If you've been following the story of how the Government withdrew the budget proposal it had submitted to Parliament at the last minute, it won't surprise you that today we begin by emphasizing that The elections in Andalusia now have a date: May 17th.

"Teaming up with Gabriel [Rufián] seems like a great idea to me," Irene Montero said a few days ago, in a significant change of attitude. In Sumar, Montero's most hated enemy, Yolanda Díaz, has withdrawn from the front lines, making it clear that she will finish her current term as Vice President of the Spanish government, but will no longer run as a Sumar candidate. It was also a few days ago that Yolanda Díaz made clear her willingness to consider the possibility of uniting (or subsuming) Sumar into a broader project of the left—to the left of the PSOE—to run in the general elections, as proposed by the ERC spokesperson in Congress, the aforementioned Gabriel Rufián, now the white mermaid ( white blackbird(You'll have to excuse me) of the left, of what Salvador Espriu called the bull's hide. That is to say: Catalan, Galician, Basque, and Spanish leftists, pro-independence and pro-union leftists, united to stop the shift to the right and the far right. This was largely the subject of some of Espriu's major works, such as the play Esther's First Story or the poems of The bull's hideWe are in the vicinity of Iberianism, the idea of ​​an Iberian Peninsula formed by a set of cultures and languages ​​(Portuguese, Castilian, Basque, Galician, and Catalan, which includes Catalonia, the Valencian Community, and the Balearic Islands) that should coexist in peace, respect, and mutual understanding. This is an idea that Espriu took up from Joan Maragall and that has been defended by other intellectuals: more recently, the Portuguese José Saramago and the Asturian Xuan Bello.

The opposition from Esquerra Republicana, along with the rejection by the PP, Vox, and UPN, has sunk the law promoted by the PSOE in Congress to lower the legal blood alcohol limit for drivers from 0.5 grams per liter to 0.2. This legislation had been stalled for a year. It is the first time this legislative term that the Republicans have rejected a law promoted by the Spanish government – ​​in the previous term they did so with the labor reform, which passed thanks to a mistake by the PP. The decision comes – precisely – on the same day that the PSC and ERC agreed that the Catalan Government withdraw the Generalitat's budgets To prevent Salvador Illa from suffering a parliamentary setback on Friday, MP Inés Granollers argued during the debate in the lower house's Interior Committee that "this law won't prevent accidents; what it will do is cause a lot of frustration." The Republican MP lamented that the Socialists were "cowards" for establishing a rate around 0.0 and argued that the law was "very cynical" and contained a "false promise." However, the PSOE, Sumar, Junts, Bildu, and the PNV supported it, with 18 votes in favor and 19 against. The ERC's position was that the "best" rate would have been to prohibit drivers from drinking a single drop of alcohol, but not only that. The Republicans also advocated for early retirement for professional drivers—they presented an amendment to this effect—and for reducing the number of hours they can spend behind the wheel. Furthermore, they had long been demanding more driving examiners in Catalonia to end the backlog of waiting lists. In fact, there was a call this morning between ERC and Pere Navarro, the Director General of Traffic, but the conversation was unproductive. "The truth is, we haven't received an adequate response," summarized Inés Granollers.

Teachers are continuing their week-long strikes today, and this morning they received the support of farmers in the Terres de l'Ebre region. There are so many sectoral grievances (teachers, peasants, Renfe users(public healthcare users, those aspiring to rent an apartment…) that the unease is widespread. And if you look up at the world, this unease transforms into anguish, not only because of the price of oil or making ends meet—which is a real struggle—but also because of the survival of democracy and, at times, of humanity itself. This is the socio-emotional portrait of society right now. We all operate within this ecosystem of general malaise.

I have always valued politicians who, when necessary, abandon the script and make proposals that involve a certain risk. That is what ERC deputy Gabriel Rufián has just done in Madrid. All my respect, although, as I will try to explain in this paper, neither the diagnosis nor the prescription seems appropriate to me. The discussion about how parties "to the left of the PSOE" should act (sicThe idea of ​​avoiding vote splitting, including the proposal to present single candidates per constituency, only scratches the surface of a much deeper debate. No one dares to address it, whether due to ideological discomfort and/or fear of political damage. In most European countries, the left has been losing its connection with the urban working class, as well as with a rural population that is currently at a critical juncture and which everyone ignores for a simple arithmetic reason: they represent few votes. Ultimately, the fundamental issue has little to do with the electoral tactics proposed by Rufián and much more to do with a lack of genuine representation: who feels addressed by this type of left today, who actually perceives a solution? This is the issue, and nothing else, and it cannot be resolved without a course correction that should have occurred long ago.

