Rufián's ERC
What do you vote for, the parties or the people? In general, I recommend focusing more on the parties, that is, on the ideology or the program that inspires them, than on the proper names at the helm. People pass, organizations remain. And if they do not remain, it is often precisely because of hyper-leadership. It is what happened to Pujol's Convergència. Sooner or later we will have to see what happens to Puigdemont's Junts. At the same time, it is also true that without a strong leader it is difficult to keep any organization together: be it a party, an institution, a company, or an association. The balance between the group and the personality leading it is never simple.
Let's look at the case of ERC. Traditional voters are uncomfortable with Rufián. On the other hand, it is possible that with this headliner the party will gain new votes, especially from young people – or not so young – detached from traditional Catalanism. It is another classic dilemma: to concentrate on one's own audience and satisfy them with what they expect, or to open up and attract different people? To maintain the essences or to hybridize? To hold the position or to take a risk? This time, ERC, rather than making a mature decision, has been dragged along by the situation: Rufián is currently a brand of his own that is too powerful to do without. The ERC led by Junqueras has decided that it is strong enough to maintain this free verse, even if their coherence creaks. It is a bicephaly with little risk because Rufián has no room for maneuver within the party, where his current (Tardà and company) is a minority. Junqueras, therefore, has decided that it was fine for him to have someone in Madrid with the capacity for media impact, someone who plays the card of left-wing frontism. The visible face of ERC in Madrid can be more heterodox than in Barcelona.
How many times has Catalanism played with the 'Catalonia inside' and 'Catalonia outside' dynamic? Let's remember the tandem of Prat de la Riba and Cambó. Or Pujol and Roca: the latter, it is true, ended badly. Roca, of course, was very strong within CDC. Later there was the tandem of Pujol and a Duran shielded by his own party, UDC. Pujol let him be. With the PSC it has been different: the party was organically linked to the PSOE from the beginning, so that in Madrid the reference was no longer one of their own politicians. Very soon they lost their parliamentary group in Congress.
The history of ERC, like that of most political parties, is filled with fratricidal battles. In five years, however, it will be a centennial party. Considering the turbulent contemporary history of Catalonia, this milestone is not insignificant. It was born in 1931 in a process of accelerated unity of the left, the most labor-oriented and the most nationalist. The hasty invention worked out well for them, with the quixotic Macià, a former Spanish military officer, as leader: the 'Avi' (the Grandfather), a living myth. Then came Companys, the martyr president, executed by firing squad in 1940. ERC survived the long dictatorship and one of its former leaders, Tarradellas, president in exile, placed himself at the head of the restored Generalitat, although he did not do so in the name of ERC but as an emblem of institutional continuity. An ERC that at the beginning of the Transition practically resurrected from nothing amidst left-wing forces much more established in the anti-Franco movement: socialists and communists.
One of the key moments in the recent history of the party was the leap to independence politics with the entry of Àngel Colom –leader of the Crida– and Josep-Lluís Carod-Rovira –militant of Nacionalistes d'Esquerres–. The move was gestated exactly forty years ago this autumn, in 1986. The first public signal was launched by Carod-Rovira with an article in Avui published on November 1st: A vital necessity: refounding ERC. The comeback of a then-marginal ERC with 5 deputies at the Parc de la Ciutadella began. A decade later, Colom and Pilar Rahola left to found the ephemeral Party for Independence (PI). The ERC led by Carod-Rovira continued to rise, with 23 seats in Parliament in 2003, when it made the tripartite government possible. The subsequent history, including the departure of Carod-Rovira, is well known enough. The maximum number of seats arrived in 2021 with 33 and Pere Aragonès elected president. The Junqueras-Rufián tandem does not cease to reflect the double historical soul of the party's origins. We shall see where it leads them.
