Ada Colau to Lead Broad Front, Proposing 2% Tax on Big Fortunes
Former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau heads the Broad Front in Spain's snap election, with housing at the center and a 2% annual tax on large fortunes.
Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona, will head the Broad Front, a new coalition to the left of the PSOE (Spain’s Socialist Party), in Spain’s snap election, the Catalan newspaper Ara reported. Housing sits at the center of the campaign, and two of the first proposals are a yearly tax on large fortunes and a law to expropriate homes from so-called vulture funds.
Colau left Barcelona City Council two years ago. Ara says she now returns to politics with the goal of “taxing the rich.”
A coalition that had to find its leader
The Broad Front is the heir to Sumar, the platform Yolanda Díaz promoted three and a half years ago. Comuns, Moviment Sumar, Esquerra Unida and Més Madrid had spent months building the alliance, putting the program ahead of personalities. The leadership question stayed open after the public presentation in February, and the early election arrived before the coalition had settled it.
Minister Pablo Bustinduy ruled himself out, although he acts as a spokesperson during the campaign. The names of Unai Sordo, general secretary of the CCOO union, and Minister Ernest Urtasun were also mentioned. Més Madrid then proposed Colau, and she was confirmed. Ara reports that she first asked for Podemos to be on the ballot too, then accepted without the party. In most provinces she will run against it.
The coalition varies by territory. In the Valencian Country the list formed around Compromís, in the Balearic Islands the alliance with Ara Més has been renewed, in the Canary Islands the partner is Nueva Canarias, and in Aragon the coalition reached an agreement with the Chunta Aragonesista. Podemos joined the first three.
It is not yet known when or in what format Díaz, the founder of Sumar and Minister of Labor, will take part in the campaign. On Monday the vote takes place to choose the new Director-General of the International Labour Organization, a post she is seeking.
Housing and a tax on the richest
The coalition’s roadmap defends the social measures Sumar pushed during the legislature, including paternity leave, the dependency law and increases in the interprofessional minimum wage (Spain’s national minimum wage). It says the transformation “remains unfinished” and promises to overcome the resistance that has blocked further progress.
The candidacy presents Colau as a benchmark of the right-to-housing movement, pairing her background in social mobilization through the PAH (the mortgage victims’ platform) with her time as mayor of Barcelona.
Her first two proposals are:
- A tax on large estates that would make fortunes of more than one million euros pay 2% of their assets each year.
- A law to expropriate homes from vulture funds that own more than 1,000 apartments.
What’s at stake in the 10% threshold
The campaign’s stated goal is to pass the 10% vote threshold. According to Ara, people in the candidacy’s engine room consider it essential for winning seats that are being contested in several provinces, some of them against Vox, and for a sharp multiplication of deputies.
Colau says the coalition is at 8% in voting intention, and she predicts a jump that could take it from 8 to 22 seats. Barcelona and Tarragona are among the provinces marked in red as targets. Ara notes that the polls in Catalonia do not, for the moment, favor the coalition there.
Source: Ara
