Colau, a candidate for president of Spain from Barcelona

Barcelona“Ada Colau will be the state candidate”. It is not usual for a Catalan to occupy this role, but in the Broad Front it has been made crystal clear before starting the campaign. The Comuns team explains that Colau will prioritize the Spanish agenda during the general election campaign. Despite occupying the number one spot for Barcelona, the former mayor of the Catalan capital was chosen as the presidential candidate for the coalition that takes over from Yolanda Díaz's Sumar and, therefore, her agenda will lead her to travel throughout the State. In this scenario, the number 2 for Barcelona and Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, will be the one who will carry the weight of the party's Catalan campaign. Thus, the former mayor will only hold two rallies on Catalan soil during the two weeks of the campaign. In fact, she already kicked off the campaign at an event in Madrid.

Colau will be the headliner of the coalition's central event, which will take place in Barcelona on Saturday, November 21, accompanied by Urtasun and the candidate in Madrid, Emilio Delgado. The day before, the presidential candidate will be in the city of Tarragona, where the group will hold the other campaign event in Catalonia. There will be three events if one counts that on November 25, coinciding with the demonstration for the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women, which is celebrated every year in Barcelona, she will give a press briefing. Be that as it may, Colau already opened the campaign in Madrid and will also close it in the Spanish capital. She will also follow the election night results from the Madrid city because the decision depends on the state committee, as admitted by the campaign team from Catalonia.

The role of Urtasun

In the rest of the events in Catalonia, it will be Urtasun who pilots the campaign, with a press briefing in the morning and an event in the afternoon. He will also be the one to participate in the electoral debates in Catalonia, as he already did last Sunday in the one on RTVE and the following day at Pimec. Conversely, Colau will be the visible face of the coalition in the national-level debates and is the one who has done the interviews with David Broncano on La revuelta or with Jordi Wild.

The fact that she has been mayor of Barcelona for two terms, therefore, will not mean she will intensify her presence in the Principality and, especially, in the Catalan capital, where she remains the greatest asset of this political space. “She is the state candidate and parties from other areas of the State, such as, for example, the Chunta Aragonesista, ask for Colau to be there and she does not have the gift of ubiquity,” they ironize from the campaign team in Catalonia. And they add that the one who was the candidate for this space in 2023, Yolanda Díaz, only held one event in Catalonia in 2023. “And Colau will now play the role of Yolanda Díaz,” they highlight. That most of her tweets since her return to X are in Spanish, with few exceptions, already denotes this will.

Tour through Spain

In this sense, sources from the candidacy admit that “there are many demands from Catalonia,” but that they cannot cover them all. In fact, the wish of Comuns was for Colau to participate in the final campaign event on Thursday, November 26, in Cornellà de Llobregat, with Urtasun, but the debate that TVE will organize that day will make her presence unfeasible. “Electoral debates also condition her participation for us,” they explain.

In any case, the coalition formed by Sumar, IU, Més Madrid, and Comuns wants the candidate to make an appearance in the provinces where they are confident of gaining representation, given polls that predict a sharp decline for them. “We will focus the campaign on the provinces where we gained representation,” they remark from the campaign team. In 2023, Sumar secured six deputies in Madrid, five in Barcelona, three in Valencia, two in Seville, and one more in fifteen constituencies, including Girona and Tarragona.

For the moment, the coalition has confirmed that Colau will make stops in Seville, Zaragoza, Valencia, and A Coruña, beyond Barcelona and Madrid. The candidacy's intention is to visit other communities such as the Canary Islands, Castile and León, the Basque Country, or the Balearic Islands, although it is not yet confirmed. A tour across the Spanish state with the goal of trying to make a breakthrough in these territories, while in Catalonia the party assumes it will be able to retain, more or less, the support achieved three years ago with the fight for housing as its main draw. However, most polls point to a decline in the Principality; without going any further, the ARA poll grants them four seats, three fewer than in 2023.