More than 1.4 million voters were called to take part in Barcelona’s municipal elections, and just over a half did so (54%).

Opinion polls prior to the elections left no room for doubt: the socialists would pick up the most votes, as they had done in all the previous elections. What no poll got right was the strong showing from the communists, who came second after forecasts suggested they would come fourth.

Despite a lower turnout than expected, overnight, the ballot box brought an end to 40 years of Francoist city councils and opened up a period of profound changes on a city level.

With 34% of the votes cast, the PSC took 14 of the 43 seats at City Hall. They were followed by the communists of the PSUC who, with almost 19% of the votes, had nine councillors. The nationalist coalition, CiU, obtained their best-ever results at the time in Barcelona, with eight councillors and 18.5% of the votes. CC-UCD fared much worse than expected and were relegated to fourth position, with eight councillors and only 16.7% of the votes. For their part, ERC achieved their target of more than the minimum, with 5.2% of the votes, which gave them two councillors.