This weekend there was a real electoral campaign atmosphere in Barcelona. Promises and replicas have raised the tone of a battle that until then was moving in a low profile without fanfare.
However, this Saturday almost all the candidates appeared before the media: Ada Colau announced a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office for false news that directly affected her; Ernest Maragall replied to the mayoress denouncing that he takes advantage of this fake news to talk about it and get noticed; Jaume Collboni, asking the two to announce their position on issues such as the airport, the Hermitage museum, the Sant Antoni neighborhood or Las Ramblas, and promising that the reform of this iconic promenade, which has begun in a first phase but that the budget has not yet been consolidated in its entirety, It will be finished in the next 2027. Even Jaume Collboni’s number two on the list, Maria Eugènia Gay, has made her first pre-campaign statements against the independence movement.
The rest of the candidates have also demonstrated this weekend: Daniel Sirera, from the PP; Anna Grau, from Ciutadans, promising free books for students, and Eva Parera, from Valents. The only one who was absent from the media focus was Xavier Trias.
The socialist candidate for mayor of Barcelona, Jaume Collboni, organized an event on Saturday in which he entered into a dialogue with Albert Batlle, current Councilor for City Council Security and vice president of Units per Avançar, a party that will present itself again together with the PSC.
Collboni assured that Batlle would repeat his position in the event that the PSC governed the city, and furthermore, he would be the alderman of the Ciutat Vella district. In this sense, they vindicated the security policies carried out by the Batlle council in a district, Ciutat Vella, governed by the councilor of Barcelona En Comú, Jordi Rabassa. Collboni distanced himself from the policies developed by Ada Colau in the downtown district of the capital and remarked that “it is possible to bring order.”
Although he acknowledged that urban transformations have been launched in the district, he assured that it is not enough: “We must guarantee coexistence, safety, cleanliness and redo the investments that had always been made in Ciutat Vella and that in the recent years have been conspicuous by their absence .”
In the field of security, the president of Valents, Eva Parera, announced that she will propose the reopening of the police station that is under Plaza Catalunya. Parera affirmed that “it is surreal to do without a police point of special importance in the center of the city.” At that time, she went on to criticize the policies of the Commons, ensuring that “since the arrival of Ada Colau as mayor of Barcelona in 2015, until September 2022, Barcelona has accumulated more than 1.2 million criminal offenses .”
For his part, Ernest Maragall, in addition to also attacking Colau, according to him, for taking advantage of the false viral message about the irregular registration of Maghrebis to achieve notoriety, got into a fight with Collboni’s number two, Maria Eugènia Gay. The current government delegate in Catalonia declared that she will not agree with anyone who “puts the city at the service of the independence movement”, and the ERC mayor took the opportunity to ensure that Gay “is making explicit which government he wants: one with the PSC, the PP, and JxCat “. By the way, Maragall fired at Junts Per Catalunya: “Gay says that she will not agree with ERC because we are pro-independence, and therefore she considers that JxCat is not. Perhaps there are reasons.”
The Republican was targeted by the PP candidate, Daniel Sirera, because Maragall had asked that the Junts Per Catalunya number one, Xavier Trias, not accept the votes of the popular after the May 28 elections. Sirera remarked that “a strong PP in the City Council could jeopardize their attempts to turn Catalonia into an independent republic .”