Ex-French PM Valls Bids to Stop Separatists Ruling Barcelona

(Bloomberg) -- Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls is seeking to block a Catalan independence party from governing Barcelona by playing kingmaker for the incumbent mayor.

Barcelona-born Valls pledged his support for Ada Colau to help her stay in her post following city elections held on May 26, he said Wednesday. It’s up to the leaders of other parties “to take the initiative to ensure a sensible and constructive way out" for the city’s politics, Valls said.

Barcelona’s mayoral election went down to the wire, with both the separatist candidate Ernest Maragall, of the Esquerra Republicana party, and Colau, of the anti-establishment party Barcelona En Comu, winning the same number of seats. Maragall was proclaimed the winner because he had slightly more votes.

Mayors in Barcelona are elected by a simple majority in the 41-city assembly. Both ERC and En Comu have 10 seats, the Socialist party eight, Valls’s platform backed by Ciudadanos, six and pro-independence Junts, five.

Valls espoused a staunch anti-independence strategy during the campaign. He fell out with Ciudadanos officials over the party’s refusal to rule out doing deals with the right-leaning Spanish nationalist party Vox.

To contact the reporter on this story: Rodrigo Orihuela in Madrid at rorihuela@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Charles Penty at cpenty@bloomberg.net, Macarena Munoz

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