Jordi Martí wins Junts primary to lead party into Barcelona mayoral race, defeating Pilar Calvo and two others

The primary vote

Jordi Martí secured the nomination with 253 votes (40.29%), ahead of congressional deputy Pilar Calvo, who received 184 votes (29.30%). Lawyer Jaume Alonso-Cuevillas placed third with 117 votes (18.63%), and parliamentarian Glòria Freixa took 70 votes (11.15%). Four blank ballots were cast. Voter turnout reached 67.24%, with 628 of 934 registered party members participating. The provisional result was announced Sunday evening, and the final certification will come on 23 June once any appeals are resolved.

Martí’s long career beside Trias

Martí, born in Barcelona in 1961, has been a fixture in city politics for over 15 years. He joined Convergència in 1979 at 18, motivated by the post-Franco transition and the restoration of the Generalitat. After earning a law degree from the University of Barcelona, he began working for Jordi Pujol’s regional government. By 1988 he was a technical advisor to Xavier Trias, then health minister, and later served as his chief of staff across two departments. He followed Trias to Madrid as a congressional deputy from 2000 to 2004 and, after a stint in the private sector, returned to his side when Trias won the mayoralty in 2011.

Trias’s chosen heir

When Trias decided to retire definitively after failing to reclaim the mayor’s office in 2023, he designated Martí as his successor. Trias stayed an extra year in the city council specifically to smooth the handover. The pair’s personal bond is so close that Trias officiated Martí’s wedding in the Saló de Cent on 7 October 2023. Trias’s public endorsements of Martí have been frequent, and his support was visible again on Saturday, reinforcing Martí’s claim as the political heir.

A primary forced from below

The leadership under Carles Puigdemont had hoped to avoid a contested vote. It preferred Josep Rius, the party vice-president and a close Puigdemont ally, as the candidate. Martí refused to step aside, however, and Rius eventually withdrew, issuing a letter that included reproaches aimed at Martí. That opened the field to Calvo, Freixa and Alonso-Cuevillas. Calvo’s late entry surprised many; she had backing from the party’s Madrid spokesperson Miriam Nogueras and Puigdemont’s lawyer Gonzalo Boye, whose appearance at a campaign event was widely seen inside the party as a signal of leadership support for Calvo over Martí.

If I am not elected mayor… screw you all.

What comes next

Junts now turns to preparing for the municipal election, where it aims to recover the mayoralty it lost in 2023 when a last‑minute pact handed the office to Jaume Collboni despite Trias’s electoral win. Martí’s challenge will be to rebuild a party whose Barcelona support collapsed after the 2015 loss to Ada Colau and only recovered when Trias ran again under the personalist banner “Trias per Barcelona.” Without Trias on the ballot, polls have again shown the party’s numbers sliding. Martí’s allies believe his institutional experience and Trias’s legacy can reverse that trend.