The anecdote of Pío Cabanillas is often cited, who in the years of the Transition, after a stormy UCD congress, said “We have won, but we don't know who”. In current Catalan politics, something similar happens when we talk about unity. We want unity, but we don't know of whom. We know we have to unite, but we don't know what or whom we are referring to when we talk about ourselves."Unity" is one of those big words that, like "progress" or "freedom," become empty concepts when tinkered with by the political class. In general, when a leader advocates for unity, he conceives of it as a concentration of forces around himself. And this, of course, has little to do with authentic unity, which implies mutual approach, concession.I am one of those who think that unity is a false dogma that is often contrasted with division, when its opposite, in fact, is plurality. And in democracy, plurality is necessary. It is the inevitable starting point for achieving consensus, broad majorities: another kind of unity, which does not imply uniformism and which does not generate vetoes.In Catalonia, this kind of unity based on pluralism is necessary. Because the country has very serious problems and calls for far-reaching reforms, which are impossible with a too atomized Parliament, and with a growing presence of the far-right. And this implies forming transversal majorities, which go beyond the limits between left and right, and between sovereigntism and Spanish nationalism. I will be more precise: there are a series of issues (language, health, education, infrastructure) that should be based on a strategic agreement between the PSC, Junts, ERC, and Comuns. They are the parties that can guarantee an operational parliamentary majority.

Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero defended on Thursday from Barcelona a left-wing front for the upcoming general elections. The Republican spokesperson in Madrid was faithful to his most direct and, in some cases, provocative style. Rufián filled the auditorium of the Pompeu Fabra University with slogans to support his strategy to combat the far-right. These are some of those that summarize his speech:

Whatever politicians (and, of course, analysts) do or say is conditioned by a major force, which is the impact of the war in Iran, which has not yet ended because it hangs by a very thin thread, which is the fifteen-day ceasefire. Yesterday, the International Monetary Fund warned states that “it is necessary to prepare for the worst”, because prices will rise, there may be a shortage of products or supply chain disruptions, because there will be no orderly return to normality, money will be charged more dearly to curb inflation, and states will not be able to indefinitely support tax cuts like the one approved by the Spanish government on the price of gasoline. All politics will have to operate under the impact of the war on people's pockets and public budgets. In this sense, this Trump war does no favors to the European far-right partners, such as Vox. But Pedro Sánchez polarizes the vote in Spain and voting against it or voting against the far-right is and will surely be a reason to go vote on the day it matters.From this fear of the far-right lives Rufián's project of uniting the left to the left of the PSOE.In yesterday's event in Barcelona, Rufián gave a headline, which is that Yesterday Rufián asked Esquerra to take the lead in the operation. Esquerra will not officially respond to Rufián. However, the party says that if it were up to Esquerra, the right-wing would never govern anywhere, not even in Spain, that they are aware that democracy could be at stake, but that it is not Esquerra's function to solve the discussions and egos of the Spanish left-wing parties. 

What should be the unitary left-wing front proposed by Gabriel Rufián? Aware that his party, ERC, does not subscribe to the proposal, the republican spokesperson made an explicit request to him this Thursday: "I ask my party to lead this. And if it costs me my position, I'll go home." Rufián wants Oriol Junqueras' party to adopt the proposal and unite, under its banner, this confluence in Catalonia. And in the State? The republican spokesperson in Madrid has argued that Podemos should play this role: "Podemos can help these confluences." The second stop on his tour of the State has taken him to Barcelona, to the auditorium of the Campus de la Ciutadella at Pompeu Fabra University, alongside Irene Montero, Podemos's number two, who has taken up the proposal's gauntlet.

New mass resignation at ERC. After the cases of Girona and Barcelona, where the resignation of more than half of the executives forced the appointment of a caretaker committee, now comes that of Igualada. In this case, all members of the leadership have decided to step down in response to the recent internal vote, which rejected the Rufián path (coalition with Comuns and CUP) that the resigning members had advocated for the upcoming municipal elections. And, as in the Girona and Barcelona cases, they leave with direct criticism of the party's national executive, chaired by Oriol Junqueras.

