Gabriel Rufián shakes off the responsibilities for his controversial absence, this Monday, from the Pimec 29-N candidate debate and points to his own party. In an interview this morning on SER Catalunya, the Republican head of the list stated that he did not participate in the employers' association's event because the Republican campaign committee ordered him to. "I would have liked to go, but my party told me not to go," he said, adding that the result was a "huge screw-up".

Pimec had organized its traditional electoral debate for this Monday morning ahead of the November 29th elections. The association for small and medium-sized enterprises had announced that all the number one candidates for Barcelona would participate, except for Comuns-Front Ampli, which sent its number two, Ernest Urtasun, instead of Ada Colau. The surprise came when an empty chair was spotted, belonging to ERC candidate Gabriel Rufián, who was absent from the debate at the last minute. For what reason? Rufián and Pimec have offered contradictory versions throughout this morning.

The trains have failed again this morning. The Rodalies service is operating this Monday with widespread delays. Why?

It has taken almost a month since ERC closed its list for 29-N for Gabriel Rufián and Oriol Junqueras to have taken the stage together. In fact, the republicans' first pre-campaign event two weeks ago was shared: Irene Montero and Gabriel Rufián starred in their first joint event in Barcelona –this Saturday they did it in Madrid– and Oriol Junqueras listened from the front row. It has not been until this Sunday that ERC has organized its first pre-campaign event, in Badalona, bringing the party president onto the stage. This is the first rally that Junqueras and Rufián have shared after weeks of tension over the lists and the attempt at a common left-wing front that the republican candidate has defended for months.

The Podemos event in Madrid this Saturday had a touch of ERC. And not just because Gabriel Rufián, the Republican candidate for 29-N, acted as an opening act for Irene Montero—it was their first joint pre-campaign event in the Spanish capital—, but because they both coincided in the color of their sweater: yellow. "That's how connected we are," said Rufián, who assured that they had not discussed it beforehand. He also revealed that he had never held a pre-campaign rally in a circus. Militants and supporters of the purple party were summoned to the tent of the show The Island of Neverland, which these days is hosted at the city's Espacio Delicias. A leisure proposal inspired by Neverland, the island of Peter Pan where children never grow up. Party sources explain that it is the only place they found with such short notice: initially, Rufián and Montero were supposed to debut in Madrid last Saturday, but they suspended it due to the tragic train accident in Urda, Toledo, in which 69 people lost their lives and for which three days of official mourning were decreed.

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.

The electoral pre-campaign has been blown to pieces. Until the accident in Toledo, what we had was a comeback for the PSOE that, even if it might not have been enough to break the PP-Vox majority, was enough to put Alberto Núñez Feijóo in a bad spot and weaken his leadership. Now the PSOE and the left have no choice but to activate survival mode to prevent the conservative wave from running them over. And this opens up the range of other multiple battles.

On Tuesday night, the collaborative left-wing duo formed by Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero visited La revuelta. The La 1 program, in which Broncano harasses his guests by asking about their sexual relations over the last month, encountered two candidates who went beyond his usual calculations and turned sex into the background noise that ran through a good part of the interview.

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.

In view of the upcoming general elections, there has been unusual interest and coverage regarding the possibility of building a unitary candidacy for the left that exists beyond the PSOE. In all autonomous communities, to the left of the socialists there is a political space that is more or less large, quite consolidated, which the PSOE candidacies cannot aspire to occupy, even though the real programmatic differences are not, at this moment, excessively large. It is a matter of origin and political culture, of different emphases, as well as of more moderate forms in some cases and more radical ones in others. The left that comes from the culture of democratic communism, of Carrillo, López Raimundo, and Berlinguer, for us to understand each other, has its own scope, especially when a new left coming from social mobilizations and new concerns has joined it. Deep down, the approaches are social democratic like those of the PSOE, although a bit more demanding when it comes to proposing social and economic transformations. Both social democratic offers are needed to be able to govern in Spain, also in Catalonia. They coexist and there is much more that they share than what confronts them.

