What remains pending for Ada Colau
BarcelonaIn September two years ago, Ada Colau put a full stop to her institutional political career. A full stop because at that moment, despite leaving the Barcelona city council one year after losing the mayoral staff that she had held in her hand for eight years, she did not close the door to running for re-election in the 2027 municipal elections. During the last two years, and having also formally abandoned the leadership of the Comuns in Catalonia, her political role has taken a back seat: she has led the Sentit Comú Foundation, the think tank of the Comuns, and has combined it with an incursion into entities and parties of the international left.
However, for a few months now, Ada Colau has been seen again in the public and also media sphere. A few weeks ago she was at the rally to stop an eviction in Barcelona and, following the case of Maricarmen Abascal from Madrid, she made a video that she published on Instagram in which she criticized, as insufficient, the housing policies of the Spanish government. In fact, she bet on Sumar, the political space for which she campaigned in 2023, leaving the executive if the PSOE did not push forward a decree to stop evictions.
The pressure from her environment
For several people in the space to the left of the PSOE, that video did not please them, but it was also perceived as evidence that the former mayor was preparing to make the leap to the State level. And the proof is that her circle has exerted political and media pressure in recent weeks to let public opinion know that Colau was willing to take the step and lead the candidacy of the new Sumar in the State. And she did so aware that she needed to overcome the internal misgivings of part of a space that is prone to internal battles.
Colau has achieved this and is now taking the step she was missing. Her name was never a real option, for example, to lead the Comuns in Parliament. Instead, her profiles as an activist and mayor of one of the main cities of the State, Barcelona, have long been two cards that made her a potential leader of this space. In fact, she herself explained in an interview with Crític two years ago that she had been offered to be a minister and also a deputy. Her moment had not yet arrived, but it revealed what more or less everyone knew: that her name had always been on the table to have a role in the space to the left of the PSOE.
In Barcelona, she lost the elections three years ago and surely her name is no longer the rallying point of 2015 –due to the wear and tear of governing–, but in the rest of the State it is still likely that she is capable of mobilizing an electorate that until a few weeks ago was dormant. And even more so if the 29-N is about the right to housing.