Barcelona elections fallout: Now local Esquerra leader Jordi Portabella says he's bailing out of the Catalan Tripartite that governs the city, leaving it a Bipartite without an absolute majority. Hereu, as the most voted candidate, will probably have to govern from the minority. I have no idea on whether ERC will pull out of all its deals with the Socialists or not.

La Vangua is reporting there's a shakeup in Esquerra. They were probably the biggest loser in the elections, losing votes on the right to CiU and on the left to the CUP. The smoke-filled room guys seem to have decided that they're nationalists first and leftists second, and that the Tripartite deal they cut with the less nationalist Left has pissed off a lot of their more puritanical voters, who see any compromise with a non-Catalanist party as high treason. Now they're looking to deal with CiU to see what crumbs they can pick up. This sort of shoots down the Socialists' plan for the Tripartite to gang up on CiU, since one-third of it just changed sides.

Supposedly Portabella is trying to grab control of the party apparatus from evil Roveish political machine manipulator Joan Puigcercós.

Pasqual Maragall resigned as president of the Catalan Socialist Party. He wrote an open letter to La Vangua. Nobody cared. (Cue "Eleanor Rigby.")

Rumor has it that Madrid mayor Gallardón wants to run as number two ater Rajoy on the PP list in the general election, which is coming up in about 6-8 months.