ERC's eternal battle: Who should rule Barcelona?

BarcelonaIt's happened over the last two decades and will happen again this year: ERC will split again to elect its president in Barcelona. If there's a federation prone to internal battles and disputes, it's the one in the Catalan capital. They've already revealed their true colors. The two candidates who will compete at the congress on April 26On one side, Eva Baró, the current president of the Barcelona federation, who has the support of Oriol Junqueras, and on the other, Creu Camacho, president of ERC in the Eixample district and who represents critics of the current leadership. Whether or not ERC joins Jaume Collboni's government will determine the campaign. Barón proposes an imminent assembly to address it and Camacho, to revive the referendum that was suspended in June of last year. In general, internal disputes in Barcelona have been going on for a long time: sectors have been formed and undone, leaders have switched sides, and often the battles have not responded to national logic. However, in general, they have all shared a common denominator: Barcelona's autonomy. Or, to put it another way, if de facto, the federation acted as a countervailing power to the national leadership.

"Barcelona has always been like a third space," notes a leader of the Barcelona Republicans. And one with a life of its own. The most recent example is from a year and a half ago, with the confrontation between Eva Baró and Patrícia Gomà, the first challenge to Oriol JunquerasThe former was the official candidate, while Gomà represented the party's old guard, which advocated greater autonomy for the federation. However, this division has been blurred after the last congress between Junqueristas and Roviristas. For example, Gomà's list included the current ERC spokesperson in Parliament, Ester Capella, who had both been critical of Junqueras's leadership. They have now aligned themselves with the president of Esquerra (Republican Left). Although Eva Baró was Alfred Bosch's chief of staff, their paths diverged in the last national primaries, because the former minister ran against Junqueras—whom Baró supported.

But the battles go way back. In 2004, Oriol Amorós contested the presidency of the federation with Francesc Sánchez. By a narrow margin—a parameter that has also been repeated over the years—Amorós, the candidate who embodied the Portabella faction and who was at odds with Joan Puigcercós, won the congress. Since Jordi Portabella became the Republicans' mayoral candidate in 1999 (he remained so until 2014), families in Barcelona largely defined themselves by those who leaned toward his side and those who did not. These were the ones who advocated for the federation to have a Barcelona vision that defined its own strategy, which clashed with the approach championed by the national leadership, although Portabella sided with Josep Lluís Carod-Rovira, who was at odds with Puigcercós. "The aim wasn't to be a national counterpower but to have a Barcelona personality," notes a leader of the Portabella faction. "The constant questioning of the national leadership, if you're not aligned, ends up causing wear and tear," point out sources within the national leadership at the time, who have no doubt that Barcelona acted as a countervailing power.

The Amorós-Bosch dispute

Four years later, Amorós also faced two candidates: Rut Carandell, representing the critical sector that had run nationally with Joan Carretero; and Xavier Florensa, the candidate supported by the national leadership. Amorós won the congress again. However, the former Secretary General of Social Rights lost the battle six years later against former minister Alfred Bosch to become the Barcelona mayoral candidate. Although Junqueras did not make it explicit, he promoted Bosch to replace Jordi Portabella and won the primary. Despite their initial rapport, the relationship between the two historians deteriorated after Junqueras chose Ernest Maragall to replace Bosch at Barcelona City Hall.

In between, in 2012, after Junqueras himself assumed the presidency of ERC, it was one of the only times in Barcelona that only one candidate presented himself: that of Patrícia Gomà, who had been vice president under Oriol Amorós, but who sided with Bosch in the primaries with Bosch. In 2014, the national leadership, with Robert Fabregat as its candidate, won the battle against Jordi Solé, the candidate close to the Portabellist sector, who withdrew his candidacy a day before the vote because, according to sources from that list, they wanted to "get ahead of the results." Fabregat presided over the federation during the height of the Proceso, from 2015 to 2020.

In the year of the pandemic, the federation was on the verge of once again becoming mired in another battle between two factions: one represented by then-councilwoman Marina Gasol, and the other by then-councilman Marina Gasol. The consensus name endorsed by the national leadership was that of former congressman Gerard Gómez del Moral. "The internal battles are very tough, there is a lot of suffering," notes a former Republican leader. However, since then, the federation has not managed to avoid disputes, and at the end of April, the party will once again vote between two candidates.