Who will Podemos place on the ERC electoral list?

Barcelona / MadridGabriel Rufián, number 1; Mireia Ingla, number 2; Jordi Albert, number 3 and Laura Pelay, number 4. These are, for the moment, the candidates that ERC has announced for the Barcelona constituency. To complete the list for the district, the numbers will reach up to 32 (plus the substitutes) and it has not yet been made public which one the person designated by Podem will occupy. But who will it be? According to sources consulted by ARA, one of the names that the purple party had put on the table was that of the journalist Cristina Fallarás, a Catalan woman born in Zaragoza and resident in Madrid. It will not be her, however, who finally becomes part of the republican candidacy. Podem, in fact, avoids publicly advancing any name, but assures that it will come from the open primary process that it opened this Wednesday and will close this Thursday. The name will come specifically from those who have presented themselves in the Barcelona district.

While in Madrid the only candidate is Irene Montero, who will be Podem's presidential candidate if the purple party does not finally close a coalition with Ada Colau's Broad Front, in Barcelona thirty-three people have presented themselves, none of them with a media profile. Among them there is, for example, Diosdado Toledano, a historic communist activist—promoter of the ILP that managed to pass the guaranteed citizenship income in Parliament—and who a few years ago left the Comuns due to the "arrogance" of Ada Colau towards Podem. Toledano is one of the 31 people running under the umbrella of Irene Montero's team, called "Peace, Housing and Work". There is also María Pozuelo, the current coordinator of Podem in Catalonia, although her intention was to be part of the list for the Senate; or Imma Moyano, deputy mayor for En Comú Podem in Sant Vicenç dels Horts—the city where Oriol Junqueras lives and of which he was mayor—, a city council with a socialist mayor.

In the pact that the leaderships of ERC and Podem have closed, it has been made clear that there will only be candidates from the purple party in the constituencies of Barcelona and Tarragona and that they will occupy a place that will be below the results that the republicans obtained in 2023. That is to say, if in Barcelona ERC obtained 4 deputies, the Podem representative will be placed below number 4 (the concrete position has not yet transpired) and in Tarragona, number 2 would be the best scenario for the purple party: ERC obtained one deputy three years ago in this constituency, and now the head of the list will be Norma Pujol.

The parliamentary group

Republican sources explain, however, that it is not expected that Podemos will have high numbers on the candidacies, which is why it is difficult to think that the party will obtain representatives in Catalonia. The Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) Barometer published this Wednesday points to a growth for ERC, which would go from 7 to 10 deputies in the lower house. If any of these end up being from Podemos, the republicans could end up having a problem when configuring their parliamentary group: article 23 of the Congress regulations makes it impossible for people who belong to the same party to be part of separate parliamentary groups and also prohibits those who have not faced each other at the polls from separating. The idea at the headquarters on Calàbria street is not to share a group with Podemos in the lower house.