Friday is the deadline to present coalitions for the upcoming general elections and, at this moment, negotiations between the parties to the left of the PSOE remain open. In 2023, the agreement to form Sumar arrived at the last minute (with Podemos inside, despite the veto on Irene Montero) and, this year, it is on its way to being resolved for better or worse at the last minute as well. In fact, the stumbling block remains how to unite the parties that make up the Broad Front – Moviment Sumar, United Left, Más Madrid, and the Comuns – with Podemos, which right now would run alone. The purple party, however, has sought an alliance with Gabriel Rufián and ERC, wanting it to be a catalyst and a way to put pressure on the Broad Front in the negotiation. Are there possibilities for a joint candidacy? What would happen with ERC if Podemos integrates into the Broad Front?

After announcing that Gabriel Rufián will be their candidate in the next general election, ERC held a press conference this Tuesday to rule out any collaboration with state-wide left-wing parties that goes beyond incorporating members of Podemos into their lists. In fact, the party spokesperson, Isaac Albert, avoided answering the Comuns' criticism regarding the alliance with the purple party and once again shut the door on being part of the state-wide Broad Front coalition currently being negotiated by Sumar, Comuns, Esquerra Unida, and Més Madrid. However, the republican leader's words were contradicted by Rufián himself in a post on X: "ERC and Comuns must talk, listen to each other, and understand each other to unblock the situation. Beyond vetoes and hatreds that matter to no one. And I am on that. And I will do it until the end." "What cannot be is that the way to respond to the extreme right is to dilute the ERC acronym. ERC will run in Catalonia as ERC," replied Albert at the press conference.

After a week of negotiations, ERC has confirmed that Gabriel Rufián will be the party's candidate in the upcoming general elections. It did so in a statement in which it announced that he will be the number one on the republicans' list for Barcelona. According to Rufián's circle, he has reached an understanding with Podem so that the purple party "does not run in Catalonia" and asks for the vote for ERC, something that sources from Oriol Junqueras' party leadership confirm.

With twelve years of delay, in the month of January, the then Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, presented a new autonomous financing model. It was the first time that such progress had been made since the 2009 reform, also promoted by the PSOE, although that reform arrived with the consensus of all the communities governed by the socialists –those of the PP voted against it– and also with the specific endorsement of the tripartite that was then piloting the Generalitat. A very different situation from the current one, because Montero presented a reform that only Catalonia and the Canary Islands have endorsed and that has had to overcome an adverse electoral cycle for the Moncloa. "Do you want me to wrap myself in an estelada in Andalusia?", the former minister said to ERC, recalls a consulted source. The Andalusian elections in May –with Montero as the socialist candidate–, in fact, caused the calendar to be delayed. So much so, that it has not even reached the council of ministers table.

ERC sees an agreement on track for Gabriel Rufián to be the party's candidate in the next general elections. According to various sources consulted by ARA, the conversations remain open and are daily, but the party considers that it will not be necessary to resort to a plan B –the leadership had considered the member of Parliament Jordi Albert– because the negotiations with its current spokesperson in Madrid are advancing. Esquerra opened the internal process on Monday to configure the candidacies for the next general elections and the internal deadline to apply ends this Sunday afternoon. Rufián has until then to decide if he finally opts for re-election in case the talks with the leadership come to a successful conclusion. For the moment, the environment of the republican spokesperson maintains silence.

Esquerra opened its internal process on Monday to choose its candidate for the next general elections, and Gabriel Rufián has not yet confirmed whether he wants to represent the party in Madrid again. In fact, negotiations between the leadership and Rufián remain open, without any agreement having been reached so far. The relationship between Rufián and the republican leadership has been tense for some time, especially after the republican spokesperson launched a push for a left-wing front across the State—which the ERC leadership rejects. The party, however, has finally decided to seek a plan B in case Rufián ends up declining to lead the candidacy and has already put forward an alternative name, that of deputy Jordi Albert, as reported by El Periódico and confirmed by ARA. Albert has already begun collecting endorsements to present his candidacy.

In September two years ago, Ada Colau put a full stop to her institutional political career. A full stop because at that moment, despite leaving the Barcelona city council one year after losing the mayoral staff that she had held in her hand for eight years, she did not close the door to running for re-election in the 2027 municipal elections. During the last two years, and having also formally abandoned the leadership of the Comuns in Catalonia, her political role has taken a back seat: she has led the Sentit Comú Foundation, the think tank of the Comuns, and has combined it with an incursion into entities and parties of the international left.

