Martí launches Junts' candidacy for the mayoralty of Barcelona with a call not to resign oneself: "There is a game"

BarcelonaOnce again, the polls do not smile upon Junts per Barcelona with just over seven months to go until the municipal elections. But far from falling into discouragement, their mayoral candidate, Jordi Martí, presented his candidacy to society this Wednesday with a plea against resignation. "There is a game," he asserted during a speech in which he showed himself willing to turn the polls around and also the dynamic of a city that, he lamented, is not well governed.

"We do not deserve what is happening in Barcelona," Martí asserted. Before an audience that included, among others, former presidents Jordi Pujol and Artur Mas, and former mayor Xavier Trias –mentor to the now candidate–, he listed some of the problems that, in his opinion, the capital suffers: insecurity, incivility, chaos in mobility, loss of weight of Catalan in day-to-day life, lack of housing and, above all, "a weak government".

Faced with this, Martí presented his five commitments to the city if he is mayor, which could be summarized in five points: that Barcelona preserves its identity; that it be safe and with civility; that it does not expel its neighbors and has more apartments and organized mobility; that it makes life easier for merchants by eliminating bureaucracy, and that it be "well governed". "Barcelona does not need a mayor who is the altar boy of Pedro Sánchez or the PSOE. It needs someone who knows the house, who knows the city, and a team prepared to govern from the first day," he snapped, and claimed himself as the candidate of "order and prosperity".

No mentions of immigration

Martí admitted that "the context is not easy," but he expressed conviction that they will be able to repeat the victory they achieved in 2023 with Trias, which ultimately proved insufficient to govern. Martí's first challenge will be to rally a party that initially turned its back on him. The secretary general, Jordi Turull, had to accept him as a candidate after Martí forced a primary that the party leadership did not want. This Wednesday, however, Turull was in the front row supporting his party's mayoral candidate.

The other major challenge that Junts will have to overcome is the threat from Aliança Catalana, to whom all polls give representation in the city council of the Catalan capital and which could take away part of the voters from the Junts supporters in Barcelona. In a symptomatic gesture of the type of campaign he wants, however, Martí avoided any reference to immigration this Wednesday, the main banner of Sílvia Orriols' party.