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.

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.

The ERC deputy in Congress Francesc-Marc Álvaro presented the book, but it was another republican in Madrid who took the party president's message. "I went to jail for Catalunya, not because Colau is a deputy on an Esquerra list." Oriol Junqueras has cut short the unitary list of the left promoted for weeks by Gabriel Rufián with the collaboration of his former colleague in the lower house, Joan Tardà. In fact, a few days ago Tardà himself suggested in an interview in Público that Colau be number 2 on a list headed by Rufián and that David Fernàndez (CUP) also be in third position.

In an interview yesterday in La Vanguardia, the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo stated that Pedro Sánchez is delaying the application of the amnesty to Carles Puigdemont. It is not new. Before, Feijóo had already said that Sánchez has deceived Carles Puigdemont with the amnesty law.

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.

"A party that has had Francesc Macià, Lluís Companys, Josep Irla, Josep Tarradellas, and Pere Aragonès is above all else." The president of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, asserted this Friday the importance of his party, above any specific dispute, including regarding the candidates. "We are not afraid of anything," he responded in an interview with Ser Catalunya when asked if he feared that Gabriel Rufián might leave ERC in search of a national left-wing front. "ERC goes far beyond all of that," he insisted, adding that "if we weren't afraid of prison, how can we be afraid of anything else, much less this?"

Any news we discuss here must be understood within the context of a war that increasingly affects us. War first in Ukraine, and now in Iran and Lebanon. The price of oil has climbed again, and we know that when gasoline goes up, everything else goes up. Our economy currently depends on two politicians, Netanyahu in Israel and Trump in the United States, who don't care about any of this because war gives them free rein to do whatever they want. For example, Israel has attacked the world's largest gas fieldSo this war, which the United States has called "Epic Fury," is bringing us epic inflation and epic disaster, like everything Trump's inept finger touches, especially when he lets himself be swayed by the Israeli lobby and trusts his intuition more than his generals. It's becoming clearer every day that the United States won't bring down the ayatollahs' regime with bombings and targeted assassinations.

This is evidence that Catalonia needs a new budget after two extensions. It is also evidence that the negotiating strategies of the PSC and ERC to reach an agreement had reached a dead end. With the Catalan government's decision to withdraw the budget proposal (a gesture unprecedented in Catalan politics) and ERC's announcement that it is willing to negotiate without red lines, the situation has been unblocked, and a possible agreement before the summer is now in sight.

John von Neumann was not particularly fond of lanterns –Deception—in poker games—but the father of Game Theory recognized its usefulness in keeping any zero-sum negotiation on edge. Of course, he also warned that one had to know how to play them. To begin with, the success of any lantern It depends on whether the other party—Von Neumann's study focused primarily on two-way negotiations—can consider it plausible. And this is precisely where the negotiating strategy between ERC and PSC regarding the 2026 budget has failed. Salvador Illa set a deadline, March 20, for the Republicans to stop dragging their feet and engaging in a game of chicken—another concept from Game Theory, which explains that both sides move toward the precipice without wanting to be the first to concede—that has ended in a stalemate. The PSC and ERC have given each other more time because it was the only way to ensure that no one loses.

This morning, around eight o'clock, the Catalan Government and Esquerra Republicana staged the pact they reached last night, which we discussed yesterday in our analysis and which we anticipated this morning in the print edition of ARA:

