Paolo Tomaselli is a member of the RCI who was involved in Barcelona en Comú at the time of the events analyzed below.

In the spring of 2015, radical left-wing candidates shocked the Spanish ruling class with sweeping victories in the mayoral elections of the country’s main cities: Madrid, Barcelona, Valencia, Santiago de Compostela, Ferrol, and Cádiz elected radical mayors that promised to break with the status quo and make cities livable for working people.

This victory raised enormous illusions in the Spanish working class. The tide was turning in our favor. Finally, “our own” were at the helm of the most important cities, giving a boost of confidence to go on the offensive and potentially turn the major cities into fortified strongholds against the central government’s cuts and the rotten “1978 regime.”

The most significant of them was Barcelona, where a former anti-eviction movement activist, Ada Colau, became the first ever working-class woman to be invested as mayor of the Catalan capital and to lead the council for two consecutive mandates.

Ten years later, none of the issues that were at the heart of Colau’s original program have been solved. The cost of living crisis is soaring, and cities are an unaffordable hell for young workers. Most cities are now governed by the traditional parties of the Spanish political regime, the conservative Popular Party (PP) and the social democratic Socialist Party (PSOE).

The balance sheet in Barcelona is stark: now governed by Colau’s former deputy mayor, the “socialist” Jaume Collboni, the housing crisis has reached unforeseen heights. Rents have increased by a staggering 25% since 2018, and 50% of residents of the metropolitan area had to move away from it or are planning to move in the next two years. As a response to these unbearable conditions, a militant mass movement of workers and youth has taken to the streets, with the youth at its forefront, staging rent strikes and mass protest marches for the right to affordable housing. All the while, developers and tourism sector capitalists are making a killing, with profits reaching 14 billion euros annually in tourism alone.

The experience of the Barcelona en Comú (“Barcelona in Common,” Colau’s party) city government is ripe with lessons for us communists on the nature of city governments, their limits and how to potentially use them to advance the class struggle.

This is particularly relevant right now in light of the victory of Zohran Mamdani in the New York City mayoral primary elections. Can one “socialist” mayor make a difference for the working class? What type of institution is a city council? Could he enact change from within the Democratic Party? What are the similarities and differences between Colau and Mamdani? How should communists intervene in the movement?

From the streets to the ballot box

In the period leading up to the 2015 mayoral elections, massive movements rocked Spain against austerity cuts carried out by the right-wing Popular Party in the aftermath of the 2008 economic crisis and against the rottenness of the political system: the “15M” movement of the “indignados,” the “Mareas” defending public healthcare, pensions, and state sector education, four general strikes, the Catalan pro-independence movement, the student movement, and countless industrial action throughout all sectors.

Despite the heavy participation of the masses, the cowardice and class collaboration of the union leaders allowed the cuts to pass through parliament. This led to a shift towards the electoral arena, with the emergence of Podemos and a series of linked local council coalitions that were seen to be challenging the system and offering an alternative.

The 2015 mayoral election was the clearest expression of the attempt by the masses to find a political way out of the crisis of capitalism that eroded living conditions across the whole country.

Barcelona’s working-class neighborhoods deliver victory

Ada Colau became known to the wider public for being the spokesperson of the PAH (Platform of those affected by mortgages), as someone who was not afraid of calling the powerful out for what they are: parasites who prey on the exploitation of the majority.  An honest, relatable working-class woman, who had been involved in direct action against banks evicting those with mortgage arrears—the polar opposite of the discredited, cynical professional capitalist politicians.

Her candidacy was promoted by neighborhood assemblies where thousands of people became involved in politics for the first time, and veteran left activists were finding renewed hope. Like Jeremy Corbyn in Britain and Bernie Sanders in the US, there was talk of “a new kind of politics,” and there was a sense of re-tying the unbroken thread of the Spanish Republic and the revolutionary struggle against Franco’s dictatorship in the 1970s.

These neighborhood assemblies joined together under the name Barcelona en Comú and discussed and approved a program that had a very radical tone, promising a halt to vulture tourism and urban development, a drastic increase in social housing and council services like daycare centers and social services. The campaign spoke about kicking capitalist lobbyists out of the city and delivering it “back to workers.”

The enthusiasm was palpable in every working-class neighborhood. Ada Colau and her team leaned on the active mobilization of these neighborhoods to stage a successful grassroots campaign with massive outdoor meetings and mass canvassing.

The working-class neighborhoods responded by participating massively in the election, beating the hated outgoing right-wing Xavier Trias and electing Ada Colau mayor.

The total share of the left-wing parties reached an absolute majority of 53%, and Barcelona en Comú came first with 25% of the vote. The right was in disarray, and the capitalist press was in a state of sheer panic.

That initial enthusiasm slowly dissipated over the next few years ending up in the traditional establishment parties regaining control. So, what went wrong?

Abandoning the mobilized masses—adapting to the system 

Having won a relative majority of 25% that amounted to 11 councillors out of 41, a debate ensued within BeC on how to govern the city with a minority government.

The correct strategy would have been to lean on the already mobilized masses to, on the one hand, pressure the other left parties to approve the progressive measures of their program, and on the other, to use the council as a loudspeaker to expose the budgetary limits imposed by the central government, tying the implementation of their full social program to the necessity of breaking with capitalism, expropriating empty homes to swiftly solve the housing crisis and the lack of public daycare centers.

BeC correctly offered other parties to the left of the Socialist Party of Catalonia (PSC) to join the municipal government, but when they rejected for their own sectarian reasons despite confirming Colau as mayor, Barcelona en Comú soon invited the old Socialist Party back in. 

