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.

The unity of the left-wing parties to the left of the PSOE will not happen. 

Gabriel Rufián considers the possibility of a unitary agreement to the left of the PSOE as practically buried, both in Catalonia and in the State, and admits that he has even thought about quitting. This is how he explained it in an interview on RAC1, with only a few hours left before the deadline to present coalitions for November 29th ends at midnight. The leader of the republicans in Madrid, very critical of his party's leadership, revealed that this Thursday he was about to step aside, but ended up discarding it because they "stopped" him, and also out of responsibility. Even so, he has acknowledged that he has not succeeded with his plans in favor of a unitary candidacy: "I have failed, we have failed. There are hours left, but it is very likely that it will not happen," he said.

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.

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".

After announcing that Gabriel Rufián will be their candidate in the next general election, ERC held a press conference this Tuesday to rule out any collaboration with state-wide left-wing parties that goes beyond incorporating members of Podemos into their lists. In fact, the party spokesperson, Isaac Albert, avoided answering the Comuns' criticism regarding the alliance with the purple party and once again shut the door on being part of the state-wide Broad Front coalition currently being negotiated by Sumar, Comuns, Esquerra Unida, and Més Madrid. However, the republican leader's words were contradicted by Rufián himself in a post on X: "ERC and Comuns must talk, listen to each other, and understand each other to unblock the situation. Beyond vetoes and hatreds that matter to no one. And I am on that. And I will do it until the end." "What cannot be is that the way to respond to the extreme right is to dilute the ERC acronym. ERC will run in Catalonia as ERC," replied Albert at the press conference.

Two Catalans, Ada Colau and Gabriel Rufián, come to the rescue of the Spanish left. 

The battle of Gabriel Rufián to unite the Spanish left will still provide chapters to be written. Despite the pact reached on Sunday that makes him the head of the list for ERC with an understanding with Podemos, which allows him to campaign across Spain, the spokesperson in Madrid has stepped forward to ensure that he is still working to unite Oriol Junqueras' organization with the progressive parties of the State. "I will try until the end," he said on X.

Rufián has ended up becoming a kind of half-candidate between ERC and Podemos, an idea that until not long ago might have seemed outlandish and that now passes as a kind of compromise solution. Between now and Friday, it remains to be seen whether his maneuver succeeds in leading the rest of the parties "to the left of the PSOE" that are looking to constitute the so-called Broad Front –Moviment Sumar, Comuns, Més Madrid, and Esquerra Unida– to present a single ballot in the elections, as many of their voters and some of the parties that want to join but without diluting their acronyms (as happened in 2023 with the creation of Sumar) are asking for. This is the case of Compromís, in the Valencian Country, and of Més per Mallorca and Més per Menorca, in the Balearic Islands. A single ballot would be the clearest electoral message that the left could send to its voters, and for Gabriel Rufián it would mean the validation of his thesis on the need to unite everyone who has the concern of stopping the extreme right in Spain. A frontist message and thesis, unprecedented in a candidacy for the general elections of a Catalan pro-independence party. The other thing that obviously remains to be seen is how this new configuration affects the electoral results that ERC may obtain in Catalonia. As a counterpart in the negotiations between the two parties, Podemos has renounced running in Catalonia for the benefit of ERC, but it is unlikely that the rest of the Broad Front parties with electoral aspirations in Catalonia will want to do the same.