Barcelona, May 12 (AFP/APP): After eight years running City Hall, Barcelona’s left-wing mayor, Ada Colau, is eyeing a third mandate on May 28, when Spain votes in local and regional elections whose outcome is unclear.
A total of 36 million people will cast their ballots to elect local leaders and mayors in 12 of Spain’s 17 regions on that day, with the election campaign formally starting on Friday.
The polls are widely seen as a trial run ahead of a year-end general election, which is expected to be a tight race for the left-wing government of Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
In Barcelona, where Catalan separatists staged a failed independence bid in 2017, polls put Colau neck-and-neck with her two closest rivals — Socialist candidate Jaume Collboni and Xavier Trias, a conservative nationalist and her predecessor as Barcelona mayor.
In 2015, after four years in office, Trias lost his seat to Colau, a former housing rights activist.
She was elected at the head of a citizens’ platform backed by the hard-left Podemos, the junior partner in Sanchez’s coalition.
The pair are once again set to face off in the polls but much has changed since 2015 in this city of 1.6 million inhabitants.
During the same elections that year, Madrid also elected another Podemos-backed candidate, Manuela Carmena, as mayor but the city has since swung firmly to the right.
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