Ruffian: Double or nothing

We've read very different versions of the true meaning behind the maneuvers of Gabriel Rufián, the voice of ERC in Madrid, who has managed, through his own merits, to place himself in the Spanish media spotlight. He himself maintains that his is an honest effort to stop the foreseeable rise to power of Vox and the PP with an alliance of Sumar, Podemos, and the plurinational left. Period. Some believe that Rufián is acting independently, without the support of his party, and that his real objective is to ensure he remains the lead candidate, in contrast to those sectors that consider him a "soft" separatist, whose mission—or assignment—is to dilute the party's maximalist discourse. There are also those who claim that Oriol Junqueras is delighted that Rufián "complements" the official ERC discourse with a narrative more palatable to the non-separatist sectors that until now voted for the PSC or Comuns. And finally, there are the suspicious ones who believe that Rufián is preparing his political future outside the ERC party to become one of the leaders of the new Spanish left, which is in yet another process of reconfiguration.

In any of these cases, it's clear that ERC has a lot at stake in this whole affair, because Rufián, with all due respect to Junqueras, is the party's most recognizable face in Spain as a whole, even though in Catalonia he inspires as much passion as hatred. Therefore, ERC's future also hinges on Rufián's. For the more optimistic, the Rufián-Junqueras combination is the norm. ticket The winner of Catalan nationalism, as were Prat de la Riba and Cambó, Macià and Companys, Pujol and Roca, Mas and Duran i Lleida: pure nationalism and the Spanish flank, working in parallel and with just the right amount of contradiction that the country's complexity requires. Pessimists, on the other hand, believe that Rufián is diluting the party's sovereignist DNA, taking Spain as his frame of reference and destroying bridges with Junts (which makes independence even more of a utopia).

Just as the 1986 reformist operation (Miquel Roca's gamble to forge a Spanish centrist party that would be the natural ally of Pujolism) failed in Spain but catapulted CiU electorally, some within ERC believe that Rufián will fail in his attempt to unite the plurinational left, but will improve his position in Catalonia, especially at the expense of Comuns and the foreseeable decline of the PSC, should Pedro Sánchez ultimately succumb to internal and external enemies. This, combined with the erosion of Junts due to the Orriols debacle and the decline of the CUP, would allow the Republicans to rebuild the pro-independence movement from a position of advantage and become the real alternative to the Catalan socialists.

But it's important to remember that Miquel Roca was a highly skilled politician who enjoyed equal prestige in the Spanish Parliament and among CiU voters, while Rufián has so prioritized his Spanish version and so neglected to speak in Catalan and to advocate for Catalonia's specific interests that a significant portion of ERC members and voters could turn their backs on him. The fact that Rufián and Junqueras practically never appear together, nor make any effort to harmonize their narratives, reinforces this view. Therefore, it seems clear that the political future of the old republican party, which turns 95 next month, depends excessively on a single person, which, besides making Junqueras uncomfortable, amounts to a do-or-die situation.