barcelona en comú

Motion comes weeks after contradictory reports on Spanish intelligence’s ties to mastermind

JxCat loses its local hegemony, the Socialists stay afloat, and ERC’s election results turn bittersweet after Ada Colau keeps hold of Barcelona

BComú leader elected by city councilors with support from Socialists and Manuel Valls

ERC’s candidate wins Barcelona’s local elections by a handful of votes, earning the same number of councilors as Ada Colau’s Barcelona en Comú

Project will link two unconnected networks

The Spanish electoral board claims that this sign of solidarity is related to some candidacies running in election

Barcelona deputy mayor rejects possibility of creating pact with any other party

Barcelona’s Mayor, Ada Colau, will have to submit to a vote of confidence after the opposition blocked the budget presented by the local government for 2017. All the opposition parties except from the Catalan socialists (PSC), with whom the executive has an agreement, voted against the new accounts in a committee on Tuesday. Colau said this Wednesday that she is “not afraid” of a vote of confidence, but stated that “there is still room to reach an agreement” and to avoid it. In this vein, the mayor stressed her will to “seriously take into account all the arguments and proposals made” by the opposition to improve the budget that will be voted on on the 23^rd of December. If Colau loses this vote, the opposition will have a month to submit a vote of no confidence - which will need to be supported by at least 21 councillors (absolute majority) to force her out. 

This Friday’s plenary session at Barcelona City Hall resulted in the reprobation of Mayor Ada Colau. All the parties in the Chamber except from the governing alternative left alliance ‘Barcelona en Comú’ and radical left pro-independence CUP criticised Colau’s “politics of gesture”. “Today your government was defeated, the majority in the chamber censors your way of governing and is telling you that we can’t continue like this”, stated liberal CiU’s spokesman in Barcelona City Hall, Joaquim Forn. Moreover, Forn committed to discussing with all the groups in the Chamber how “to build an alternative majority to the current government”. Colau, a former activist especially committed to fighting evictions, won the local elections in May last year. However, she only obtained 11 seats, just one more than the second most voted list, CiU.

The possibility that two Francoist sculptures may be displayed in Barcelona’s city centre as part of a temporary exhibition has unleashed controversy in the Catalan capital. ‘Franco-Victory-Republic: impunity and urban space’ aims to “force society to think about what Franco’s dictatorship represented” and the “impunity” this period has had “during Spain’s democracy”, explained Barcelona’s deputy mayor, Gerardo Pisarello. However, taking the exhibition to the streets by displaying the Francoist sculpture ‘Victoria’, and an equestrian sculpture of Franco himself, hasn’t gone down well with some political forces and associations in Catalonia. “In this country the executioners were not judged and the victims were not properly buried” stated ERC’s President in Barcelona’s City Hall, Alfred Bosch, adding that he considers the wounds that Franco’s dictatorship provoked not yet healed. 

The alternative left in Catalonia is gathered around En Comú Podem, a coalition which is running for the Spanish elections with members from Catalan Green-Socialist party ICV, alternative left-wing Podem, which is the Catalan branch of the Spanish party Podemos, and representatives from the 'En Comú' candidacies, which won significant mayoralties in the last local elections, for example that of Barcelona, with social activist and now Barcelona mayor Ada Colau as its strongest asset. En Comú Podem's programme focuses on social measures to beat the crisis which "is still lashing Spain" and improving the situation "of those who are suffering its consequences", stated its top member, Xavier Domènech. Regarding Catalonia's push for independence, Domènech defended the celebration of a "binding referendum" with "a clear question which can be answered with yes or no", he stated.

On Friday, the Catalan Green-Socialist party ICV and alternative left-wing Podem (Catalan branch of the Spanish party Podemos), reached an agreement to run together in the Spanish elections, after already having agreed a few days ago to run together in the next Catalan elections (scheduled for 27 September). The Spanish elections have not been called yet, but are expected to be held later this year, according to Barcelona-based newspaper 'El Periódico' and sources from the two political parties. In late June, the leaders of ICV, Joan Herrera, and Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, already announced that the two parties intended to participate as a coalition in both the Catalan and Spanish elections. They are to run in both ballots under the name 'Catalunya Sí que es pot' (in English, 'Catalonia yes we can'), adding the word 'Podem' at the beginning of the name for the Spanish elections.

Ada Colau is the new Mayor of Barcelona. It is the first time that the Catalan capital has a woman as Mayor. Colau, who led the alternative left and green coalition Barcelona en Comú, won the last municipal elections – held on 24 May. However, she lacked support to reach the absolute majority in the City Council and be elected Mayor. During the last 3 weeks, she has been negotiating with the other leftist parties over forming a coalition government or at least obtaining their support and reaching the 21 vote minimum necessary in the City Council’s mayoral election. None of the other parties have so far agreed to form a government coalition with Colau, but 3 of them have backed her to be elected Mayor. They are the left-wing Catalan independence party ERC, the Catalan Socialist Party PSC and the radical independence and alternative left party CUP.