Ada Colau already has someone to accompany her on her adventure in Madrid. The Comuns have validated the lists for the general elections, which hid a last-minute surprise: Aina Vidal, the current deputy spokesperson for Sumar in Congress, has been excluded. This Wednesday's national council was not exactly smooth sailing, with several voices dissenting from this decision, which also provoked a significant protest vote. The lists for the four Catalan constituencies were approved with 66% of votes in favor, but with 34% against and 20 blank votes. Vidal was the head of the Comuns list in the 2023 elections.

The song Los niños del barrio was playing when the leaders of the Broad Front appeared this Saturday in Madrid before more than a thousand militants who were waiting to learn about the project that brings together the left in the State for the November 29 elections. But not everyone was there. Los niños from Podem were missing, with whom the possibility of running together in Madrid, Barcelona, and other territories vanished this Friday night after an "agonizing" negotiation, acknowledge some voices from this space, who arrived at the event having barely slept. Gabriel Rufián was also not there, who had risen as the unifying face of all the forces to the left of the PSOE to curb the threat of a PP-Vox government. Nor was Yolanda Díaz, who three years ago was the candidate for this space – then under the name Sumar – for the presidency of the Spanish government. This Saturday she had a parallel event at a university. Today, Ada Colau returns to the political front line, candidate of the Broad Front for the presidency of the Spanish government and number one for Barcelona – Ernest Urtasun will run as number two on the ticket in the Catalan capital –, and Emilio Delgado will be the number one for Madrid.

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?

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 Spanish legislature is running out and the left is not prepared. Whether in the summer, when four years will have passed since the last elections, or at the end of November in case Pedro Sánchez presses the electoral button this Monday, Comuns, Sumar, IU and Més Madrid have not yet defined the structure or the candidate. The failure of the housing decrees has shaken the political board and this Saturday Ada Colau activated the electoral mode with an urgent call. "It is the moment for great alliances. The citizenry would not understand if everyone went their own way," she exclaimed at the inauguration of a conference of the School of Political Imagination organized by the Sentit Comú Foundation, which is presided over by Colau herself.

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.

The PSC and Comuns have once again been absent this year from the Catalan Summer University (UCE) in Prada de Conflent. The space for training and reflection of Catalanism and sovereignty in the Catalan Countries has a marked pro-independence accent, but all Catalanist formations have been welcome and the PSC has historically been present. Comuns have also not attended this year and no CUP leader has intervened, unlike Junts and ERC or other extra-parliamentary parties like Alhora. What are the reasons for these absences?

The leader of Comuns in Parliament, Jéssica Albiach, has opened up to running again as a candidate in the Catalan elections scheduled for 2028: "I believe we are doing a very good job," she stated in an Europa Press interview, although she clarified that the decision does not depend solely on her: "It is not just a matter of mine, it is a matter for the party. And there are two years left, but, well, I am where I want to be." Albiach has defended the role of her group in the current legislature, with only six deputies: "Never before have six deputies given so much." However, could Albiach run again in 2028?

The Council of Statutory Guarantees (CGE) ruled this Tuesday, unanimously, that the bill to limit the speculative purchase of housing, presented by Comuns, violates the right to private property, inheritance, and freedom of enterprise. Furthermore, the consultative body – whose resolutions are not binding – concludes that processing it by a single reading contravenes Article 138 of the Parliament's Regulations, which governs this express procedure, and Article 23.2 of the Constitution, which refers to citizens' right to access public functions and positions in conditions of equality. The ruling also adds a third pillar of unconstitutionality: it considers that the key article of the proposal encroaches on the State's exclusive competence over the bases of contractual obligations. Faced with this scenario, the Minister of Territory, Housing and Ecological Transition, Sílvia Paneque, has assured that the Government will seek "all legal measures [...] to protect the right to housing in Catalonia" in accordance with the Statute.

In the midst of the housing crisis, the Government has made officially protected housing (HPO) one of its flagship projects. This Friday, the PSC and Comuns have presented a bill to accelerate the creation of officially protected housing that includes five measures, one of which is to give interested owners the option to convert commercial premises, offices, and hotels into protected apartments. According to sources close to the negotiation, "if everything went well and the entire package of measures worked" it could serve to incorporate up to 20,000 apartments. "It was an unavoidable priority to expand the stock of protected housing and ensure that housing fulfills its essential function of being a home," defended the Minister of Territory, Sílvia Paneque, at the joint presentation of this regulation alongside the leader of Comuns, Jéssica Albiach.

"Cutting down trees is not a crime", said Salvador Illa this Monday in an interview with RAC1. The President of the Generalitat called for a "change of mentality" in forest management and argued that "the forest must be managed". A few months ago, Parliament modified part of a Government decree on measures related to the agricultural and forestry sector. What exactly changed?

