The former president of the Generalitat of Catalonia, Carles Puigdemont, confirmed this Thursday in an interview on the program Pla Seqüència of the 2Cat channel that he will not assume the position of leader of the opposition in Parliament, should the case arise, when he returns. "I could not act as such, but, on the other hand, even if I could, it seems to me that someone who has been president of the Generalitat and has held the presidency, which is an institution, it is not correct that they should later have to control the president, whoever it may be," he assured.

Jaume Valls is no longer the coordinator of the ANC in Vilassar de Mar. As ARA has learned, the Assembly informed him that he was being dismissed as the entity's top representative in the Maresme town after it was made public that he will be the mayoral candidate for Aliança Catalana. It did so on September 30, just two days after ARA published that Valls had labeled Sílvia Orriols' party as "fascist" when he was the entity's secretary in April 2024. Sources from the Assembly have explained that the procedure to dismiss him was already underway and that it was not adopted before the publication of the article because the body responsible for making his departure effective first had to meet. The dismissal was carried out via an email in which he was informed that it was incompatible to be a candidate for a party and at the same time hold a position in the entity, as established by the internal regulations.

Fifteen years had to pass, with the 'Procés' in between, for the Crown of Aragon to be made visible once again: it took place at the meeting in the Royal Monastery of Santa Maria de Poblet. King Felipe VI presided this Thursday over the meeting of the Poblet board of trustees with the Catalan, Valencian, Balearic, and Aragonese presidents, in addition to the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun. All together, beyond highlighting the common history with the kings buried in the royal pantheon of this monastery founded in the 12th century, and which is reflected by the four common bars on the flags of the territories, they wanted to celebrate the common Spanish project.

The President of the Spanish Government, Pedro Sánchez, has stood by the spokesperson for the PSOE executive, Montse Mínguez, following the controversy over her partner's real estate properties. When asked from Brussels about the real estate management companies of Mínguez's partner, Sergi Vélez, the socialist leader stressed that he "of course" supports her. Mínguez was ratified this Wednesday as the lead candidate for the socialists for Lleida.

This Friday night marks the end of the legal deadline to register coalitions, and the left-wing parties at the state level still have not reached an agreement to run together in the upcoming Spanish elections. A critical situation that various Comuns sources believe Gabriel Rufián has brought about by reaching a pact only with Podemos, giving it more bargaining power against the parties of the Broad Front.

While the space to the left of the PSOE is still debating leaderships and negotiating in extremis a formula to achieve unity, the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) has predicted an improvement in the result of the progressive bloc as a whole. According to the public body to which demoscopy experts have long attributed a bias towards the left, the PSOE and the Broad Front –without counting the rest of the plurinational majority– could add up to a higher percentage of the vote than that of the PP and Vox. However, beyond this preference for a progressive government pointed to by the CIS –unlike what other private polls indicate–, the October barometer published this Wednesday also places some proper names as the favorites to reach the Moncloa.

Gabriel 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 demarcation, the numbers will reach up to 32 (plus the substitutes), and it has not yet been made public what position 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 born in Zaragoza and a resident of Madrid. But it will not be her 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 started this Wednesday and that will close this Thursday. The name will specifically come from the people who have presented themselves in the Barcelona demarcation.

On November 29th there will be no Aliança Catalana ballot at the polling stations and there is a good number of potential voters for the party presided over by Sílvia Orriols who will look for alternatives. Who benefits most from this situation? For some time now, surveys have been drawing a scenario in which there are two parties that stand out as option B for citizens who, when the time comes for the Catalan elections, are clear that they will choose Aliança. Almost 4 out of every 10 of these voters will opt for either Vox (18.5%) or Junts (18%), according to the latest barometer from the Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO), published this Wednesday.

A sea of thousands of green t-shirts approaches the Puerta del Sol this Wednesday at noon. "Public education for everyone and by everyone," it reads in white printed letters. They are the teachers of non-university public schools in the Community of Madrid, who are starting an indefinite general strike. They advance walking along one of the streets that leads to the kilometer zero of the Spanish capital. Upon arriving, they surround the nearly 2,000 tents that have remained installed in the square for almost twenty days: the first one was placed on the night of September 26th.

The leadership of Esquerra Republicana has already decided on the traveling companions that Gabriel Rufián will have in the next Spanish elections. The party's executive has shored up Mireia Ingla, Jordi Albert, and Laura Pelay as numbers two, three, and four in the Barcelona constituency, respectively, all three of whom have the utmost confidence of the party president, Oriol Junqueras. "Time proves us right: national candidacies, rooted in the territory, are the ones with the most strength to stop Spanish neo-fascism," asserted the ERC spokesperson, Isaac Albert, in a statement issued by the party this Wednesday.

