Bad Bunny, Anuel AA or Gabriel Rufián

Barcelona"For my birthday I want a Bad Bunny figure, an Anuel AA one, or one of Gabriel Rufián". The girl asking for it won't be able to vote on November 29th (for any of the three), because she is only thirteen years old, but at her high school she doesn't need to give many details for her 2nd year ESO classmates to know who she is talking about. Two world music stars and a politician, the one who has the most appeal among young people (and not so young). Although he began his political career in 2015, Rufián is experiencing a second youth in Madrid. Having become the preferred leader for left-wing voters (only Pedro Sánchez overshadows him) and the best-rated in polls (in Spain and in Catalonia), he is currently the most coveted candidate: for ERC, for the Broad Front, and for Podemos. The vote-mobilizing potential of his speech is not disputed by anyone, but, consolidated as a free spirit, the tensions within his party have been growing to the point of becoming a big enough problem that his continuity has been called into question.

Rufián has become a professional politician. He is no longer the novice who sought to make his way by trying to overshadow Joan Tardà –with whom he maintains a father-son relationship today– with fiery speeches and performances in the hemicycle. From the first minute, he made it clear that he would have a very particular role, with a discourse more accustomed to generating headlines and addressed directly to the public. As Esquerra's role in Madrid has become relevant for conditioning majorities, at the headquarters on Carrer Calàbria they understood that they needed to control their spokesperson in Madrid more. And he has not taken it well, especially when he has been relegated to a secondary role in some of the relevant negotiations.

In 2019, the leadership placed Gerard Gómez del Moral on the lists, and in the few months that passed until the electoral repetition, it became clear that they would not get along. The party asked Teresa Jordà to stop being a minister to send her to Madrid in 2023. Now Rufián wants the hierarchy to be clear in the next parliamentary group, without counterpowers. And this is a point of friction that is difficult to overcome, especially when ERC perceives that Rufián has his own agenda in Madrid and when he has been walking hand in hand with other leaders of the state left advocating for a unitary front –which Esquerra rejected–. Even when his judgment has overridden the instructions coming from Barcelona, whether it be the obligation to speak Catalan in Congress, which was established by the leadership provisionally led by Marta Rovira or, more recently, the public questioning of Oriol Junqueras' decisions.

A broken group

The last three years within the ERC group in Madrid have not been easy, to the point that they have ended in an internal breakdown. Rufián practically does not interact with some of those who until now were his colleagues in the parliamentary group. Starting with Jordà, one of the few who has shown a willingness to repeat on the lists. Pilar Vallugera and Jordi Salvador, both critical of their spokesperson, have said goodbye to the front line and the independent Francesc Marc Álvaro remains expectant. Etna Estrems and Inés Granollers, the two deputies closest to Rufián, do intend to repeat, and he also wants more people of his own choosing on the candidacy.

The republican leadership wants to retain its main electoral asset, even though it is working on a plan B that it knows does not have the same appeal – especially if Rufián signs for the competition. That is why it has tried to minimize the clashes in public, even though internally the situation was becoming more complicated. How far can Rufián stretch the negotiation with ERC? Stars, like Bad Bunny, Anuel AA or Gabriel Rufián, have their conditions.