New mass resignation in ERC. After the cases in Girona and Barcelona, where the resignation of more than half of the executives forced a caretaker committee to be put in charge, now comes that of Igualada. In this case, all members of the leadership have decided to resign in response to the recent internal vote, which rejected the Rufián path (coalition with Comuns and CUP) which the resigning members had bet on for the upcoming municipal elections. And, as in the cases of Girona and Barcelona, they leave with direct criticism of the party's national executive, chaired by Oriol Junqueras.

This afternoon, Esquerra's spokesperson in Madrid, Gabriel Rufián, will present in Barcelona his proposal for a broad left-wing front, which he already presented in Madrid in February. He will be accompanied by Irene Montero, from Podem, but neither Oriol Junqueras nor Elisenda Alamany will be there.And they won't be there because they don't agree with Rufián's proposal to unite everything to the left of the PSOE to curb the far-right. Basically, because Esquerra's objective is to replace the socialists in Catalonia, not to position itself to their left. In the same way that for many years, and still now, first Convergència and then Junts occupied in Catalonia part of the space that the PP occupies in Spain, Esquerra has always wanted to get ahead of the PSC, and therefore Junqueras finds, to put it in current terms, that this is not his war, that if Podem or Sumar or Més Madrid have a representation problem, they will deal with it themselves.From here comes the headline of this chronicle, which is that Rufián is once again testing ERC's patience, and to be more precise, Junqueras', who said that he did not spend four years in prison to put Ada Colau as a candidate. The party leadership has seen how Rufián has started to fly solo, has created his own political and personal brand by expressing himself as if he were the critical conscience of the Spanish left, and goes so far as to recall that he lives in the Basque Country and works in Madrid but does not visit Catalonia much. The situation is ironic, because Rufián is a political creation of Junqueras, the personification of an intuition: for Esquerra to enter the metropolitan area of Barcelona, it was necessary to have a candidate who was like the majority of metropolitan voters. The bet was disruptive and it worked. Precisely because of this, Junqueras still needs Rufián with one year to go until the municipal elections. And Rufián obviously needs Esquerra for his project of left-wing synthesis throughout Spain.Meanwhile, this morning President Illa received Minister Puente at the Palau de la Generalitat, amid smiles of complicity. Puente's reluctance with the chaos of Renfe and Adif in Catalonia is shown by the fact that Illa and Puente concluded this meeting taking advantage of the minister's presence in Barcelona because yesterday evening he attended the presentation of the first edition of the Aena literary awards. The Secretary of State who came to live in Catalonia left after a month. The problems that were supposed to be solved in April are now said to be solved in June. Ila's government has discovered that it was not so easy to solve problems through good governance and reconciliation with Spain, thanks to having an allied government in Madrid. Neither with Rodalies, nor with financing, nor with almost anything. Good morning.

Gabriel Rufián's tour to defend his proposal for a broad front of the left makes its second stop in Barcelona this Thursday. The ERC spokesperson in Congress will sit down with Podemos's number two, Irene Montero, after a few weeks ago, in Madrid, his interlocutor was the spokesperson for Més Madrid, Emilio Delgado. In the front row, he knows that the president of Esquerra, Oriol Junqueras, will not be there – he has justified his absence due to "agenda matters" – but a small representation of the party's executive will be: the deputy secretary-general, Oriol López, and the deputy secretary, Laura Pelay.

The councilwoman of Perafort Elisabet Albujar (Vilafranca del Penedès, 1982), who was number 2 for Junts, on Monday supported the motion of no confidence by ERC to oust the mayor from her party, who had been in power for almost 27 years. The councilwoman did so by displaying a t-shirt that read "Me la bufa" (I don't care), something that the outgoing mayor, Joan Martí, reproached her for. In conversation with ARA, the also president of the Consell Comarcal del Tarragonès reiterates: "It is deplorable and shameful to wear this t-shirt because the Town Hall is the most important institution in the town and it was a plenary session that will go down in history".

