As the days go by, the PSOE tries to put behind it the crisis over the railway tragedy in Urda (Toledo) and tries to refocus on the campaign that had begun before the accident that left 69 dead. This is what Pedro Sánchez did this Saturday from Tarragona: appealing to the dilemma of a progressive government in the face of the "far-right international" that in Spain is personified by the PP and Vox. The Spanish prime minister, however, added an element that until a few days ago he could not yet use in his favor: the victory of the Democrats in the United States, which is added to that of Lula da Silva in Brazil to give hope to the Spanish left-wing electorate. For this reason, the socialist leader has called for mobilization and has asked for a "broad majority" that will allow stopping the aspirations of the PP and Vox to reach the Spanish government. "If we vote en masse, we send Feijóo and Abascal home," shouted Sánchez.

The 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.

To save the budget, the PSC agreed to legally prohibit the speculative purchase of housing that the Comuns were advocating for. Four months have passed and the project remains stalled, with an unfavorable report from the Council of Statutory Guarantees and without the two partners managing to agree on a common solution to overcome the obstacles. What separates them?

The tragic accident in Toledo has placed the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, under scrutiny. And as the hours pass, the pressure for him to provide explanations about the causes of the accident grows even more, as do the voices demanding he take responsibility. In fact, it has been the far-right that has bluntly called for the minister's resignation and has also filed a lawsuit against him. However, criticism is also coming from the parties that are still part of the coalition government, and the Broad Front has demanded explanations from Puente. For now, the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, maintains confidence in the Minister of Transport, according to Moncloa sources who explained to Efe that they believe the train accident has nothing to do with his management. Puente will appear next Tuesday before the Permanent Deputation of Congress to explain himself. But the PP is not satisfied and also wants Sánchez to explain, having requested that he appear as well.

Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero present themselves this coming November 29th as a bulwark against the right and the far-right, but also to ensure the PSOE does not look towards the right. Both wanted to convey this message in the first joint interview they have given during this pre-campaign after signing an alliance for the upcoming general elections. It took place on La Revuelta, on TVE. There, the interview began with gifts with a message. One of those Montero gave to the host, David Broncano, was a pair of kneepads for Santiago Abascal or Alberto Núñez Feijóo, because they are "kneeling" before Netanyahu and Trump. She added a leash for the dog that the Spanish Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, brought to the program last week. "So it doesn't wander off to the right," Montero said. And this last point was the message repeated most often during the interview.

Now only the president of the 1-O, Carles Puigdemont, is missing. The exile ends nine years after several pro-independence leaders chose this path to respond to the State's repression. Six of the seven exiles have already returned, with former ministers Lluís Puig and Toni Comín having just arrived thanks to the lifting of the arrest warrants. In recent years, the former secretary general of ERC Marta Rovira, former minister Meritxell Serret, former CUP deputy Anna Gabriel, and former minister Clara Ponsatí have also been able to free themselves from exile. Nine years later, what is the balance sheet of the exile?

Gabriel Rufián has spent the last few months calling for a left-wing front for the upcoming general elections, but the only alliance that the republican leader has ended up signing –without an agreement with Ada Colau's Broad Front– has been with Irene Montero, the Podemos candidate. Both, in fact, already held an event together on April 9th in Barcelona and, in recent months, they have been strengthening ties, although their political affinity is not new. Rufián had come to Montero's defense several times in the face of the right-wing's offensive when she headed the Ministry of Equality. However, since when have both leaders known each other? Have they always had political complicity?

Gabriel Rufián confirmed last Friday that he had requested a trusted team to accompany him on the list for the November 29th general elections. "Rufián wants to have trusted people. And who doesn't? Doesn't Miriam Nogueras have trusted people?", he said in an interview with RAC1. When he submitted his request to the party, the leadership reminded him that the candidates who are part of the list emerge from territorial assemblies and are voted for by the membership. He asked to have more room for maneuver to place some of his closest collaborators in winnable spots, but ultimately the candidacy is essentially nourished by people close to Oriol Junqueras' leadership. In fact, the president himself will make an appearance, symbolically closing the candidacy (number 31, with MEP Diana Riba at 32) for the first time he is able to do so: this very Tuesday the amnesty was applied to him. Raül Romeva is also there, as a substitute, who for the first time can also be on an electoral list. Dolors Bassa, however, is not there, who also ceased to be disqualified this Tuesday.

After losing the mayoralty of Sant Cugat del Vallès in 2023, Mireia Ingla (la Seu d'Urgell, 1966) returns to institutional politics. Until now she held the management of the Xarxa Audiovisual Local, and this week ERC has chosen her to be Gabriel Rufián's number two in Congress. A responsibility that a priori will not be easy, taking into account the clash between the republican spokesperson and Oriol Junqueras' leadership over the broad front that Rufián has defended in recent months. With a law degree and a master's degree in mediation from the University of Barcelona (UB), Ingla has already faced unpleasant situations before.

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.