The Together pel Sí by Gabriel Rufián

MadridThere has been much speculation about what Gabriel Rufián intended with his proposal. "217 articles" have been written, he stated, immediately after launching the conference he headlined with the leader of Más Madrid, Emilio Delgado, in the Galileo Galilei room in Madrid. But it must be acknowledged that Rufián has finally fleshed out his proposal, although it hasn't been agreed upon by his party and will likely provoke strong opposition from the Comuns and the CUP.

The key to understanding what he proposes lies in two ideas: eliminating competition among left-wing parties in the provinces (understanding "left" as those to the left of the PSOE) and allowing only those with the greatest potential to maximize results to run. He called this "specialization." He then proposed sharing positions with the rest of the Valencian, Basque, Galician, Madrid, and Andalusian left, and joining forces in Congress with an "interparliamentary" group. But how does this translate to Catalonia? In practice, this could mean absorbing the Comuns so they would join Rufián's Left, making him the leading figure of the left in the Principality in the Spanish elections, although if you look at it by province, Sumar outperformed ERC in Barcelona. The same would happen with the CUP, although they decided not to run in the last elections, or with Unidas Podemos at the national level. "What's the point of 14 left-wing parties that defend the same thing competing against each other to see who gets the votes?" asked the ERC leader. Pablo Echenique replied suspiciously: "Let the PSOE run in every province."

Rufián's proposal has two problems: it's practically impossible for the party leadership to reach an agreement—he expects everything to flourish through popular pressure—and uniting political formations doesn't always mean gaining more. Why do the 14 left-wing parties Rufián refers to really represent the same thing? In Catalonia, is the electorate of Comuns interchangeable with that of ERC? Ideologically, the nuances are probably minimal, but in terms of national objectives, the gap is wider. In fact, his proposal could suffer from the same shortcoming as Junts pel Sí, which ERC pointed out at the time: that people from Esquerra would never vote for Convergència and vice versa.

The elephant in the room

That Rufián's proposal makes Esquerra uncomfortable is obvious from the party's minimal presence at the event. Oriol Junqueras chose not to attend, even though he was in Madrid to preside over a meeting of the Republican parliamentary group in Congress. In fact, he avoided the topic altogether at the meeting, which also included Rufián, where the most pressing issues with the PSOE were discussed. This is the clearest evidence that the Rufián phenomenon is the elephant in the room for ERC and Oriol Junqueras himself, although it is true that there was a palpable sense of enthusiasm, or at least curiosity, among the audience at Wednesday's event in Madrid.