ERC sees Gabriel Rufián's candidacy on track

BarcelonaERC sees an agreement on track for Gabriel Rufián to be the party's candidate in the next general elections. According to various sources consulted by ARA, the conversations remain open and are daily, but the party considers that it will not be necessary to resort to a plan B –the leadership had considered the member of Parliament Jordi Albert– because the negotiations with its current spokesperson in Madrid are advancing. Esquerra opened the internal process on Monday to configure the candidacies for the next general elections and the internal deadline to apply ends this Sunday afternoon. Rufián has until then to decide if he finally opts for re-election in case the talks with the leadership come to a successful conclusion. For the moment, the environment of the republican spokesperson maintains silence.

This Thursday, after it was made public that the leadership was considering an alternative, the ERC leader in Madrid responded with a tweet in which he assured that he wanted to be the ERC candidate, but that he needed to know if the party also wanted him to be so under his conditions. What is certain is that if Rufián runs as the head of the ERC list, he will do so only representing the republicans, although it remains to be seen what interaction he ends up having with the rest of the formations to the left of the PSOE during the campaign, with whom he had advocated forming a common front.

Until now, the leadership directed by Oriol Junqueras had maintained that it could not accept the conditions that its spokesperson in Madrid was proposing, because, from the start, it rejected running alongside the forces that are negotiating the Broad Front coalition. The republican leader had also asked to have his own trusted team in Congress. His relationship with the current parliamentary group in Madrid was practically broken. Two of the current parliamentarians, Pilar Vallugera and Jordi Salvador, have already announced that they will not continue. However, Teresa Jordà does choose to do so, as she is running for Girona, where the current deputy Etna Estrems will also run. Rufián had also demanded to have more capacity for influence in the decisions that depend on Madrid.

The Junqueras option, ruled out

In recent days and faced with uncertainty about the decision Rufián would end up making, several party officials have defended the option of Oriol Junqueras running to replace him. However, the ERC leader refuses to do so because he claims his goal is to run in the Catalan elections to aspire to be president of the Generalitat. The argument that various sources use to defend that the Junqueras option would be ideal is that the authority held by the party president would serve to end the crisis with Gabriel Rufián and also because the party could leverage his profile as a former political prisoner to confront the right.

The tension between the leadership of Oriol Junqueras and Gabriel Rufián has been in crescendo in recent months. Rufián's Broad Front proposal had cooled a bond they had built over many years. The republican spokesperson has held events in Madrid, Barcelona, and Valencia with actors to the left of the PSOE –he shared the stage with the leader of Més Madrid, Emilio Delgado, with Podemos MEP Irene Montero, and with the leader of Compromís, Mònica Oltra– to defend the union of the left throughout the State. Several party officials have perceived this as a challenge to the leadership. If the talks for Rufián to return as the ERC candidate end in an agreement, the next phase will be to see who accompanies him on the list and how the party approaches the electoral campaign.