Barcelona: Manuel Valls officializes his candidature for the local elections

Manuel Valls officially announced Tuesday his candidature for the local elections of the Catalan city.

“I want to be the next mayor of Barcelona.” By these words, marked Tuesday, September 25, as a Catalan, in the Center of contemporary culture of Barcelona, Manuel Valls his candidature for the town hall of the Catalan capital officialized. Its announcement, expected, hardly creates the surprise.

This Catalan adventure remains however a bet for the former chief of the government, on the spot scoffed by certain political personalities and the satirists for his ignorance supposed at local realities.

In the same speech, the former Socialist announced that it was going to resign of his mandate of deputy of the Essonne in France. He made this French announcement this time and declared that this abandonment of its French responsibilities would take place the next week.

Manuel Valls, 56 years and former French Prime Minister were born in Barcelona and were naturalized French. “Since my birth (…) my relation with Barcelona was intimate, constant”, put forward Manuel Valls.

At ease in Castilian as as a Catalan, it was born 56 years ago in the second town of Spain of a Catalan father and a Swiss mother before obtaining, at the 20 years age, the French naturalisation.

It is in France that it made all its career, with the right wing of the Socialist party and Evry (the Essonne), of which he was mayor of 2001 to 2012, until becoming Home Secretary in 2012, then Prime Minister of François Hollande in 2014 and finally unfortunate candidate with the primary education of the left in 2017.

Since the failure of his presidential ambitions in France in 2017, Manuel Valls engaged on the other side of the Pyrenees, multiplying meeting and demonstrations against the Catalan freedom fighters who tried to make secession of Spain last October.

The challenge is announced of size on May 26th to succeed current the mayor of left, the old militant one of the right to housing, Ada Colau, in charge of the town of 1.6 million inhabitants. Manuel Valls is ensured of the support of the liberal party Ciudadanos, spearhead of the opposition to the independantism, which had invited it for several months to carry its colors.

It recruited for its countryside a ex-director of communication of the FC Barcelona, club of which it is to support, and the old right-hand man of the socialist mayor, Pasqual Maragall (1982-1997), symbol of the entry in the modernity of the city which accommodated the Olympic Games in 1992.

A survey published at the beginning of July granted 5.2% of the voting intentions to Ciudadanos, the centrist party with which it has the most affinities, for the local elections of May 26th, 2019.

According to Jordi Muñoz, political economist of the University of Barcelona, “his chances to be a mayor are thin”.

Manual Valleys for the time being did not manage to convince the two other parties anti-freedom fighters, the Socialist party on the left and the Popular party on the right, to join with its candidature, underlines Muñoz.

However, estimates the political economist inhabitant of Barcelona Oriol Bartomeus, “the only way which it has to gain” is to set up a list of opening in order to arrive at the head on May 26th and to bet then on the division of its adversaries. The municipal elections are done with the poll proportional in Spain, obliging the parties with negotiations after the vote.

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Gabriel MIHAI

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