Salvador Illa's government continues to pressure ERC to approve the budget before taking it to the Catalan Parliament, but the Republicans are holding firm. Negotiations are at a standstill, awaiting a move from the Spanish government that, so far, has not materialized. The Republicans insist that the PSOE must commit to passing the necessary reforms in Congress so that Catalonia can assume full control of the personal income tax (IRPF), and that without this commitment, they will not even discuss the budget. This was reiterated on Saturday by ERC president Oriol Junqueras during the party's 95th anniversary celebration, which drew 400 people to Barcelona's Estació del Nord train station. The leader of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) took advantage of the historical review of the party's trajectory, which was presented before his parliamentary session and recalled that hundreds of members were murdered, imprisoned (like himself), or forced into exile, to emphasize that no adversity will break them. "There is no room for despair or losing faith. Any past moment was worse; the difficulties were far more significant than passing a budget, and we are accustomed to pressure. If prisons haven't broken us, neither will any pressure," Junqueras warned, in response to the Catalan government's push for his party's support for a budget that remains stalled. In this context, the leader of ERC reiterated, as he has since the beginning of negotiations, that his party wants to approve the budget, but will not do so without concessions in return. "We want budgets everywhere, even in the most remote areas, but we also want the revenue from the Personal Income Tax (IRPF), because it's important and we don't want to risk losing control of it," he insisted. "We know it's difficult because we don't have the support we'd like, and we ask Catalan society to help us because we have a lot at stake," he added. Regarding the pressure being exerted by some unions and employers' associations for ERC to join the budget agreement, Junqueras reiterated that his party's requests are solely for the common good. "We tell the social and economic stakeholders that we are fighting for them, that when we defend a sound funding model or tax collection, we do it to improve everyone's lives, to make this a more competitive country with decent wages; we do nothing that isn't for the good of all," he concluded. "Why should they leave us alone if we've always been there for them when they've needed us?" he asked.

Let me start with a piece of news that shouldn't be news, but you'll soon understand why I'm opening the analysis with it: 50 days after the fatal accident in Gelida, Trains ran between Ripoll and La Garriga this morning.For now, there will be one train per direction every hour, with speed limits on sections where risks still exist. The alternative road service that has been in place for the last month and a half will continue. Applause, and that's about it.

All eyes are on the door of the Sant Jordi Hall when, a few minutes after 6 p.m., the President of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, and the leader of ERC, Oriol Junqueras, enter together, accompanied by the President of the Parliament, Josep Rull. They do so practically without looking at each other until they sit in the front row of the hall where the event marking the start of the Year of Irla is being held. There has been no meeting between Junqueras and Illa, and much of the informal conversations before it began had to do with the negotiations between the Socialists and the Republicans. The event is to commemorate the 150th anniversary of Irla's birth, but the budgets are the elephant in the room of the Sant Jordi Hall.

Trump's word is worthlessBut it does come at a price, the price we all must pay for his decisions. Aware that The war with Iran has driven up oil prices and lowered stock markets.That is, that his voters have to pay more for gasoline and that his friends are losing billions in the stock market, Trump took the floor last night to say that The war is "virtually over" And that they are far ahead of the agenda they had set, that Iran "has already fired all it was supposed to fire." And Trump's words had the desired effect: the stock markets rose this morning and the price of oil fell. If this is a fluke that won't make a summer, Trump doesn't care. Yesterday he went for the coup, but he knows there are two things ordinary Americans hate: paying higher gas prices and having inflation erode their purchasing power, all because of a war that lacks the support of the vast majority. Consider that these days oil has reached its highest price in the last three and a half years, specifically in the summer of 2022, months after the war in Ukraine began, and that the cost of living is shaping up to be the major issue in the November elections. And we all know that when oil goes up, everything goes up.

The Esquerra federation in Barcelona is preparing to open a new chapter after the rebellion that forced its leader, Creu Camacho, to resignThe party has already opened primaries to choose a new executive committee. An alternative candidacy joined the effort on Monday. to the one promoted by the current councilwoman Rosa SuriñachThis faction, which emerged from the ranks of critics of the national leadership, is led by a group of supporters of Oriol Junqueras and Elisenda Alamany, headed by Republican activists Ricard Farin and Núria Clotet, according to reports. The Newspaper and has confirmed ARA.

The war in Iran that began on Saturday It's much more than a backdrop to our everyday lives. It's not that conflict we see images of but that remains distant from us, because It has the potential to complicate our daily livesAnd a lot: the price of oil and gas has increased, there are disruptions in international trade, global insecurity has increased, France has reminded Iran – and the whole world in general – that it has a nuclear arsenal.