The left-wing front of Rufián and Tardà does not guarantee victory

BarcelonaThe idea of a left-wing electoral front, promoted by Gabriel Rufián and Joan Tardà, doesn't seem to be gaining traction at the moment. The ERC leadership itself has dismissed it, and some of the parties the Republican duo is appealing to, such as the Comuns, Sumar, and the CUP, have also dampened the enthusiasm. Would this electoral unity benefit the left?

At a time of widespread voter disillusionment—easily verifiable in polls, beyond the CIS—and when the far right is gaining ground in both the polls and at the ballot box, invoking a Republican front is no trivial matter. The prime example in Spain is the Popular Front of the left in 1936, which won the elections to oust the right-wing government, just months before the outbreak of the Civil War. Even the PSOE participated in a coalition then that was presented as a contest between two ideological blocs. But by no means are all experiences of electoral unity successful at the polls.

In the recent history of Catalonia, the greatest experiment in unity was Junts pel Sí, an electoral coalition between Convergència and ERC, the two major pro-independence parties. They filled rallies and generated enthusiasm among a significant portion of the electorate, but fell short of the absolute majority for which this instrument had been created. The 62 seats they won in the 2015 elections represented, in effect, a loss of 9 seats compared to the 2012 elections, when ERC and CiU, running separately, won 71. The biggest beneficiary was the CUP, which increased its representation from 3 to 10 seats thanks to the support of the left-wing parties.

Electoral incentives

The electoral system, and especially the size of the constituencies, is relevant when forming a candidacy. The smaller the constituencies, the less proportional they are, and therefore, the greater the incentive for coalitions (that is, for fielding fewer candidates). In the 2016 repeat elections, Podemos and Izquierda Unida joined forces thinking they would grow exponentially, only to find they gained a single seat (and lost 3% of the vote). Capturing voters' hopes now seems to be the incentive for Rufián and Tardà, regardless of the results achieved by this left-wing front, which, incidentally, already existed in Catalonia between 2000 and 2011 in the Senate elections. The majority electoral system in the upper house made it advisable.

The week's details

At Christmas, politicians take stock of the year from their positions in government, such as Sánchez, Isla, and the regional presidents; from the opposition—Feijóo and Puigdemont, although the Junts leader does so as the 130th president—and also from Òmnium and the ANC. This year, a new figure has joined them: Paco Camps's message, recorded on a mobile phone in low light, which seeks to return to the forefront of politics in the Valencian Community.

During 2025, the news that most interested readers of the Politics section of ARA was the one that explained the proposal by privatize Silvia Orriols' pensions; followed by the audio recordings that Koldo García collected about the Process; from the Balearic Vox deputy who defends Catalanand a couple of references in Ada Colau and in Concepción Veray, the delegate of the Andalusian government in Catalonia.