Suddenly Pedro Sánchez has managed focus on 23-FWe won't begin to learn what the declassified documents say until tomorrow, and therefore, we won't know the historical significance of this latest distraction tactic by the Spanish president until tomorrow. The political significance, aside from steering the public conversation, is to remind everyone that far-right coups in Spain are possible.

One of the hottest debates this week in the Congress of Deputies It has been the burka ban promoted by VoxAlthough it failed to pass and only garnered the votes of the People's Party (PP), the far-right initiative opened the floodgates of discussion on the appropriateness of prohibiting the use of the full-face veil. Together for Catalonia (Juntos) presented a bill on the same day to ban it in public spaces—a text that the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) has agreed to consider—the PP followed suit two days later, and the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) has also submitted its own proposal. According to party sources, the Republicans are not in favor of prohibiting the full-face veil and imposing criminal penalties on women who violate it, but they do advocate for "discouraging" its use through mandatory community service. This is their "effective solution" to "end the burka" while preventing the measure from harming the women who wear it, they believe. "Making the burka a crime will isolate them even more," warned ERC leader Oriol Junqueras this week.

The republican front that Gabriel Rufián envisions as a way to stop the far right faces enormous resistance from the very parties that should be part of it. The primary opponent is, in fact, Esquerra Republicana. Since Wednesday's presentation in Madrid There is also a question that keeps echoing: if the fourteen left-wing parties Rufián mentions shouldn't compete against each other, who should run in each province? He didn't give a clear answer, but he did suggest that the brand should be decided based on electoral expectations in each specific territory. Probably, in the mind of the ERC spokesperson in Congress, his party would be the leading force of this left-wing front in Catalonia. But, of course, how would you determine who has the best prospects? Based on polls? Recent results? Each party's history?

You can have whatever opinion you want about Gabriel Rufián and his public persona, but the idea he has been insisting on lately (the formation of a left-wing front that can run in the general elections as a single, unified force to confront the far right) is based on a couple of observations he must have had the opportunity to make in his time on the political scene.

The Spanish legislature often hangs by a thread. The devilish arithmetic left by the June 23rd elections forces Pedro Sánchez to work incredibly hard in every vote. One of the areas where the Spanish government struggles most is in the ratification of royal decree-laws, regulations approved by the Council of Ministers that require the endorsement of Congress. This legislature has seen five repealed, the same number as in the previous 45 years. It is no surprise that the two usual allies who have most frequently abandoned the Moncloa Palace are Junts and Podem. In contrast, Esquerra Republicana is the only partner that has voted in favor of all 31 royal decree-laws promoted by the Spanish government and submitted to a vote in the lower house. The Republicans, along with the PNV, are the only ones with a specific clause in their legislation. the investiture agreement which they signed with the PSOE in which they commit to "providing stability" to the legislature "in parallel with fulfilling the commitments made" through the "willingness to approve," among other things, the decree laws.

The Esquerra Republicana Guarantees Commission has confirmed Marc Puigtió as the lead candidate for the 2027 Girona municipal elections, after rejecting the three challenges filed following the primaries last SeptemberThe former mayor of Sant Julià de Ramis, who has been campaigning intensely since January under a new brand without the Esquerra logo, Moviment Gironí, defeated former Education Delegate Adam Manyé by a single vote in September in a process that had been hanging in the balance until this week. Finally, the party's committee, citing the jurisprudence of the Central Electoral Board (JEC), has determined that the annulled ballot, which contained a sticker with the ERC logo over the name of candidate Manyé, was correctly invalidated. The other two challenges—one alleging a lack of impartiality on the part of the polling station officials and another questioning the entire process—have also been dismissed by the party's legal experts.

The week begins with a hangover from the previous one, which already speaks volumes about the level of slowdown or general gridlock that Catalan politics has reached, with no budgets in sight in either Catalonia or Spain, and none of the major agreements reached by Junts and Esquerra with the Socialists have been finalized.

Oriole Junqueras wants to run for the Generalitat again., but not everyone in Esquerra agrees. Hours after the Republican leader made his intention official this Tuesday at an event at L'Auditori in Barcelona, ​​​​several voices within his own ranks have spoken out strongly against it. One of them is Ernest Maragall, who, although no longer a member, has influence within the party. And he was blunt: "If Oriol Junqueras stands, I will not vote for him," he said in an interview with More night from 3Cat.

Girona has historically been a weak spot for Esquerra. It only governed the city during the Second Republic, and since the restoration of democracy, it has only managed to become the second largest force once, in 2015. In fact, in 2011, it was even left without representation in the City Council by a single vote: a spoiled vote containing the party's ballot along with a holy card of Escrivá de Balaguer, founder of Opus Dei, was counted. On Thursday night, this specter returned to haunt the local branch's assembly to choose the next Republican mayoral candidate in the primaries.

