Rufián once again tests ERC's patience

BarcelonaGabriel Rufián's tour to defend his proposal for a broad front of the left makes its second stop in Barcelona this Thursday. The ERC spokesperson in Congress will sit down with Podemos's number two, Irene Montero, after a few weeks ago, in Madrid, his interlocutor was the spokesperson for Més Madrid, Emilio Delgado. In the front row, he knows that the president of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, will not be there – he has justified his absence due to "agenda matters" – but a small representation of the party's executive will be: the deputy secretary-general, Oriol López, and the deputy secretary, Laura Pelay.

The leadership maintains the strategy of not entering into direct confrontation with Rufián so as not to escalate the challenge. However, the discomfort with his spokesperson's attitude in Madrid has not disappeared. In fact, according to various sources consulted, Junqueras himself expressed it in a recent national council of ERC, when he emphatically showed his rejection of Rufián's proposal. The leadership is annoyed with their party leader in Congress for moving forward with his proposal and not sitting down to discuss it with the party. "Junqueras is my friend, he is the best politician of the last decades and I hope he becomes president of Catalonia, and it's okay if he doesn't come. We have talked about the event, but I am not going to spread gossip," he limited himself to saying hours before the event in an interview with El matí de Catalunya Ràdio. Although tension is growing, Junqueras's spokesperson also maintains that he is "very good friends" with Rufián, as he said this Tuesday in an interview on RNE, and that he respects the "decisions" he may make. From the Republican leadership, however, they maintain that they can share Rufián's diagnosis of the situation, but not how to face it. "His proposal is going nowhere," say consulted sources. The leadership, moreover, disagrees that Rufián places the party to the left of the PSOE: "We are the left of the country, ERC is the national left that also wants to occupy the space of the PSC".

So far, Rufián has only obtained public endorsement from his predecessor in the lower house, Joan Tardà. But that has not made the republican leader shrink, who this Thursday will once again defend the need for the left to unite forces in the face of the rise of the far-right. "We have a historical responsibility to stop fascism, we have always done so. We have a president who was imprisoned and shot for fascism like Lluís Companys, and defending that things go well for the Spanish left does not make me less of an independentist or Catalan. The ideal scenario is a PSOE subdued by the left," Rufián said during Thursday's interview.

The unease with Rufián's role goes beyond the leadership and also extends to part of the parliamentary group in Madrid and among several republican cadres. Several consulted individuals reproach him for having an "own agenda" and for defending the interests of the state left. This is a widely shared thesis by all consulted cadres.

This Thursday, however, the republican spokesperson did not want to make waves: "I will be in ERC until they kick me out and I won't speak ill of anyone; the group functions in an unbeatable way".

However, there are also voices that acknowledge Rufián's political value and present him as an asset for Esquerra, because he reaches an audience that the party would not reach on its own. In any case, they do not understand the strategy he is currently following, because they see it as a "power play" with the leadership.

The riff on Colau

In fact, the proof of this "tug-of-war" is, for some leaders, the fact that the Republican spokesperson repeated Ada Colau's statements last week. The former mayor of Barcelona replied to Oriol Junqueras: "I don't need her to bless me to be a deputy." The response stems from the jab that the Republican leader had sent her when he once again closed the door to Rufián's left-wing front by including the former leader of Comuns in the equation. "I went to jail for Catalonia, not because Colau is a deputy on an ERC list," Junqueras stated.

Despite the discomfort, ERC maintains that Rufián continues to be their candidate for the general elections. They recall that the alliances proposed by their spokesperson in Madrid are already practiced by meeting more or less periodically with formations like Compromís, the BNG, or EH Bildu to draw up a joint strategy. This Thursday, however, they will again hear Rufián defend going further by forming a broad left-wing electoral coalition that involves the party with the most traction in each province presenting itself to consolidate votes into a single option. And he will do so hand in hand with Irene Montero, who until now has closed the door to running in a coalition with other state-wide left-wing formations, such as Sumar, Izquierda Unida, or Comuns, despite her party having ended up changing its mind in Andalusia, where it will end up running in coalition.

In this Thursday's interview, Rufián has once again defended the need to unite. "Whoever thinks that Bildu or Compromís will do well by achieving good results with Abascal as minister is mistaken. There cannot be fourteen left-wings and two right-wings," he stated. Regarding ideological divergences with other left-wing forces, he has downplayed them. "We have very few differences, only with the self-determination referendum, and I do not agree that Podemos labels the demand to manage immigration, which must be addressed with rights and duties, as racist," he pointed out, after recalling that Podemos opposes the new financing model, but so does Junts.

Montero: "I would like to team up with Rufián in the elections"

For her part, and from the microphones of SER Catalunya, Irene Montero has insisted on the idea of forming an electoral ticket with Rufián for the next general elections: "I would like it very much. Not just for the elections [...]. We are willing to form a team," she said. Thus, and despite leaving the formula for running together in the elections up in the air, she defended the idea that Podemos can promote the coalition in Spain and ERC in Catalonia, and has not ruled out running as a candidate at the state level with Rufián as the head of the list in Catalonia. "I'm not saying it can't be a path to take," she said.

Convinced that Rufián, despite being an independentist, "excites" many people in territories such as Andalusia, Extremadura, or La Rioja at the moment, she has guaranteed that the "morados" (referring to Podemos) will not exclude the defense of self-determination from this incipient project. "Let no one have the slightest doubt. Spain is a plurinational country and Catalonia has the right to decide," she argued.