"The first person to sign me was Convergència": Rufián, in ten sentences

BarcelonaERC spokesman in Congress, Gabriel Rufián, was interviewed this Sunday on the La Sexta programme The thing about Évole, where he has reflected on his career and the political situation. In a preview, the Republican leader already regretted that the independence movement and he himself had distributed "purity cards". Words that They were very unpopular with some sectors of the independence movementThese are the ten most notable phrases said by the Republican leader.

In the midst of an internal debate in ERC on whether it has to welcome non-independence sectors, Rufián has also criticized that the party has not "wanted" to open up to more profiles like him: "The problem is that there are not more people like me in the party in certain places. I am not extraordinary. There should be more people like me in the party leadership and there has not been that will. I should not be the snowflake of ERC".

Rufián also explained how he entered politics, revealing something hitherto unknown. "The first person who wanted to sign me was Convergència. A personality who was a commentator and is now a member of Parliament asked me if I would be interested in talking to Artur Mas, but I told him I was left-wing. I didn't see myself in this world. Then ERC came to look for me through Sergi Sol in a cafeteria where I also wanted to make the leap to Congress."

Rufián regretted that only ERC is affected by its pacts with the PSOE: "No left-wing political force is worn down like we are. Bildu is as good as ever and says, votes and does as we do. The BNG has obtained the best results in its history. And Compromís is also doing well. If you put Etu raso when he was in prison."

Rufián is not considering swapping Congress for Parliament. "I love politics and I will devote as much time to it as they trust me and as long as it pays off. More and more people tell me that they wish I would stand as a candidate for the Generalitat, but I don't aspire to this, I'm working so that Junqueras will be one day. There are things, however, that motivate me to stand for Catalonia, like facing S."

The Republican spokesman has acknowledged that he has "a huge ego, like that of a truck" and has given an example when he landed in Congress: "I was clear that I wanted to win in Tardà, that people would talk more about me than about him. And today I miss this ambition and that someone comes and tells me «I'm coming for you»"Now there are people from antagonistic parties like the PP who ask me to respond to something they have said or have taken issue with, but I have not done so."

Whatever the case, he admitted that he never thought he was irreplaceable. "Every day I've seen my position in danger. But it's good and it's served me well. I understand someone who has been putting up posters for fifteen years, but it didn't last long that people thought he was a crony," he said.

She has also not shied away from talking about the Catalan Alliance, whose growth she understands: "I listen to Silvia Orriols and I understand that some people think that this woman will save them." How to deal with it: "It is Catalan pro-independence fascism, but it is a mistake to call its voters fascists. We must propose an attractive project by speaking clearly about school, work and families. The right is telling people what they want to hear and that is very powerful and they think that it is easier for them to occupy their flat than to not evict them." In this sense, she has made it clear that "it is not being brave to go against the chicken coop, the extreme right excludes part of its country and that is not being patriotic."

Analysing the errors of the Process, Rufián has regretted the lack of confluence with the Comuns: "We were not able to seduce a left that is nuclear and instead of understanding it we vilified it, we despised it and insulted it. This is a mistake. You don't change anything in Catalonia without that right."

Self-critically, the Republican spokesman has spoken of slogans that, in his opinion, have not helped the independence movement. "There are terrible slogans that have done us a lot of harm, such as«Spain steals from us». There is a part of the independence movement, from the Junts orbit, that always criticises us and makes us fewer and fewer but more convinced," he added, regretting that he is criticised for speaking in Castilian in Congress now that Catalan can be spoken in. "If fifteen deputies already do it in Catalan, what harm is there in one doing it in Castilian?

Rufián did not want to go into his relationship with the spokesperson for Junts in Congress, Míriam Nogueras, but as he has done throughout the interview, he has not stopped criticising Carles Puigdemont's party. "It doesn't matter how we get along. I only ask the Catalan right to think that we are several and that we are not anyone's servants. The Catalan right thinks that Catalonia is theirs and that they can evict you because the institutions are theirs," he said. And at the same time he attacked some of Junts' votes in Congress in the social sphere: "The growth of the independence movement cannot be based on the suffering of our people, and Junts is interested in what is best for us."