In defense of broad fronts
After twelve years in prison under the fierce Uruguayan dictatorship, José Pepe Mujica felt empowered to declare: "If we start arguing about our differences, we could spend our whole lives arguing. If we start working on our similarities, we'll spend our whole lives working together for change."
It's no coincidence that he was one of the main driving forces behind the Broad Front in his country. A Broad Front that showed that the left could transform people's lives with honesty, reclaiming old struggles, and inspiring younger generations.
It was no different in Spain. In 1936, after witnessing the brutal reversal of rights driven by a right-wing movement bordering on fascism, Catalonia and the Valencian Community decided to create their own leftist fronts. The equivalent in Spain was the Popular Front, also composed of diverse forces, both more moderate and more radical, but all of them anti-fascist.
These fronts could have been conspired as early as 1933 to block the path to a government close to Mussolini and Hitler. This didn't happen, and the mistake was costly. To avoid repeating past mistakes, united fronts were launched on July 23, 2023, to prevent the PP and Vox from coming to power. The most successful was the one formed by EH Bildu in the Basque Country. Sumar was also an effective electoral tool, but it was born with exclusions that ultimately weakened it. However, with the support of ERC, the Gallec Nationalist Bloc, and other forces not necessarily on the left, such as Junts and the Basque Nationalist Party, the seemingly impossible was achieved: Pedro Sánchez was sworn in and the PSOE was forced to adopt measures it would never have adopted without that external pressure.
In recent years, thanks to the pro-independence forces, social improvements have been approved that have benefited the entire working and middle classes in the state. And vice versa: with the support of the state's left-wing parties, amnesty, recognition of Catalan, Basque, and Galician in Congress, and other decentralizing measures have been achieved.
It's clear that he has lacked the strength and courage to embrace certain structural changes. Precisely for this reason, it's necessary for left-wing parties with a genuinely plurinational outlook and pro-independence movements to recreate and improve upon the front-line approach of those who came before us.
It's not easy. The specific scales and territorial realities must certainly be taken into account. But the mere willingness to understand and the courage in the proposals can inspire many people who currently view politics from a distance.
Is it so difficult to find common ground in defense of the decent housing that young people are demanding? Is it so complicated to identify shared proposals on matters of social and climate justice, racial justice, gender justice, respect for plurinationality, and rejection of devastating wars and genocides like the one in Gaza?
Gabriel Rufián isn't the only one who thinks so. Building bridges of trust among the Republican left would inspire hope in many people who no longer believe that any single party can stop the Trumps and Milesians of our time.
Is the electoral implementation of all this difficult? Well, let's start with the most obvious: meeting in the streets, in the neighborhoods, getting to know each other better, and the rest will follow.
It would be foolish to wait for the radicalized right to gain more power than they already have to make a move. As Pepe Mujica would say, as our Republican ancestors would say, the time is now. We must face it with courage, creativity, and the joy that comes from not resigning ourselves to a dystopian future and fighting together for a country and a world worth living in.