After the first mandate in coalition with the Socialists, they even negotiated a deal with an anti-Catalan liberal party to maintain the mayorship at all costs, despite coming in second behind an ERC candidate.

These were the same Socialists who had governed the city for decades, turning Barcelona into the tourism powerhouse we all know and into a heaven for hedge funds and capitalist developers. Old bureaucrats who know the ins and outs of the Barcelona council and whose profitable careers are entrenched with the metropolitan area municipal companies such as the Metropolitan Transit of Barcelona (TMB).

Instead of basing themselves on the mass mobilization that won them the mayorship, they fully relied on council arithmetic and horse trading, accepting the bear hug of the ruling class’s fifth column within the labor movement.

They chose to operate within the limits of what they perceived as “possible,” that is, what the capitalists would allow them to do. The powerful lobbies staged smear campaigns and legal proceedings to try and stop the implementation of their radical measures. This, in turn, fed demoralization and skepticism, demobilizing those who had supported BeC’s election campaign.

Instead of going on the offensive, they cowered and played the game in a field much more favorable to the ruling class.

They ruled that 30% of new buildings should be social or affordable housing units, a measure that already exists in cities like NYC and London, with very limited results.

They limited new tourism licenses in the areas that were already experiencing a high density of tourism facilities and fined AirBnB for breaching their plan for regulating licenses. This did not stop new tourist apartments from opening in the city centre, thanks to loop-holes in the regulation.

At every turn, the capitalists always found a way around the measures implemented by Colau’s government. After all, these are their laws, their state, and their system.

Every timid attempt to regulate housing and tourism ran into the obstacle of the capitalist system. This proves in practice that the issue is capitalism itself and the only solution to housing and over tourism is its abolition and replacement with a democratically planned economy.

Eventually, they were only able to build a handful of social housing units and to halt tourism licenses for a brief period—far too little to hold back the spiraling living conditions of the Catalan capital.

The class nature of councils

City councils are not independent institutions that can become islands of progressive policies. They are links in the bourgeois state apparatus, designed to manage cities according to the interests of the ruling class. In the present epoch, this means managing austerity and other cuts at the local level.

In most countries, councils have limited power to legislate on housing and social services, as these are largely managed by the central state and government. This is not by chance. It is a conscious design to limit the scope of action of the nuts-and-bolts institutions of bourgeois rule.

Communists could potentially use city councils as strongholds of class struggle to show what could be achieved by clearly breaking with capitalism. That is, by going beyond the budgetary limits imposed by the central government. We could use them to expose the system and rally the working class behind a revolutionary communist program.

The key question is to reject the limits imposed by what is acceptable to the capitalist system. Failing to do so will necessarily lead to class collaboration and betrayed promises.

Zohran Mamdani and Ada Colau: a comparison 

Both Colau’s and Mamdani‘s candidacies are an expression of the profound anger and discontent that exist in society towards the political and economic establishment. Zohran’s victory is also a poke in the eye of the Zionist elite, proving the anti-imperialist sentiment that exists in the US, particularly among the youth and a layer of the working class.

Like Colau, Mamdani‘s primary election campaign was powered by a grassroots movement of thousands of people from the working-class neighborhoods of the five boroughs.

The bullet points of their political programs focused on the housing and the cost-of-living crises, and both advocated for increasing social housing to palliate the effect of the economic crisis.

However, Zohran’s program is far less radical than Colau’s original set of proposals, and the reason is clear. It stems from the fundamental contrast between the two: Ada Colau stood on an independent working-class platform, whereas Mamdani is running within the bourgeois-institutional Democratic Party.

If Ada Colau was unable to improve living conditions, confining her actions to the narrow bounds of the capitalist system, the same will apply tenfold if Mamdani wins on behalf of the Democrats.

New York City is the belly of the beast, the richest and most unequal city in the world, where the wealthiest openly flash their power and privilege next to some of the poorest neighborhoods in the country. Even if Mamdani stood on an independent platform like Colau, the pressure on him to water down his program would be even stronger than in Barcelona. The ruling class trembles at the prospect of a defiant and mobilized New York City, as it would be a dangerous example for the entire country and world.

If Mamdani were to break with the Democrats, it would unleash a tremendous potential to use his campaign to set up a new mass party of the working class. Without that, should he win the mayoral election, he is doomed to break his promises and disappoint his enthusiastic campaigners.

Key lessons for the communists 

In the last analysis, the unwillingness of Ada Colau and the rest of the left Spanish mayors to break with capitalism led them to opportunistically adapt to the system and water down their original program. In this epoch of organic crisis, confining oneself to the limits of capitalism leads inevitably to betrayed promises.

The result is that they “change everything to change nothing.”

The main takeaway is that political independence is not enough without class independence and a clear revolutionary program.

For communists, mayoral elections are a matter of tactics and not an endgame. This is not based on opinion but on fact, given the class nature of city councils and how they relate to the state and national government.

We are always guided by what can advance the class struggle the most at a given time.

In Colau’s case, they could have used the city council as a loudspeaker to organize and lead the working class. They had everything: a grassroots organization and a national network of rebel cities. Unfortunately, they chose to adapt and play by rules stacked against them, thus squandering the enormous potential, and ending up in the dustbin of history.

In Mamdani’s case, if he broke with the Democratic Party, an independent working-class candidacy should become the launchpad for building a mass socialist party.

The potential is there and it is the communists’ task to intervene openly in the movement, patiently explain these lessons, and win over the best individuals to a revolutionary, class-independent program and organization.