In the survey by the Sociological Research Centre (CIS) last June, Gabriel Rufián first appeared as one of the names Spaniards considered as a candidate for the presidency of the State. The percentage was very low, 0.6%, but what was significant was that a leader of ERC, specifically the party's spokesperson in Congress, appeared in the predictions. The Rufián phenomenon has been growing over the months – in this March's survey the percentage had grown to 5.8% –, spurred on by his campaign for a left-wing front. All the sovereignist left-wing parties, starting with his own, ERC, turned their backs on him and the feeling was that Rufián was rowing against the current, even though he never tires of saying that what he defends is what he hears on the street and what the left has always been criticized for: lack of unity. And especially at a time of rising right and far-right. Sumar welcomed Rufián's proposal, but invited him to join the coalition that was already negotiating with Esquerra Unida, Comuns, and Més Madrid. A project in which Podemos, incidentally, is not involved. It is precisely for this reason that the person who has taken up Rufián's challenge is Irene Montero, the number two of the purple party.

Not even a year after ERC elected Creu Camacho as president of the Barcelona federation, the party will once again fight for the throne on April 17 and after an internal rebellion that was seen as a new challenge to Oriol Junqueras's leadership. If last April the officialist list headed by Eva Baró faced off against the list of the critics, led by Creu Camacho; this time the factions are the same, but with changed leadership. Rosa Suriñach, a councilwoman in Barcelona City Council, will be the face of the critics, while the officialists will have Ricard Farin, president of the ERC branch in Horta-Guinardó, as their visible representative. Both candidacies have already presented the minimum required endorsements: Suriñach's campaign stated last week that they had presented "more than double" the 46 required (5% of Barcelona's membership), while Farin's presented "more than triple". And as has happened in recent years, historical figures of the party in the Catalan capital have positioned themselves around each candidacy to bolster each of the projects. Who is who in each candidacy?

Oriol Junqueras has spent weeks actively and passively rejecting the project of left-wing unity that ERC spokesperson in Madrid, Gabriel Rufián, is trying to promote at the state level. The republican leader, however, went a step further this Monday with a more than clarifying sentence about his position: "I went to prison for Catalonia, not because Colau is a deputy on an Esquerra list," he summarized in the context of the presentation of the book by deputy Francesc-Marc Álvaro. A statement for which the former mayor of Barcelona has accused him of doing mansplaining.

Earthquake in l'Ametlla de Mar. Junts and the PSC had agreed to share the mayoralty after ousting ERC from the municipal government with a pact between the two formations after the elections. The Junts had obtained five councilors, the same as the Republicans, but the Socialists (2) invested the former and entered the executive. The quid pro quo was that the PSC would assume the mayoralty at the end of the term. So far, so normal. What is not so usual is that the socialist councilor now does not want to invest the head of her party's list. And this has led to a crisis not only in the PSC, but has reached the government itself and will result in an unagreed-upon handover of the mayoralty.

Carlos Cuerpo and Arcadi España have moved up a rung in the Spanish government after the departure of María Jesús Montero. The hitherto number two in the Spanish executive, however, not only hands over the first vice-presidency and the Ministry of Finance, but also the negotiating power with the so-called Catalan file. Specifically, Arcadi España will be the one to tackle the hot potato of materializing the new financing and reopening talks with Esquerra after the transfer of the IRPF derailed. España was one of the strong men of Ximo Puig's Valencian government and those who know him define him as a convinced federalist and Valencianist, as well as being a firm defender of new regional financing. In fact, he endorses the reform that Montero agreed with ERC. And what do PSC and ERC think of the new minister? The Republicans view him favorably for giving a new "opportunity" to negotiations.In Palau they also look hopefully at the new minister, whom a voice from the Catalan socialists describes as "receptive" to the demands of Catalonia, many of them coinciding with those of the Valencian Country."Arcadi is social democracy made politician, dialogue made ruler, common sense made person," wrote former Valencian president Ximo Puig in a message on X after his appointment was made public. In statements to el ARA, he reaffirms: "He is a person with an open disposition, without closed dogmatisms, with the capacity to listen and empathy." España was Puig's chief of staff during his time in Madrid, also when he was general secretary of the PSPV and when he presided over the Generalitat Valenciana, and subsequently served as minister of Territorial Policy and also of Finance. "Federalism is part of his political culture," defends Puig, who recalls that he is one of the people who has most defended new regional financing within the PSOE. In fact, this is one of the issues that Esquerra values.