What do you vote for, parties or people? In general, I recommend focusing more on the parties, that is to say, on the ideology or the program that inspires them, rather than on the proper names at the helm. People pass, organizations remain. And if they don't remain, it is often precisely because of hyper-leadership. That is what happened to Pujol’s Convergència. Sooner or later, we will have to see what happens to Puigdemont’s Junts. At the same time, it is also true that without a strong leader it is difficult to keep any organization cohesive: whether it is a party, an institution, a company, or an association. The balance between the group and the personality that heads it is never simple.

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.

At the gates of the elections, the ERC candidate, Gabriel Rufián, publishes How to beat the fascists (Ara Llibres), in which he breaks down the keys to combat the far right and, in this way, avoid a victory for the PP with the support of Vox on 29-N. Below, we offer you a decalogue with the most important ideas of this work that distills the sharp style of the republican leader:

A society is ordered when it is governed according to a common concept of justice that is shared and respected. This must begin with self-respect, which is the primary principle. That is what John Rawls thought. Spinoza, in a similar vein, proposed that without self-respect and self-appreciation, happiness is impossible: a person will not be able to respect others if they do not respect themselves. This entails believing in one's own project but also having enough strength to carry it out. This second element is as important as the first. In Spain, we often forget this, both historically and in current practice.

The date for the first pre-campaign event for Gabriel Rufián and Irene Montero has been set. The ERC candidate and the head of the Podemos list for the Spanish elections on November 29th will debut at a joint rally next Saturday, October 24th, in Barcelona. The event is the result of a collaboration agreement between their respective parties for the general elections, under which the purple party will not run in Catalonia and will instead support ERC, which includes members of Podemos as independents on its lists, while Rufián will hold campaign events with the former Minister of Equality on Spanish soil.

Unitary platforms against something (everyone united against a common enemy) are an invention from ages ago that sounds very good in anthems and can mobilize dormant wills, but experience tells us that Fronts, whether popular or patriotic, only exert their centripetal force in concrete, short-lived, and highly tense situations. Afterwards, the diversity of origin and destination, of likes and dislikes, causes plurality and rivalry to return, which are the basis of the system, and which are only rejected by those who wanted to use the unitary fever to avoid a failure on their own.

The facts are as follows: the Broad Front, which wanted to recreate the 2023 Sumar formula, has not been possible on a general scale, so both Irene Montero and Ada Colau will formally be candidates for the presidency of the Spanish government. Neither of them, however, is the preferred candidate for the bulk of Spanish left-wing voters, who prefer (oh, surprise) the republican Gabriel Rufián. And now let's recap.

Gabriel Rufián, the republican candidate, already sees it as "very likely" that there will be no unitary agreement of the left and asks for "apologies to the voters", we read on Friday in ARA. But, my goodness, that "the left" should come to an agreement, on anything at all, does not cross the mind of any voter of "the left". The voter of "the left", unlike the voter of the right (who is not, conversely, a voter of "the rights", but of "the right"), finds great pleasure in considering all other leftists "less left" than himself. The one on the right, on the other hand, finds great pleasure in considering themselves "not as" right-wing as the others. Those on the right and those on the left carry a burden inside, deep inside, which they only confess when they drink (kombucha for some, coffee with brandy for others): it must be nice, restful, to be on the other side. Those of "the left" secretly have fantasies about order and those of "the right" secretly have fantasies about disorder. One day there is one, man or woman, of the left who behaves like a priest or a nun and one day there is one, man or woman, of the right who behaves like a revolutionary.

There are still a few hours left to determine whether Ada Colau's Broad Front and Irene Montero's Podemos will join forces in a single left-wing candidacy in the State. In Catalonia, it will not happen. Gabriel Rufián regrets that ERC has closed the door to running with the Comuns and claims that in the last few hours he has been on the verge of quitting, but that, "out of responsibility," he remains at the head of the republican candidacy for the upcoming general elections. As always, in this Friday's interviews on RAC1 and TVE, the republican spokesperson has left a series of phrases and slogans that we compile below.