The former president of the Generalitat Carles Puigdemont has declared the end of the "political repression" stage following the 1-O, after the Constitutional Court fully endorsed the amnesty. The decision represents, he said, a defeat for the various Spanish public powers that have put obstacles in the way of the law's application "for strictly political reasons." The institutional appearance of the former head of Government took place this afternoon, a few hours after the Supreme Court also announced the lifting of his arrest warrant, which represents the first definitive step for him to return from exile to Catalonia. The leader of Junts has claimed the "enormous political importance" of the law, which disavows the repression and makes it evident that "this was not the way." However, he warned that the political conflict with the State remains in force: "In terms of the Catalonia-Spain relationship, nothing is solved today [...]. The amnesty is not in itself a solution," he claimed from Waterloo.

When Pedro Sánchez called general elections in 2023, just after the Socialists' heavy defeat in the regional and municipal elections, Alberto Núñez Feijóo already saw himself as the winner. The pools of potential ministers were repeated throughout the campaign, and the speculations were primarily about whether the PP would reach 160 deputies and how far it would be willing to concede to Vox. No one, or very few, predicted that Pedro Sánchez would hold on to Moncloa. For this reason, the results of that July 23rd spread a sense of disappointment within the party towards the person who was supposed to save them from 'Sanchismo'. But they gave him a vote of confidence, taking into account that he had been at the head of the PP for little more than a year. That was the argument: Feijóo still lacked experience. Almost a year has passed and the popular leader now finds himself at the match point of his political career.

Gabriel Rufián has spent the last few months asking left-wing and pro-sovereignty political forces to form a common front to run under the same umbrella for the upcoming general elections, which since this Monday already have a date, November 29. The current ERC spokesperson in Congress, however, has been rebuffed by most formations in this space, especially from his own party, which has strained relations with Oriol Junqueras' leadership. With November 29 in sight, Esquerra activates this very Monday the internal mechanisms to configure the candidacy for the next general elections and Rufián leaves it up in the air whether he will be the party's candidate: he admits that he is "reflecting" on what his role should be in the next elections. The republicans' leadership, however, maintains that he is their bet. "He is the best candidate," stated the party's general secretary, Elisenda Alamany, in a press conference.

Gabriel Rufián asked this Friday for "a cool head" from Pedro Sánchez when deciding whether to press the red button to call early elections. The republican spokesperson said this because on the left of the PSOE there is "nothing to add up" – the Sumar space has not yet chosen a visible face nor has it negotiated what its coalition will be like –. This has been one of Rufián's obsessions for months: to bring together the left-wing and pro-independence forces from across the State into a broad front to try to maximize the vote – a proposal that has met with the frontal rejection of Oriol Junqueras –. But beyond how this space is reconfigured, Rufián ignored that if the Spanish legislature ends, the main pacts that ERC still has to fulfill will also be left as dead letters. Without going any further, the new financing model for Catalonia, the star pact that led ERC to invest Salvador Illa, would not see the light of day.

Gabriel Rufián has gone up to the Congress rostrum with a stack of papers, some keys, and a 50-euro bill in his pocket. The stack of papers was to show the hundreds of messages he claims to have received from people asking for ERC to vote in favor of the two housing decrees. The keys, he said, were to his home, which is not his own, he added. And the 50-euro bill was to send a message to Junts: "This is their estelada." While it is already common for the republican spokesperson to repeatedly send darts at Junts in his speeches in Congress, this Friday he dedicated his entire intervention to attacking heavily against the no from Junts to the two housing decrees that are to be validated in Congress this morning. And he made a promise: "For as long as I remain in politics, I will strive to ensure you end up in the greatest ostracism".

In a week marked by housing across the country, Salvador Illa began the general policy debate on Tuesday with a set of measures to resolve the crisis that has been dragging on for years. The president announced a 25 million euro fund to prevent evictions similar to those of Maricarmen Abascal and also a program with which the Government will offer the option to Catalans over forty years old to share the ownership of their home – 50% of the home would remain with the public administration, which would cede ownership for forty or fifty years –. It is this last measure that has not received the endorsement of Parliament because the Comuns abstained. A setback for the executive, considering that the one who has derailed this resolution is one of the two investiture partners. ERC, on the other hand, voted in favor.

