• 28-M The PP will only prevent Trias from being mayor of Barcelona if Collboni breaks with Colau and ERC
  • Barcelona Ada Colau claims a tripartite pact with the PSC and ERC to leave Xavier Trias (Junts) without the Mayor's Office

There is no satisfactory election for the PP in the Barcelona City Council, today. To prevent Xavier Trias (Junts) from being mayor of Barcelona, the four popular councilors have to vote in favor of Jaume Collboni (PSC) and his coalition with the commons of Ada Colau and with ERC. And neither option satisfies the local PP leader, Daniel Sirera, at all. That is why he is trying a more than unlikely third way in which the PSC agrees with the PP and renounces its priority partners. And that they, in return, continue to support it. Or in which the Socialists collude with the independentists of the orbit of Carles Puigdemont.

Junts took out 11 councillors; PSC, 10; the party of Colau, 9; CKD, 5; PP, 4; and Vox, 2. The absolute majority is 21 councillors. Today, and given Collboni's refusal to bow to Sirera's proposal, the PP of Barcelona is more inclined to vote for itself as an apparently innocuous solution. But it wouldn't be. Neither innocuous nor Solomonic. Because if the four popular votes go to Sirera and, therefore, nobody obtains an absolute majority, the mayor of Barcelona would automatically be the one on the most voted list. That is, Trias, who has a marked accent of his own within his party, but also enjoys a close relationship with Puigdemont.

"Guatemala or 'Guatepeor'"

Within the PP, fears have grown that his party will be blamed for the separatists taking over the mayor's office of Spain's second largest city. Three leaders of the main opposition party agree that "between the bad and the worst", we must choose "the least bad". They refer to the PSC. And in the Basque PP, a three-year charge against nationalism uses a similar simile: "Between Guatemala or Guatepeor, Guatemala, what remedy, right?"

A senior national official adds that the right decision would be to support the PSC, but "if it gives something." "This should be a matter of state," says one baron. That is, to transcend the local debate. This means that, at any given time, Feijóo could give the instruction not to do anything that benefits the independence movement. But the president of the PP has given Sirera a free hand to negotiate. "The Collboni and Colau ticket is a ticket that the majority of the citizens of Barcelona do not accept, and in this context I am sure that Mr. Sirera will make me a proposal," he said on Tuesday.

Most of the ten leaders and veterans of the PP consulted agree that it is a "danger" not to raise a cordon sanitaire against Junts, but they also agree – this time, unanimously – that it is a dilemma of very difficult solution. Why? Because if the PP makes it easier for Trias to govern in Barcelona, it will do so in a minority and handcuffed. He would have to agree everything with the PSC or with several parties. While if the PP supports the PSC and it agrees with ERC and Colau, an immovable majority block would be consummated, for the entire legislature. And also with independence influence.

Other PP officials clearly support Sirera. "We are not going to do again like Manuel Valls," sums up a veteran senator. "The responsibility is not of the PP, it is of Collboni, which is in a Frankenstein pact with Junts, so they would have to understand them, Trias and Collboni," he adds. "If he has decided to go there, it is the least bad," adds a popular regional president. "We trust him 100%," he adds.

"In the Basque Country we have given investitures to the PSOE in exchange for nothing," they remember in the PP of this community, although they clarify that in no case Trias – a moderate within Junts – is the same as Bildu.

  • PP
  • Barcelona
  • Municipal Elections
  • Ada Colau
  • Politics

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