Rufián and Montero will share two rallies for November 29th: one in Madrid and one in Barcelona

BarcelonaThe event that Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero will share this Saturday in Madrid will only be repeated once during the campaign: it will be on Saturday, November 21, at Podemos' central event in the Spanish capital. However, the two candidates will also share the stage in Barcelona the next day, Sunday, November 22, at ERC's central event, just as they did two weeks ago in Nou Barris. The alliance between ERC and Podemos, therefore, will finally result in a total of four events until November 29. The Republicans' campaign, led by Rufián, will travel through a large part of the Principality, and will also pass through Palma and Castellón, where the party is also asserting its presence ahead of the next general elections.

Rufián, who this Sunday will star in the first pre-campaign event in Badalona alongside Oriol Junqueras, will mainly hold events in the Barcelona area and will pass through the city of Barcelona, Mollet, Rubí, and Sant Andreu de la Barca, where ERC will close the campaign, according to what the Republicans explained this Thursday. In the rest of the Catalan territory, the candidate will be in Tarragona, where ERC will kick off the campaign on Thursday night, November 12, and he will also be at an event in Lleida on November 18. He will not, however, participate in any of the events that the party has scheduled in the Girona area, where the head of the list is Teresa Jordà. The party justifies this due to the candidate's schedule constraints.

Oriol Junqueras will be involved in the party's electoral agenda for the two weeks of the campaign, as will the Republicans' secretary general, Elisenda Alamany, and both will accompany Rufián at events throughout the Catalan territory. Despite the tensions between the party's leadership and the Republican candidate regarding the formation of the November 29 lists, ERC now wants to exploit the media profile that Rufián has and combine it with the good momentum the party's brand is currently enjoying in the polls, especially after a downward electoral cycle –following the poor results in the last Catalan, municipal, and general elections–. The main challenge they will face, they admit from within the party, is to prevent the strategic vote that the PSOE is prepared to play from eroding ERC's electoral prospects.

"Defend yourself", the campaign slogan

Precisely because ERC now has its main voting border with left-wing parties such as the PSC and Comuns –and not with Junts–, the party has designed a campaign in which it prioritizes the left-right axis, which is what they consider the November 29th elections to be about. "Defend yourself" will be the campaign slogan, to try to demonstrate that the race until November 29th will be about defending rights that could be threatened in the face of a hypothetical arrival of the PP and Vox in government. This does not mean that the defense of the right to self-determination will disappear from the electoral program; on the contrary, it will be there again. But the party will also place emphasis on issues that remain to be resolved this legislative term: implementing the new funding model, the transfer of Rodalies (commuter rail service), and also shielding the right to housing.