Junts will bring to a vote this Thursday the reprobation of the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa. It has little chance of succeeding, because one of the Government's partners, ERC, has already closed the door to voting in favor. However, the 'juntaires', besides wanting to reprove Illa, also want Parliament to request the dismissal of the Ministers of Interior and Education, Núria Parlon and Esther Niubó, due to the crises open in their two departments. The CUP also proposes reproving the Government's management for the "systematic non-compliance" of Parliament's agreements, just like the PP, although in their case, due to the "subordination" they consider the Catalan executive has to the Spanish one and to the pro-independence parties. Beyond these requests, in this Thursday's debate the groups are also bringing to a vote a battery of measures regarding housing, precisely the week that two housing decrees, which the Council of Ministers approved on Tuesday after negotiations, are to be validated in Congress in extremis.

The star agreement that the PSC and ERC signed for the investiture of Salvador Illa involved moving forward with a new financing model for Catalonia. In that pact, however, socialists and republicans also signed a commitment that went more unnoticed and which, two years later, has not materialized: creating a national convention to resolve Catalonia's political conflict. A forum that, under other names, was tried at the beginning of the process when the National Pact for the Right to Decide and, later, the National Pact for the Referendum were first promoted. The last mechanism that was put into operation was the dialogue table between the Generalitat and the Spanish government, but with the investiture of Salvador Illa, it was formally deactivated. The republicans are returning to the fray, proposing a new parliamentary vote along the lines of the one they already won last year during the general policy debate, with the support of the PSC, Junts, Comuns and the CUP. This year, Esquerra is bringing this issue up again in one of the resolution proposals that will be debated in the chamber and is going one step further: it is trying to set an initial calendar.

Amnesty for Marta Rovira. The Barcelona Court has applied the law to the former secretary general of ERC, who still had an open case for disobedience following the 1-O, according to the court resolution to which ARA has had access. This is the case that the Supreme Court opened against her in 2018 and which led her to go into exile in Switzerland. At that time, the high court accused her of a crime of rebellion, which became sedition starting in 2019 and, after the reform of the Penal Code, was reduced to a crime of disobedience. In May of this year, the Supreme Court decided that it was not competent to resolve this case and transferred it to the Barcelona Court, which closed it this Tuesday by applying the amnesty law. Rovira faced a possible sentence of disqualification, but was no longer at risk of being sentenced to prison.

Pedro Sánchez has tried to send a message this Sunday in response to the pressure from the streets for the Spanish government to approve the new housing decree this very Tuesday. In fact, he addressed Maricarmen Abascal directly, the 87-year-old woman who was evicted on Wednesday and who this Saturday asked him directly—through a video recorded from the Gregorio Marañón Hospital in Madrid—to approve this regulation to prevent a case like hers from being repeated. "Maricarmen, I have a message for you: we are working against the clock to bring the royal decree on housing on Tuesday," affirmed Sánchez. "It is not a matter of ideology, but of humanity," he added at a PSOE event in Madrid in Getafe to present his mayoral candidates for next year's municipal elections. Furthermore, the Spanish president also promised that on Tuesday the Council of Ministers will approve an extension until the end of the year for the measures that include the social shield that was approved a few months ago to deal with the war in Ukraine.

The eviction of Maricarmen Abascal has triggered a wave of indignation that was visible on Wednesday in the streets of Madrid, Barcelona, and various cities across the State, and it was repeated this Saturday in a demonstration in the center of the Spanish capital that ended in an encampment. Under the slogan Not one more Maricarmen, thousands of people gathered at the Puerta del Sol, where the seat of the government of the Community of Madrid is located, to walk to the Madrid City Hall and finish at the Congress of Deputies. In total, 25,000 people took to the streets, according to the Spanish government delegation – 300,000 according to the organizers. The Madrid Tenants' Union ended the demonstration by calling for an encampment at the Puerta del Sol, and tents spread across this square in the center of Madrid throughout the night.

Last Wednesday, from New York, Pedro Sánchez described the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal as a "social tragedy" and immediately pledged to push forward the new housing decree that, until now, had been kept in a drawer due to a lack of parliamentary support – the Spanish government was supposed to present the regulation before the summer. The Spanish government is negotiating against the clock with its partners for a new decree so that it can be on the table of the Council of Ministers this very Tuesday. Junts and the PNV on one side and Sumar and Podemos on the other are the ones with the most opposing positions.

Ada Colau is willing to take a step forward within the space to the left of the PSOE ahead of the next general elections. According to knowledgeable sources, the former mayor of Barcelona has changed her mind over the last few weeks and, after ignoring the siren calls of her party colleagues on several occasions, she has agreed to start working to promote a broad left-wing front in the State and to position herself as one of the main leaders, at a time when the post-Yolanda Díaz left is short on references.