Salvador Illa will reach the midpoint of the legislature with the political stability he sought. This Thursday, Parliament has definitively approved the budgets that he agreed upon a few weeks ago with Esquerra and Comuns, the two investiture partners, who this morning added their votes to validate the first accounts of the socialist government – Junts deputy Noemí Nieto also voted in favor by mistake. Accounts that will reach almost 50,000 million euros, 22% more than those of 2023, the last project still approved under the presidency of Pere Aragonès. This Thursday's plenary session also validated the budget accompanying law, which includes, among other things, increasing the tourist tax to 30 euros per day for cruise ships calling at Barcelona and creating the Catalan Airport Authority. Illa thus guarantees himself to reach the end of the legislature with updated budgets and a parliamentary majority that requires the Government to continue for its agreements to be fulfilled.

María Pozuelo (Lanzarote, 1976), coordinator of Podem Catalunya since June 28, 2025, just one year ago, receives ARA when the pre-campaign for the municipal elections begins and coincides with a climate of possible pacts in the left bloc.

The PSC, Esquerra and Comuns have reached an agreement to increase the tourist tax for cruise ships calling at Barcelona. Through an amendment to the Generalitat's budget accompanying law, presented this Tuesday in Parliament, the three groups will force an increase in the tax to 30 euros for ships that are less than 12 hours in the Catalan capital.

In a month's time, Salvador Illa's government will have approved the first budgets of the legislature. An agreement with Comuns and ERC that gives the executive breathing room and certifies that this is currently the only viable majority in Catalonia. Republicans and Comuns already invested Illa and, despite the tug-of-war of the last two years, they continue to be the partners that give him stability. Even to avoid inconvenient appearances by the president in Parliament. This Tuesday, for the second consecutive week, ERC, Comuns, and the PSC prevented the chamber from summoning Illa. Junts wanted him to appear to explain the role of the Generalitat in the crisis opened with public school teachers. Seven days ago, the Junts, with the support of PP and Vox, demanded that the president respond for the cases of alleged corruption that splash the PSOE (and that the judge does not rule out entirely that they have a derivative in the PSC).

Salvador Illa's first budgets passed their initial parliamentary stage this Thursday. The debate on the entirety of the accounts once again highlighted the alliance that brought the socialist president to the Palau de la Generalitat and which the Government intends to serve it to reach the end of the legislature. Thus, the budgets have begun to be processed with the support of the two investiture partners, ERC and Comuns, with whom the Government reached an agreement two weeks ago. The executive, however, has not managed to secure the 'yes' of any of the opposition groups: Junts, the CUP, Aliança, the PP, and Vox had presented amendments in their entirety, four texts that have been rejected. The words of the Minister of Economy, Alícia Romero, asking them to come out of the "trench" and defending accounts that reach almost 50 billion euros and grow by 22% compared to those of 2023, have not served to convince them. And even more so when, during the debate, the news broke that teachers rejected the unions' agreement with Education. Junts and the CUP have taken the opportunity to attack the executive, while the partners have asked the Government to reopen negotiations.

The left-wing front that began to walk in February in Madrid made a stop this Saturday in Barcelona. Comuns, Més Madrid, Esquerra Unida and Moviment Sumar have once again shared a stage to defend a common project for the upcoming general elections at a time when Gabriel Rufián's proposal, which calls for uniting state and sovereignist left-wing forces, continues to resonate. Under the slogan A step forward, the promoters of this refoundation of what was Sumar in 2023 have presented themselves as the alternative to the PSOE at a time when cases of alleged corruption surround the socialists and, especially, the environment of the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez. In this regard, the Minister of Culture, Ernest Urtasun, has demanded that the PSOE make a move: "Responsibilities must be assumed, faces must be shown, and brave decisions must be made".

Nobody questions that Gabriel Rufián has established himself as an undisputed benchmark for the left throughout the State: he is, after all, the fourth best-rated politician in Spain and the preferred by Catalans. ERC's spokesperson in Congress has long made an uninhibited call – and discredited by the leadership of their partyLast week, Gabriel Rufián took another step and

Rarely (very rarely or never) do you attend the presentation of the same budget project twice in a year. This is what has happened on this occasion in Parliament, where the accounts for the remainder of the fiscal year have been submitted, after they were withdrawn last February due to disagreement with ERC.

The Government already has all the support to approve the budgets for 2026. After this week's agreement with ERC, validated this Wednesday by the Spanish government, the executive and Comuns have signed their definitive pact for the accounts this Thursday morning, which includes 2.5 billion for housing and rethinking the R-Aeroport, among others. Salvador Illa and Jéssica Albiach have sealed the understanding at the Palau de la Generalitat and this Friday the Government will approve the numbers in an executive council, with the aim that Parliament definitively validates them in the first fortnight of July.