The main festival: the political brawl of every summer

BarcelonaThe arrival of summer is the arrival of the main festivals and, with them, the same ritual: the mayor goes out onto the balcony at the moment of the proclamation. But increasingly often this ritual also becomes a headache: the moment when organized citizens take advantage of the most media-friendly stage of the municipal calendar to express their discontent with those in power or the politician who shows up. It repeats year after year, and takes different forms depending on who is on the balcony, who is shouting from below, and what is at stake.

The latest example occurred in Gràcia. This Friday during the proclamation of the main festival, shouts were heard against Laia Bonet, the first deputy mayor and councilor for Gràcia. "Laia Bonet, out of the neighborhood!", shouted a good part of the public. When the herald asked what was the ugliest place in Gràcia, the attendees themselves responded in unison: "Laia Bonet!". Last year, she was already booed by neighbors and other groups.

It is, by no means, the first time that Plaça de la Vila has made a mockery of institutional representatives: the most remembered precedent is that of 2021, when Ada Colau was booed and ended up crying into the microphone until Jordi Cuixart – freshly released from prison and invited as herald – had to call for calm from the same balcony and called for unity and against division.

In Mataró, the socialist mayor, David Bote, received a strong booing with whistles and shouts of independence when proclaiming Les Santes. It is not new: a year ago, the police eviction of the Espai Firal at the end of the festival resulted in arrests and injuries, and the Santes Populars platform, which emerged from those events, has since denounced the reduction of opening hours and the loss of self-managed spaces for entities and groups.

The dispute over who has the right to the balcony

There are times when the target of scorn is not the one in power. At the Patum of Berga, Sílvia Orriols – leader of Aliança Catalana and mayor of Ripoll – invited by an opposition councilwoman, was met with a large booing by a large part of the attendees during the first jump of the full Patum, in which the 'guita' carried the anti-fascist flag. Hundreds of people, some with whistles, booed her with shouts such as "Out fascists from the Patum!" or "Jump, jump, jump, fascist who doesn't vote!". In fact, even part of the square demanded that the festival not begin until she left, but the mayor gave the order for it to start.

The same dispute – who has the right to speak from the balcony – marked the Festes de Maig in Lleida, where about twenty entities asked to reconsider that the town crier be the kayaker Saúl Craviotto for his statements against October 1st and endorsing police repression. Other parties such as ERC also denounced that the "heir" of the festival was a young man who sympathizes with Aliança Catalana. Despite the reproaches, Mayor Fèlix Larrosa (PSC) maintained the town crier and the heir.

Sometimes the fight comes from the council itself. In Terrassa, the three Vox councilors unfurled a banner that read "We have you dancing" amidst general indifference at the start of the Ball de Plaça, which is the inaugural act of the main festival of the co-capital of Vallès Occidental. The far-right councilors were referring to the incidents that occurred the previous year.

Then, the three Vox councilors unfurled the banner "Vox does not dance with totalitarians" in front of the mayor Jordi Ballart (Tot per Terrassa), to denounce that Terrassa's popular culture entities had excluded them from the dance since they burst into the City Council in 2023. Amidst great tension, Ballart reported suffering shoves and threats from the Vox councilors and filed a lawsuit for an alleged crime of attack against authority, which a court in Terrassa admitted for processing and is still being investigated.