Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls will present himself at Barcelona City Hall

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Former French Prime Minister Manuel Valls has announced his candidacy to be the mayor of Barcelona.

It is an unprecedented offer to defend an important political position in a second European country.

Mr. Valls was born in the Catalan city of Barcelona 56 years ago while his parents were on vacation there, but grew up in France.

He was French Prime Minister between 2014 and 2016 under Socialist President Francois Hollande.

In his race to the mayor of the second largest city in Spain, Mr. Valls will be on an undefined anti-national platform.

He has had a tumultuous relationship with French politics in recent years.

Minister of the Combative Interior and Prime Minister of Mr. Hollande, he failed to be the socialist candidate for the 2017 French presidential election.

He then tried to change sides and join Emmanuel Macron's centrist movement En Marche.

But Mr. Macron rejected his offer to be prime minister.

The election of the mayor will take place on May 26, 2019, with candidates vying to face the current mayor of Barcelona, ​​Ada Colau, a former activist for housing and social rights.

A divider candidate

"After a period of serious thought, I made the following decision: I want to be the next Mayor of Barcelona," said Mr Valls at an event in the Catalan capital.

Speaking in Catalan, he said that he would resign from his political responsibilities in France next week.

The Catalan anti-nationalist nationalist party leader, Albert Rivera, thanked Mr Valls for announcing his candidacy – but it is still unclear whether he will be part of the platform of this party.

"There is no one better to recover the prestige of Barcelona and defeat separatism and populism at the polls," Rivera said.

Carles Puigdemont, the former Catalan president who was removed from office in 2017 after a referendum declared illegal, criticized the candidacy of Mr Valls.

"This is a candidate who does not know Barcelona, ​​which is not known in Barcelona," Puigdemont told the AFP news agency in Brussels, where he currently resides, under the threat of a Spanish arrest warrant.

The opinions on the streets were similarly divided.

"I do not know why he's coming here," AFP Laura Bozzo, a retiree in front of Barcelona City Hall, told AFP. "I think that as nobody wants in France, he comes to Barcelona."

David Centellas, an employee of the bank, disagreed, saying that "the international recognition of Mr. Valls can improve the image of Barcelona".