Barcelona (EFE) thanks to the triumph of Xavier Trias in Barcelona.
The electoral map has turned upside down compared to 2019, two years after the political earthquake caused by the unilateral referendum of 1-O, when ERC became the first municipal force in Catalonia, with 822,107 votes and 3,114 councillors, ahead of the PSC (768,478 votes and 1,308 councilors) and JxCat (558,508 votes and 2,804 councilors).
With 98.94% counted, the Socialists are the first force in votes (708,102) and have 1,453 councilors, JxCat is in second position (543,572 votes and 2,664 councilors), while ERC falls to third place, with 514,011 votes and 2,867 councilors.
Trias wins in Barcelona for the second time
Contrary to what almost all the polls predicted in recent weeks, the winner of the political battle for the city of Barcelona has not been Jaume Collboni (PSC) or the mayoress Ada Colau (BComú), but rather Xavier Trias, the former mayor of CiU -he governed from 2011 to 2015- that played JxCat a few months ago as the headliner.
Trias, who has hidden the initials of JxCat in his electoral brand and who has deployed a discourse that has ignored the question of independence, has obtained 11 councillors, above the 10 from Collboni’s PSC and the 9 from Colau’s commons , while Ernest Maragall’s ERC, winner in votes in 2019, has fallen to fourth place, with 5 councilors, one more than the PP, and Vox enters the Barcelona City Council for the first time with two representatives.
The PSC wins again in three provincial capitals
After losing the mayoralties of Tarragona and Lleida in 2019, the Socialists have achieved victory in these two provincial capitals and have also turned around in Girona, a place where they had historically dominated but where they gave in to the independence hegemony in the years of the process.
The PSC, with Rubén Viñuales, has won the victory in the city of Tarragona (9 councillors), ahead of the 6 ERC councilors of the until now mayor, Pau Ricomà; In Lleida, the PSC has prevailed with 9 councilors, above the 5 that the PP, ERC and Junts have harvested, while in Girona the socialist Silvia Paneque has been the most voted, tied at 8 councilors with the CUP.
The red belt is still red
The PSC has maintained the first position in the main municipalities around Barcelona, the so-called red belt, although it has lost the absolute majorities it obtained in 2019 in two of its strongholds: L’Hospitalet de Llobregat and Gavà.
The socialists have won first place in most of the main municipalities of the metropolitan area of Barcelona, especially in the Baix Llobregat region, such as Cornellà de Llobregat, Sant Adrià del Besòs, Santa Coloma de Gramenet, Sant Feliu de Llobregat, Viladecans and Sant Just Desvern, among others, in addition to achieving the absolute majority in Sabadell.
The independence movement falls
The demobilization of the independence vote, especially in the Barcelona metropolitan area and in the large Catalan cities, has allowed the Socialists to advance positions, although ERC and JxCat have remained in the top positions in the municipalities of Central Catalonia.
ERC wins in Manresa, Moià and Solsona, Junts preserves Vic and Igualada – where the first vice-president of Parliament acting as president, Alba Vergés, has scored – while the CUP repeats its victory in Berga.
Far right on the rise
If in 2019 Vox reaped only three councilors in all of Catalonia -all of them in the Girona municipality of Salt-, four years later it has multiplied its representation exponentially: 125, in the absence of closing the scrutiny.
Another far-right formation that has gained a presence has been Som Identitaris, the formation of the ultra Josep Anglada, who was the founder of the xenophobic Platform for Catalunya and which will have two councilors in Vic.
On the other hand, the pro-independence extreme right has made history in Ripoll, where Sílvia Orriols’ Aliança Catalana has won the elections (6 councillors), while the Front Nacional de Catalunya has scratched two seats in Manresa.
Catalonia, the community with the highest abstention
Participation in the municipal elections in Catalonia stood at 55.5% of the census, 9.3 points less than in the 2019 local elections, when it reached 64.8%.
Catalonia, where nearly 3,050,000 voters have voted, has thus been the community with the least participation of all the autonomies in these municipal elections.