• Negotiations: Three mayors for an unlikely unit in the face of the coronavirus crisis
  • Incident Resigns the mayor of Badalona after being arrested for drunk driving and assaulting the police

The PSC negotiates with the independentistas to try to continue excluding the PP from the Badalona Mayor's Office. For the third time in five years, the socialists seek to articulate a new pirouette with the sovereignists to veto the former mayor and former leader of the popular Catalans, Xavier García Albiol, in the opposition since 2015 after chaining three victories in the elections of the fourth city of Catalonia. The attempt coincides with ERC's refusal to support the extension of the alarm state. Despite Gabriel Rufián's estrangement from Pedro Sánchez in the midst of the coronavirus crisis, the socialists have tried to seduce the ERC by offering to alternate at the head of the Badalona City Council. The idea was liked in the local executive of the Republicans, but the leadership of Oriol Junqueras has nipped it in the bud.

The slip of former mayor Álex Pastor when he was forced to resign for assaulting the police officers who caught him driving drunk has left the PSC at risk of losing the city: it administers it in a minority and with the fragility of having been only third in the municipal of 2019. The blank check that the sovereignists gave to the socialists in exchange for relegating the PP is out of print; if they do not close an agreement in less than a week, Albiol will return to command.

To prevent the return of the popular , the deputy mayor Rubén Guijarro is willing to postpone his aspirations and take turns in front of the City Council until the elections of 2023 with the local president of Esquerra, Àlex Montornès . It is a little-known name outside his party in Badalona and he had not applied before the PSC offer, which states that Montornès is mayor for a year and a half and that Guijarro relieves him until his mandate is exhausted.

The unexpected maneuver marginalizes the former sovereignist mayor Dolors Sabater , from Guanyem Badalona , the formation linked to the CUP that led the electoral coalition to which the Junqueras party adhered and which the local ERC executive undone a month after the municipal . The socialists refuse to support Sabater again, whom they seconded in 2015 to unseat Albiol, and who was brought down three years later with a censure motion endorsed by the PP after the high stage of the process .

The cunning of the PSC has delved into the fissures of the independence bloc and has tried to break it with a trick that exasperated Sabater, which requires captaining an Executive that isolates the PP. A year ago, the local ERC leadership viewed the former mayor with skepticism, a bet by the previous top leader of the force in the city, Oriol Lladó , and consecrated by Junqueras from prison. Failing the challenge of defeating Albiol, the local executive broke with Sabater.

The offer of the PSC implied that ERC sacrificed the former mayor and bypassed Lladó, number two in the coalition that came second after the PP. Esquerra disavowed the temptation of its leaders in the town to reach an agreement with the Socialists to take the mayoralty until November 2021. The party's spokeswoman, Marta Vilalta , called the PSC's proposal "blackmail" and clarified that the Republicans are still aligned with Sabater .

The ERC management urgently summoned those responsible in Badalona, ​​which forced them to suspend the appointment to continue negotiating a pact against the PP. Although the offer will not bear fruit, the PSC has demonstrated the internal weaknesses of those who need to continue ruling and has fertilized its terrain to blame Sabater if Albiol regains the reins of the Consistory. Despite the hesitation of Esquerra, the environment of the former mayor believes that the Republican leadership has shielded her commitment to Sabater and continues to pressure the Socialists to compromise in favor of the sovereignty. Meanwhile, Albiol waits.

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  • ERC
  • PSC
  • Xavier García Albiol
  • Pedro Sánchez
  • Oriol Junqueras
  • Gabriel Rufián
  • Catalonia
  • CUP
  • Politics

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