France’s former prime minister Manuel Valls is considering standing in Barcelona’s mayoral election next year, as a candidate for the Spanish centre-right Ciudadanos party, reports The Guardian.
Valls, who was born in Barcelona to a Catalan father and Swiss-Italian mother, has been a vocal critic of the drive for Catalan independence, which is also fiercely opposed by Ciudadanos.
Asked on Friday about the party’s offer for him to represent it in the election, Valls said: “I would be interested in continuing in the debate on independence and I’m going to study it.”
In an interview with the Spanish public broadcaster TVE, Valls said the secessionist movement had stalled, leaving Catalonia a fractured place. “The separatist project has been killed off by the response from King Felipe and Europe, but the [secessionist] ideas will carry on and the process will be a long one because society is very divided,” he said.
Valls was France’s prime minister between 2014 and 2016. He staged an unsuccessful bid to become the presidential candidate of the French Socialist party at the 2017 election.
The 55-year-old politician has positioned himself as a high-profile opponent of Catalan independence in recent months and took part in a pro-unity rally in Barcelona in March.