compensate in any case their losses. Of the 24 municipal governments of which this legislature has formed part, at the expense of what happens in Barcelona (where they have been the minority partner), it is foreseeable that they will only retain six at the expense of agreements with other parties: Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, La Coruña, León, Jaén, Lugo and Cuenca.

In the PSOE they took for granted some losses after the 28-M elections such as those of the mayors of Granada and Segovia. In Seville and Valencia, this place in which they governed in coalition with Joan Ribó, from Compromís, they also came to fear that the sum of PP and Vox could unseat them, as finally happened, although their internal polls at least at the beginning of the campaign election gave them reason for optimism.

The city that did not enter into their forecasts of possible casualties at all was Valladolid, where the polls agreed that Óscar Puente would obtain sufficient support to be able to continue governing with his partners for the last eight years, Valladolid Takes the Word. Nor was there the eviction of the Toledo Mayor's Office of Milagros Tolón, for whom the poll survey even predicted an absolute majority.

With last Sunday's electoral debacle, the Socialists have also lost the consistories of Murcia, Palma de Mallorca, Burgos, Albacete, Castellón, Logroño, Huelva, Cáceres, Guadalajara, Ciudad Real and Huesca.