If there are no last minute surprises, Badalona will soon have a new mayor, the socialist Rubén Guijarro. The fourth in just three and a half years. PSC, Guanyem, ERC, Comuns and JxCat have already decided to add their votes, although it is still unknown how many of them (the platform close to the CUP has already taken off the hook) will participate in the new government team. The change to the head of the mayor’s office can be seen as the direct consequence of the still unclear relationship of Garcia Albiol with the activities revealed in the ‘Pandora Papers’. Or rather as the inevitable culmination, delayed, of the pact that derailed in 2020 and became possible again, as soon as the opportunity arose, from the moment in which the former mayor Dolors Sabater he abandoned local politics.
Xavier García Albiol has been the most voted candidate in the last three municipal elections in Badalona (2011, 2015 and 2019) thanks to a policy of personal presence of the still mayor in the neighborhoods, to a speech that associated immigration and crime -which has left Vox without political space in his city- and also to the constant confrontations in the political fabric of the city, which go back to the bitter divisions in the local federation of the PSC that they already facilitated, together with the abstention of CiU , his victory in 2011, and they have had continuity in which they made it possible for Albiol to offer the mayor’s office to the socialists, facing Sabater, in 2018, and for him to achieve it in 2020 thanks to Sabater’s refusal to join an agreement already closed with PSC, ERC and Comuns after the traumatic resignation of the socialist Álex Pastor. But although he has often discussed the legitimacy of the agreements that left him without the mayor’s office in 2015, in 2019 and – it seems – now, it should not be forgotten that in each case the rest of the political forces of the city added the majority of votes after explicitly committing to prevent his return to the mayor’s office (in the current plenary session, 16 councilors compared to 11 from the PP).
It is difficult to detach the political instability of the city with its urban evolution in the last two decades. Badalona is far from completing what should be its great project, the remodeling of the coastal façade, and it has not managed to make other initiatives (the Ciutat del Bàsquet, the unborn comic museum, its Roman heritage) unfold their potential. Nor does it seem (and that partly explains both the polarized electoral map and the difficulties in finding political consensus) that it has found a way to build bridges between the very contrasted realities of the historic center and the rest of the neighborhoods. Badalona has also lost, albeit anecdotal, the status of third city in Catalonia to the benefit of Terrassa.
However, Badalona still has in the remodeling of its neighborhoods and the highway that divides it, in the auction of its waterfront or in the projects that can be developed around the Can Ruti campus reasons to Look into the future. Each of the mayors who have succeeded one another in the town hall in the Plaza de la Vila have tried to do so. None have had too much time to achieve it (so far this century, only Maite Arqué and Xavier García Albiol have managed to finish a mandate). Badalona’s left-wing parties should now see their reconquest of the municipal government as a opportunity to agree on long-term initiatives and strategies and neutralize grudges and misgivings, which allows them to present to the voters an alternative to a García Albiol convinced that in the May 2023 elections the neighbors will once again give him their confidence. Something not at all ruled out if those who have ended up adding their votes in this new motion of censure repeat their internal complaints again.
Reference-www.elperiodico.com