The new political year is beginning to take shape, and the president of the Generalitat, Salvador Illa, has unfinished business. The Socialists have overcome their first year in government with a boost. of almost 4 billion extra in the Catalan public coffers, despite having failed to approve budgets. They did so thanks to agreements with Esquerra and Comuns, the two partners that the executive will also call in the coming weeks to begin negotiations on the 2026 financial statements. However, before sitting down to talk with the Minister of Economy and Finance, Alícia Romero, Comuns is demanding a meeting to make them lack what they have been proven to be, especially housing, on which Jéssica Albiach's party has pivoted the negotiations they have held with the Catalan socialists until now.

After twelve years in prison under the fierce Uruguayan dictatorship, José Pepe Mujica felt empowered to declare: "If we start arguing about our differences, we could spend our whole lives arguing. If we start working on our similarities, we'll spend our whole lives working together for change."

Statements by the general secretary of Podemos, Ione Belarra, In the interview conducted last Sunday by Núria Orriols in this newspaper They've been leading the way all week and have rekindled one of the most entrenched and unproductive feuds in the Catalan and Spanish political world. It's the one that pits the Catalan right against the Spanish left, with mutual accusations that are always the same and are basically based on prejudices and commonplaces. Ione Belarra herself is one of those figures who loves to express herself with slogans, and she feels reaffirmed when she spouts the clichés that the Catalan right is more or less a reproduction of the Spanish right, because apparently their capacity for observation and analysis of reality is incapable of going beyond it. It's true that the rancid, poor-strangling Catalan exists, and these very days we've seen the president of the employers' association, Josep Sánchez Llibre, almost squirming in his simultaneous bows to the PP, Vox, and Junts for having voted against the 37.5-hour workweek. But it is absurd and unfair for Belarra, and those who think like her, to deny the evidence that a significant portion of the Catalan right (unlike the Spanish) played a fundamental role in the anti-Franco struggle, and that it has also contributed decisively, for better and for worse, to the construction of Spain's battered democracy. On the other hand, and as she has been reminded, it is in poor taste for Belarra to venture into conjectures about what the Mossos d'Esquadra would or would not do in a hypothetical situation, when the Civil Guard and the National Police have such a disgraceful and real history of racism and repression. Even if Podemos managed to force Marlaska to resign, Belarra's voice was barely heard within the Cabinet.

Esquerra (Republican Left) has responded to the Islamophobic attacks by Catalan Alliance leader Sílvia Orriols against Republican MP Najat Driouech. The mayor of Ripoll often takes advantage of her speeches in Parliament to launch barbs at Driouech for her religion—she is Muslim—and to wear the headscarf. Now, the Esquerra group has submitted a petition requesting that the Committee on the Statute of Deputies open a case to determine whether, with her "derogatory remarks" against Driouech, she has violated the code of conduct for Catalan parliamentarians.

"The extreme right represents the reaction against a left woke which has perhaps gone too far." This commonplace is not normally used to introduce a debate about the Left and the challenges it faces, such as reconciling the defense of individual identities and universality, or like the debate around the uncritical importation of concepts from an Anglo-Saxon postmodernism that feels a lack of the complexity of the complexity of complexity. made by the thick beak of the contemporary Left that consolidates a powerful idea instrumental in the rise of the extreme Right: the existence of a supposed cultural hegemony (what the extreme Right calls Cultural Marxism) of a condescending and authoritarian Left that imposes a new unnatural morality on the average citizen. YouTubers and influencers, there are a number of opinion makers in the traditional media, disguised asenfants terribles although they are often over sixty and have had their lives sorted out for years, who complain that freedom is threatened by the wokismIt is common for the same people who make fun of the "offended woke"They find it intolerable that a feminist corrects them or that someone suggests some formula of "inclusive newspeak", often trying to convert, in the name of exasperating narcissism, their daily pettiness into definitive proof that there are legitimate reasons to rebel. woke and good-natured that violates their freedom.

A common observation in sociological analysis is that societies change more rapidly than prevailing ideas. We are formed in childhood and youth, which is when we acquire notions of how things are, what values ​​to defend, and what the appropriate options are at any given moment. With the acceleration of social change, it becomes very difficult for our beliefs and values ​​to transform at the same pace as the circumstances in which we live; and this fact, so evident at this moment, has many consequences, both in the difficulty of reaching agreements between generations and in the near impossibility of accepting new options, even if our lives are at stake. What we have always believed cannot suddenly be abandoned and denied, because deep down we believe that things are as they are and that, after certain scares, everything will return to how it was.