ERC seeks to turn the campaign into a duel with Illa

Barcelona"This is about PSC or ERC." This is the mental framework that the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) is seeking to impose on the February 14th campaign, which will start this Thursday at midnight. ERC has presented the main axes of their campaign, which they want to become basically a hand-to-hand duel with the former Health Minister and Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) candidate Salvador Illa. "It will be a close call. This is what the polls reflect", was the argument of ERC's Deputy General Secretary, Marta Vilalta.

ERC believes that the close race is possible because the two parties represent opposing proposals. The Republicans, the bet for self-determination, and the socialists, for "repression and direct rule". "The broad path of joining forces for freedom or the path that defends repression", Vilalta summed up. But finding this duel that ERC wants will not be an easy task and they will have to compete with JxCat, who this weekend has made clear that is also exactly what they want exactly.

ERC are aware of this and already have an argument prepared to claim to be the first in line to fight the PSC. They argue that the Socialists got worse results in their traditional electoral fiefdoms when ERC has grown but not when other parties have. Thus, Vilalta has recalled that in recent years they have beaten the PSC in cities like Lleida or Tarragona, which for many years had socialist mayors. Thus, ERC considers that it has done its homework better than anyone else in competing with the Socialists for the big cities and the metropolitan area of Barcelona. "It is ERC who can make a stand in certain areas of the country", defended Vilalta

ERC will have a great enemy when it comes to polarising with the PSC: the pacts it has made with the socialists in the current legislature in Congress. These include voting in the current coalition government as well as voting in favour of the state of alarm and the budget, which they are often reminded of by JxCat and the CUP. But ERC is convinced that they will be able to achieve this duel and they will turn up the volume of criticism against Illa to the maximum. This Tuesday they have rehearsed some of them: "He's the worst health minister in the European Union. He left office at the worst moment of the third wave," said Vilalta.

And what about JxCat?

Unlike the recipe it wants to apply to the PSC, ERC does not aspire to pick a fight with JxCat during the elections. At least, in a direct way. Even so, they are making clear a certain distance between the JxCat proposals and their own. For example, Vilalta has expressed that independence "can't be achieved only on the basis of headlines", after JxCat guaranteed yesterday that a republic would have to be declared if the pro-independence parties obtain over 50% of the votes on February 14. The dynamic of reproaches among Government partners, however, will be inevitable. Today, Borràs has criticised the fact that the Catalan executive has not gone further into debt to help the Catalans affected by the crisis and Aragonès has replied through social media that it cannot do so without the authorisation of the State. "I'm surprised that having been in the Government she doesn't remember how it works", said the ERC candidate.

ERC will start the campaign on Thursday in Mataró and finish in Barcelona, after passing through Girona, Tarragona and Lleida, as well as socialist fiefdoms or ex fiefdoms such as l'Hospitalet de Llobregat, Badalona and Terrassa. The big question is to what extent they will be able to count on the political prisoners. The only possibility is that they will be able to leave the prison, since this time, as they are not candidates, they will not be able to participate in the rallies online from the prisons. The fact that these are crucial elections for ERC is also demonstrated by their campaign budget: 1.9 million euros, 10% more than in 2017 .