The race within Junts for the mayoral candidate poster in Barcelona added a chapter this Monday that could be decisive in reaching a conclusion with just over a year left until the municipal elections on May 23, 2027. Josep Rius, councilor of the post-convergent municipal group, as well as deputy and vice president of the party, announced that under the “current circumstances” he cannot run as a candidate. He had not officially presented himself, but all the predictions placed him as the favorite of the leadership of the formation led by Carles Puigdemont. On the other side of the scale is Jordi Martí, president of the municipal group, who officially announced his candidacy on Thursday although Junts had laid out various red carpets for him to clear the way for his benchmate.
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Rius, in a very measured but forceful “open letter to the membership” published on his social networks, admits that in recent months he had seriously considered “the possibility of leading the renewal of a Junts project for the mayoralty” of the Catalan capital. “I believe I am in a position – shares the councilor – to lead a good project for a Barcelona that puts citizens back at the center of everything.” But, he continues, the four conditions that would have led him to take the definitive step are not met: “Generosity, consensus, self-criticism, and renewal.”
The letter
“We need to talk more about the Barcelona of the present than the past; a project more about going forward than returning, and a new and fresh outlook,” prescribes Rius
That Rius’s message arrives just days after Martí announced he does not intend to throw in the towel is no coincidence. His letter, in fact, can be read as a veiled response to the candidacy of the president of the municipal group. Among other things, he calls for “generosity to renew faces, ideas, and ways of doing things,” a statement that brings to mind that his theoretical rival has already been in the City Council for 15 years (he entered in the 2011 elections).
The desire for new blood can also be interpreted as a clear message to Martí’s wish to succeed Xavier Trias on the Junts poster: “We need to talk more about the Barcelona of the present than the past; a project more about going forward than returning, and a new and fresh outlook, capable of understanding the challenges of a city that is changing rapidly.” Rius considers in his letter that the announcement of his colleague “alters the essential conditions” he had set “to be able to promote a project of renewal, proposal, and ambition for Barcelona.”
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“A project – he continues – that must start from the first moment with addition and not confrontation or internal challenge.” “For me – he maintains – this was and is a red line. Instead of making us stronger, internal confrontation weakens us, both the Barcelona project and the national project of Junts.”
The context
“Under the current circumstances I cannot run as a candidate and contribute to a confrontation that, in my view, will not help us come out stronger”
Martí shared his desire to aspire to the mayoralty and called for primaries in case there were more candidates. “I don’t even want to imagine that they are not called and that the decision is made outside the democratic process,” he told this newspaper. He defended his right to promote a plan for the city and said that only the vote of the membership would dissuade him from his desire to represent Junts within a year.
This ambition does not seem to have sat well with Rius: “In a logic of confrontation and internal division, you will not find me.” And he concludes: “Under the current circumstances I cannot run as a candidate and contribute to a confrontation that, in my view, will not help us come out stronger and face the challenge that the people of Barcelona expect from Junts.”
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