Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau is confident that Barcelona En Comú is able to “win the elections again” in the Catalan capital in 2027.
The former mayor announced last week her departure from the council, which will be made official next October, after confirming that the mayor, Jaume Collboni, would not join the Comuns in the government. Colau will also leave her organic functions in the Comuns and will now work to join forces with the international left to stop the rise of the extreme right, without ruling out the possibility of running again in 2017.
In his speech at the 10th anniversary celebration of Barcelona en Comú, the party that Colau founded with other left-wing activists and politicians and which won a historic victory in the 2015 municipal elections, Colau spoke for about an hour surrounded by the municipal group and by prominent figures from the party.
Reviewing the two terms in which the BComú has governed in Barcelona, Colau expressed the opinion that fake news and smear campaigns against his party have become normal for years.
He expressed that if false news is made against the President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, it is a “scandal”, but if it is made against BComú, literally, it is a supposed normality.
After clarifying that it is not “a farewell, but a celebration”, Colau reviewed the work of his municipal government during the two terms in which he has served as mayor, among which he mentioned the superilla of Consell de Cent street, the plan neighborhood, housing cooperatives or tourism initiatives.
Colau also opted for the Comuns to continue to articulate at the Catalan level “in a spirit of cooperation”: “The Comuns have always been clear that beyond the divergences we may have, we share a program with the sister federal republican forces.” he said. In this sense, he mentioned Podemos, Compromís and the Galician Mareas.
Furthermore, Colau considers Barcelona En Comú as “a very lively space, which has a project for the city” and in which, “even after requesting the city hall, new people continue to arrive.”
They heard Colau from some of the most outstanding personalities of the Comuns, such as the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, the Secretary of the Congress Council Gerardo Pisarello and the MEP Jaume Asens, in addition to their leader in Parliament, Jéssica Albiach. .
The former mayor cited other countries in which far-right parties have grown stronger, such as, literally, France, Italy, Brazil and Mexico, and defended the construction of links in the Catalan, state and European context to form “popular fronts because the extreme right is very organized.”
“Each in their place, we will continue together, we will continue to make a community, we will continue to be in the neighborhoods, and to celebrate that we are alive, that we are together and that we want to change everything without asking permission and without fear,” he assured.
