ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the party politics of Barcelona during the Colau administration of 2015–2019, leaving an overview of policy performance as the theme. It examines the contours of political alignment and opposition that affected the delivery of the BComú programme. Municipal party dynamics shifted in successive phases as debates about the direction to be taken by Barcelona – the Barcelona ‘model’ – were affected by electoral competition at other levels of government and as the municipal focus became overshadowed by controversies over the city’s position in the deepening confrontation between the Catalan authorities and the central government in Madrid. For the Comuns, there was relatively little they could do about the wider political environment that would frame the May 2019 municipal election, although they clearly wished it would have a left-right municipal character rather than be dominated by the issue of independence.
