ERC and Junts fight in the interior Catalonia for independence hegemony with the PSC in the lead in the metropolitan area

The mayor for Barcelona, Xavier Trias (l), together with the president of Junts, Laura Borràs (c) and the general secretary, Jordi Turull (r), at an event in Barcelona, last weekend. Quique Garcia (EFE)

There is a political dispute that remains unresolved in Catalonia and that will have a new encounter this 28-M: the struggle for independence hegemony between Esquerra and Junts. It is true that day-to-day affairs weigh more heavily in local elections than national politics, but in the end, the two aspects are inseparable. Hence, in the bosom of both Republicans and those led by the binomial Borràs - Turull also live the race that today begins as another test of cotton for their strategies of dialogue with the Government and total confrontation. Although the result in the metropolitan area is key for ERC, the battle with Junts will focus especially on the interior areas. It will also be key who will manage to appropriate the voters of Ciudadanos, whom the polls leave out. PSC, PP and Vox seem to be the destination of those votes.

The competition between Junts and ERC has already had a preview and those of Oriol Junqueras has taken the cake. The Republicans, with 804 electoral lists, are the party with the most candidacies proclaimed in the four Catalan demarcations. Junts, which had always occupied the first place, has remained in the second, with 728. ERC has been able to present itself almost without problems in all the capitals of the region, while its competitors have not managed to reach their goal of presenting themselves in 800 municipalities. The Socialists, for their part, presented 17% more lists than in 2019, with a total of 715.

An unprecedented factor is that, for the first time in democracy, the Catalan Executive is monocolor, capitalized by ERC. The 28-M is seen by the former partners of Govern, of Junts, as an opportunity to remove the thorn after the divorce of last October. But both, along with the PSC, want to compete for which party is credible as the best manager and hence the pre-campaign has been marked by the attack (and defense) of the work of the Government (and Government) on issues such as attention to drought or the fiasco of the oppositions of the Generalitat. And, in an independentist key, how the relationship with Madrid (collaboration or claudication, depending on who you talk to) conditions the proper functioning of services such as Rodalies.

Precisely, last Sunday, as a result of the railway chaos, the general secretary of Junts, Jordi Turull, criticized ERC for "ignoring unity and making it easy for the one who generates the problem, which is the Government". It is a speech that, however, is muted depending on which sites. Xavier Trias, candidate of Barcelona, has not put the attack on the Government led by Pere Aragonès at the center of his speech. In places with more secessionist ancestry, such as Girona, the Republicans are in the constant target. Apart from the Catalan capital, those of Carles Puigdemont hope to be able to maintain the mayoral rod that Marta Madrenas has held so far.

Lists are one thing and results are another. Esquerra aspires to revalidate the victory in votes (822,107, 23%) and number of elected councilors (3,114) that it had in 2019. These are very good figures compared to those of the 2015 elections (510,080 votes and 2,380 councilors), where it had already recovered from the post-triparty debacle. But even with such a big comeback, in the last elections it was the neoconvergents who won more mayorships (369 against the 359 Republicans), most of them in small municipalities in the interior.

In Junts they are entrusted to a good result in the Catalan capital that allows them to decant the balance in their favor this time. In the past municipal, the neconvergentes (557,303 votes and 2,798 councilors) were relegated to third place in percentage of vote after ERC and the PSC (in second place, with 768,478 votes and 87 mayors, but in large populations). Turull himself, after knowing the proclaimed candidacies, tried to value that after the bump of the previous contest they managed to present lists again in the 36 municipalities of the metropolitan area of Barcelona.

The competition between both formations will have three places of special interest. The polls are not very encouraging to the Republicans in Lleida and Tarragona, two mayoralties that the Republicans sought after years of socialist domination and that they had managed to crown. This had also given them the key to the provincial government of both territories. The PSC, but also Junts, believe that it is possible that there will be a change of colors, something that would be a blow to the ERC discourse on how citizens have noticed "republican governance".

The other hot scenario will be the metropolitan area, which centers Junqueras' personal strategy of penetrating the red spot that stains the map. Bets such as placing the spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, in the Santa Coloma de Gramenet cartel are not in line with wresting a mayor's office from the PSC but gradually eroding its hegemony. In addition to what happens in the Catalan capital, the Socialists have almost assured hegemony in towns such as L'Hospitalet, Cornellà, Sant Adrià or Mollet. Although Junts is not a direct rival of ERC, there it is by carambola. In the headquarters of the Republicans, in the Barcelona street of Calàbria, they do not doubt that there will be sociovergencia where arithmetically possible.

From 2011 to 2019, ERC has gone from being fifth to second force in the municipalities surrounding the Catalan capital. From the 62,000 achieved in the first appointment of that period, it went to 292,000 four years ago. The cloud for the Republicans is that there is little chance that Ernest Maragall will win in Barcelona and they see how the goal of the mayor of the capital is moving away. There will be many readings on the night of 28-M and they know that Junts will jump to sell a bad result of ERC as an amendment to the totality of the commitment to dialogue with the Government and the management of Aragonès. In ERC they believe that a Trias who does not win, for example, is the tip in the attempts to reconvert Junts and that weighs in what will happen with its president, Laura Borràs.

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