A few days after Vox deputy José María Figaredo opened the door to a change in the public pension system in Spain, the PP spokesperson, Esther Muñoz, said in an interview that her party is preparing a reform of the model because she considers that it "will collapse" if changes are not made. "The system, as it stands at the moment, will collapse," Muñoz said in a podcast, and added that the main problem is that "the boomers" are now joining it, who receive higher pensions. Muñoz states that this issue "must be faced with courage and by telling people the truth, understanding that the model must be changed".

Pedro Sánchez pressed the button for the snap election due to the housing emergency the State is experiencing, personified by the eviction of Maricarmen Abascal, who died a few days later. Housing and, specifically, rents have been at the center of the political debate since then, and the PSOE is trying to position itself as the guarantor of citizens' interests and against speculators. The socialist spokesperson, Montse Mínguez, has been one of the most belligerent in this debate, and now she is precisely the one most singled out by the PP and Junts, once it was published that her partner has a real estate business with dozens of rental apartments. "It is a family business that is dedicated to rentals and complies with the Catalonia housing law," Mínguez justified this Tuesday in an interview on the programEspejo Públicoon Antena 3. The digital media outlet Artículo 14 had published shortly before that her partner has at least one real estate company, Nest Capital, which manages 8 million euros in assets and between 20 and 30 rental apartments. This Wednesday, the same media outlet expanded the information, pointing out that he would have three more companies dedicated to real estate management.

The first barometer from the Center for Sociological Research (CIS) following the housing protests has catapulted the PSOE, which would position itself as the leading force nearly twelve points ahead of the PP. According to the survey conducted between October 1st and 6th, coinciding with the vote in Congress on the Maricarmen decree and the announcement of a snap election, the socialists would obtain 34% of the votes, while the popular party would fall to 22.2%. Regarding the barometer from a month ago, Pedro Sánchez's party would grow by three points (in September the CIS gave them a voting estimate of 31%), while Alberto Núñez Feijóo's party would retreat by 3.3 points (compared to the 25.5% in the previous survey). Unlike the PP's decline, the CIS forecasts growth for Vox, which goes from 16.6% to 17.1% (half a point more) and reduces the distance with the popular party to just 5.1 points, when in September it was 8.9 points.

Former Adif president Isabel Pardo de Vera, indicted at the National Court in the framework of the Ábalos case, shows herself willing to collaborate with the justice system and fires back at the PSOE. In an interview with El Mundo, published in the midst of the general election pre-campaign, the also former Secretary of State for Transport states that former minister José Luis Ábalos and other Spanish government officials had proposed "loyal people" to "place in positions of the Adif executive leadership". "Up to almost twenty resumes", she asserts, and adds that she "always" refused because the candidates did not meet the necessary "qualifications".

Final point. The Court of Auditors has finally applied the amnesty to all the leaders of the 'Procés', including former president Carles Puigdemont, former vice-president Oriol Junqueras and former president Artur Mas. This was ruled by the court this Wednesday in a sentence, to which ARA has had access, and in which it absolves of accounting responsibilities all the former ministers and members of the under-government of the Generalitat between 2011 and 2017 who participated in expenses related to the October 1st referendum and the external action of the Government. It does so after the resolution of the Court of Justice of the European Union –which considered that there was no impact on the financial interests of the community club in the 2017 vote– and in application of article 1.1 of the amnesty law, which rendered without effect the criminal, administrative and accounting responsibility of all acts related to 9-N and 1-O from November 2011 to November 2023.

The PSC would win the Spanish elections again as it did in 2023, with an incontestable victory like the one it achieved three years ago. This is the forecast made by the Center for Opinion Studies (CEO) a month and a half before the elections. Salvador Illa's party would also win the Catalan elections, but with a narrower margin than in 2024, with ERC and Aliança Catalana fighting for second place. This is clear from the second barometer of 2026, which was presented this Wednesday with a survey conducted between September 1st and October 5th, just the day before Pedro Sánchez called early elections.

Polls are stubborn. Both the CEO and the CIS point out that the left of the PSOE would lose support in the upcoming elections compared to 2023 and, therefore, representation in Congress, especially if they run separately. In this context, Ada Colau is not giving up and insists on calling for unity. The former mayor of Barcelona has even offered to step down as the Broad Front candidate and, if necessary, to change the name of the candidacy to reach an agreement with Podemos, although this very Wednesday the coalition officially presented its new electoral brand.

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?

There is probably no historical reference further removed from what the Spanish left claims to represent than Louis XIV. The Sun King, the grandfather of Philip V, is the primary icon of absolutism, centralism, and a lack of respect for minorities. His power in France – and beyond – became so great that, to define it, a phrase is attributed to him that he probably never said: "The State is me".

1. There are no nuances left now. One after another, the European right-wing parties are capitulating, surrendering themselves to the far-right. In Italy, the latest whim of President Giorgia Meloni, who has already been in power for four years, has been an electoral law that gifts seventy seats to whoever obtains 42% of the votes, that is to say, a bonus that minimizes pluralism. And everyone has taken it in their stride. We are in the dynamic of "anything goes".