Colau accuses Junqueras of mansplaining her: "I don't need him to bless me to be a deputy"

BarcelonaOriol Junqueras has spent weeks actively and passively rejecting the project of left-wing unity that ERC spokesperson in Madrid, Gabriel Rufián, is trying to promote at the state level. The republican leader, however, went a step further this Monday with a more than clarifying sentence about his position: "I went to prison for Catalonia, not because Colau is a deputy on an Esquerra list," he summarized in the context of the presentation of the book by deputy Francesc-Marc Álvaro. A statement for which the former mayor of Barcelona has accused him of doing mansplaining.

"He mentions me very gratuitously," she reacted this morning in the context of a discussion on Els Matins on 3Cat, where she recalled: "I have already said that I am not a candidate for anything, I do not hold any institutional office." And it was then that Colau, who currently chairs the Comuns foundation, defined Junqueras's statements as "a bit of mansplaining": "If I wanted to be a deputy, I can run with my political party and I don't need Oriol Junqueras to bless me," she concluded.

The former mayor, who recalled visiting the president of Esquerra in prison "several times," attributed her words to the "discomfort" caused by "the role Gabriel Rufián is playing," whom she defended. Colau, in fact, has advocated for any initiative that aims for a "broad and encouraging front" of the left to stop a possible government of the far-right in Spain. "We have to work towards this horizon," she said.

Regarding the talk on April 9 that Rufián will star in Barcelona with Podemos MEP Irene Montero, Colau said she probably won't be able to attend, but she advocated for these types of events and showed herself willing to participate in another organized by the Republican spokesperson in Congress. Junqueras also stated on Tuesday that "very probably" he would not go to the event, just as he did not go to the one organized by his deputy in Madrid. "We have many commitments on the agenda with our social and municipal reality," he argued in an interview on Telecinco.