Setback for ERC's membership in Igualada to the proposal of a coalition with the CUP and Comuns for next year's municipal elections. The assembly that the party held on Thursday night rejected the proposal by a narrow margin: 34 votes against, 31 in favor, and 2 abstentions, as reported by Nació Digital and confirmed by ARA. This Monday, the municipal groups of ERC, the CUP, and Comuns made a pre-agreement public to run jointly with the aim of ousting the current mayor from Junts per Igualada, Marc Castells. However, after the decision of ERC's membership, this pact now remains in limbo.

The proposal by ERC spokesperson Gabriel Rufián to form a broad left-wing and pro-independence front in the Spanish elections does not have the backing of the ERC leadership, which has distanced itself from it from the outset, and can only boast of having on its side to his comrade in arms, Joan TardàHowever, at the municipal level, their approach is viewed favorably by the Republican leadership, especially if the parties run under their electoral umbrella. This is what will happen in Igualada. The municipal groups of ERC, CUP, and Comuns announced a preliminary agreement this Monday to run jointly in the 2027 municipal elections.

After doing a reset With ERC, the government hopes that negotiations with the Republicans will bear fruit and that the budget will be approved before Sant Joan (St. John's Day), but ERC is reluctant to commit to anything more than continuing to discuss it. While the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, wants to bring the budget back to Parliament between the end of April and the beginning of May and have it approved before June 24, the ERC spokesperson, Isaac Albert, refuses to set a timetable and asks the Socialists to make proposals that allow Catalonia to "gain sovereignty" in order to secure a budget. In any case, the PSC and ERC will resume negotiations this week.

A key thinker of the 20th century died a few days ago. Jürgen Habermas, a German, was born in 1929, during the Great Depression. He lived through the defeat of 1945, the Constitution drafted by the Allies for the new Federal Republic in 1949, the crisis of East Germany in 1989 and reunification, and lamented the missed opportunity of not creating a new constitution for Germany in 1990. Habermas defended a political reality based on three principles: promoting participation and transparency of information. He believed that individuals should be able to distance themselves from events and exercise their own judgment, to think for themselves, but his opinion has been largely forgotten. He observed with concern the drift toward technocracy and the erosion of solidarity. He was a political conciliator and a representative of the Frankfurt School and of the more European, restrained, and analytical German thought. An anchor for stability. His passing is a loss for Europe. He said on numerous occasions that the homeland of Europeans should be Europe, not small national homelands. Habermas thought big.

The seal on the agreement was put by Salvador Illa and Oriol Junqueras in a meeting of just over two hours at the Palau de la Generalitat on Tuesday afternoon. But the pact had been being forged since the previous weekend after days of deadlock. At the Palau and at the PSC headquarters, the strategy of buying time to avoid a parliamentary defeat that would have left the executive shaken eventually prevailed. The party's number 2, Lluïsa Moret, had a lot to do with it, explain various sources to ARA. But to limit the damage, the socialists demanded, in return, a commitment from the republicans to stop positioning the IRPF as a red line. All this, to reset the clock. To get here, however, the conversations went through ups and downs, from tense meetings to lunches and homemade doughnuts to save the negotiation.

A well-known economist assured me this week that there would be a Catalan government budget for 2026. He was very convinced. In fact, he had no doubt whatsoever, after applying game theory, a branch of mathematics used to model situations involving negotiation, conflict, competition, cooperation, and other similar interactions. This theory aims to determine the best possible strategy for each player and the expected outcome of each situation. Games can be zero-sum (the gains or losses of some players are offset by the gains or losses of others) or non-zero-sum, meaning everyone can win or lose.