Monday, October 6. : “Why not try to be mayor of Barcelona, a city where it has been shown that things can be done and changed?” Boom. On SER’s Hoy por Hoy, the most listened to program on Spanish radio. The writer, critic, communicator, actor… in the municipal elections of 2027. Nobody in the party knew it. The WhatsApp and Telegram chats of the militancy and the cadres, a thermometer of what is happening in the party, boil. Surprise? Disbelief? A joke? Were we just missing this? “Everything at the same time, but it’s serious,” says a militant who couldn’t give his life to attend to the notifications. “It felt terrible,” says an active elected official.
The emergence of Bob Pop (Roberto Enríquez Higueras is his real name) has shaken the organization. Just when its founder and former mayor, , is increasingly distant from municipal politics; when the current leader of the municipal group, after four terms. And when a name was already heard to head the list: that of the deputy in Congress, former councilor in Colau’s first term and member of the nucleus of founders of the commons, .
The way the primaries are planned, at the beginning of 2026, the candidates will be equal tandems, a man and a woman, who will compete for number one and two on the list. And the winners will choose numbers 3, 4 and 5. “If Pisarello won, the marrow of the ; now anything can happen, because, without Colau, the votes are no longer predictable,” reads a veteran. To date, one of the options was for Pisarello to run on the electoral ticket with the current councilor Gemma Tarafa, also from the founding core, highly valued internally, but with a discreet public profile and who has served three terms in the council: as commissioner, councilor for Health and in the opposition. It remains to be seen.
Pop confirms by phone that he had not spoken to the party before launching the idea on the radio: “I jumped into the pool.” A militant from Barcelona in common and a participant in relevant events in the last electoral campaigns, he argues his decision like this: “Now that we are in such an anti-political plan, it seems important to me that someone sees that politics is something that is desired, that it is not something mysterious, that it is worth giving up one’s liver, and that everything has not been decided.” The communicator points out that he knows the mechanics of the elections and that his goal is to be number one, mayor. He does not reveal any name to occupy number two.
He notes that he slipped the idea to Colau, “informally.” And if he broke the news on the 6th, this Monday, on the same program, he explained that he had yet to meet with the executive. The meeting was held: they explained how the system works and the steps to follow, explains Pop. Asked by the party last Monday, this Thursday sources from the highest body of the party neither confirm nor deny whether they have met with Bob Pop. And they refer to a meeting that they plan to hold with journalists this Friday at noon.
At the party congress last summer (the first after ten years of its founding in 2015), the main message sent by all those who spoke at the lectern on the stage was the same: . Recover the spirit with which Colau jumped from the street to the chair of mayor of Barcelona, hand in hand with entities and social movements in the city. Now the idea is also to build bridges with parties with which they have broken after governing the city for eight years, such as ERC and the CUP. “Bob Pop’s presence can be framed in this context,” notes another elected official. Another question is whether the party could convince the communicator to occupy another position on the list and settle for being a councilor. In the chats on day 6, more than one person put the popcorn bucket emoticon.
