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. He explained this in an interview on RAC 1, with only a few hours left before the deadline for submitting coalitions for November 29th expires at midnight. The leader of the Republicans, very critical of his party's leadership, revealed that this Thursday he was on the verge of stepping aside and that he did not do so because he was "stopped" and out of responsibility, but he acknowledged that he has not succeeded with his plans for 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.

The day has begun with a protest by farmers, who as I speak to you are heading down towards Barcelona in columns from various points in the country with the idea of meeting at the capital at noon, specifically in Plaça Sant Jaume. It is not an isolated protest, but the continuation of the farmers' revolt, now justified by the rise in diesel prices, which is eating into their margins. But they are not only protesting about the price of fuel or phytosanitary products or fertilizers. They are complaining, as they have been for decades, about bureaucratic procedures, which can outlast different governments without anything changing. A farmer said this morning on TV3 that at the moment “profitability is zero, it is impossible to live off it”. At today's protest, a variation of “Either farming or death” was seen, which is “Either farming or fire”, in the sense that the country will burn due to fires if no one can stay to live off the land and look after the landscape. Certainly, if the farmers fall, everything falls. And then, the question: who has the capacity to satisfy their demands? If we would have enough with sovereignty, imagine with autonomy.

Polls are stubborn. Both the CEO and the CIS point out that the left of the PSOE would lose support in the upcoming elections compared to 2023 and, therefore, representation in Congress, especially if they run separately. In this context, Ada Colau is not giving up and insists on calling for unity. The former mayor of Barcelona has even offered to step down as the Broad Front candidate and, if necessary, to change the name of the candidacy to reach an agreement with Podemos, although this very Wednesday the coalition officially presented its new electoral brand.

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.

For days now, Carles Puigdemont's inner circle has been leaning towards the idea that, despite the judicial endorsement of the amnesty and the lifting of the arrest warrant against him, the former president should not return to Catalonia until after the November 29th elections. This was indicated by various voices in ARA, and this Tuesday the lawyer for the Junts leader, Gonzalo Boye, was clear on this point: "He will not return in the middle of the election campaign, which is what the PSOE would want," he said in statements to Catalunya Ràdio.

The Hispanic Day in Barcelona has shown that the PP and Vox have antagonistic strategies in Catalonia. The traditional demonstration of civil Spanish nationalism on Passeig de Gràcia, which gathered 1,700 people according to the Urban Guard, was marked by the electoral climate. Although the march's slogan was "Catalonia with Ceuta" and it was full of flags of the autonomous city, the calling of Spanish elections was the true protagonist. Santiago Abascal's party is aware that they are strong in the Principality, currently more so than the PP in the polls, but the Popular Party is weathering the storm of the sorpasso predicting the triumph that they take for granted in the State. The notable flight of voters or supporters of Aliança towards Vox in the Spanish elections –at least around 22%, according to the CEO– allows us to understand the multiplication of messages to seduce Sílvia Orriols' voters in the middle of October 12th. It should be noted that Aliança is not running in these elections.

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.

Whenever elections arrive, a small miracle of nature occurs. Politicians whom we had only seen for months in congresses, television sets, or party events suddenly appear on the street. They shake hands with retirees, enter shops, walk through markets, and even hold babies in their arms. It is like discovering the first butterfly of spring. One thought they had gone extinct, like diplodocuses, and it turns out they were just hibernating.

After a week of negotiations, ERC has confirmed that Gabriel Rufián will be the party's candidate in the upcoming general elections. It did so in a statement in which it announced that he will be the number one on the republicans' list for Barcelona. According to Rufián's circle, he has reached an understanding with Podem so that the purple party "does not run in Catalonia" and asks for the vote for ERC, something that sources from Oriol Junqueras' party leadership confirm.

In the corridors of the European Parliament this week, a "very palpable concern" can be felt, asserts Jaume Asens. "There is a shared anxiety," agrees former European Commissioner László Andor. "All week I have received messages from colleagues on the left," explains Compromís MEP Vicent Marzà. "Everyone is asking about the issue," summarizes Javi López, also a socialist MEP.

During a very long and bitter night, that of April 9, 1992, I learned to distrust electoral polls. Which usually get it right, except when a society shows symptoms of deep boiling. That is to say, when the famous "liquid society" and in continuous mutation defined by Zygmunt Bauman passes into a completely unpredictable gaseous state. In the elections of November 29, one of these gas explosions could occur.

High-voltage pre-campaign in Spain for the November 29th elections. In the middle of 2026, eight years after Pedro Sánchez reached the presidency of the Spanish government, the PP draws an apocalyptic scenario if it does not win hand-in-hand with Vox to push for a "decisive change," while the Spanish government promises, now for real, to solve housing problems with courage and fight against those who "pull the strings" and harm the working classes. In the Andalusian town of Dos Hermanas and in Madrid, socialists and conservatives have contrasted two apparently antagonistic models of the country using language that has long denoted aggression.

October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with lightning and thunder and a lot of water and a lot of lightning and thunder. October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with thunder and lightning and a lot of lightning and a lot of thunder and a lot of water and Llarena lifts the arrest warrant for Puigdemont. Not because of the Llarena of the Supreme Court but because of the Constitutional Court and not because of the Constitutional Court but because of the CJEU. The rain continues and the campaign begins before the elections have even been called because the campaign is always underway. The rain has the advantage that, at some point, it stops raining. The campaign, on the other hand, always overwhelms us. Nothing is so much for the country as it is for the survival of the parties. Oh, the parties. For personal survival itself. Oh, the egos. There are those who, without us knowing how, always manage to stay on the surface and not drown. Mazón. There is, above all, a déjà-vu, a kind of stalled commuter train, or a commuter train, it doesn't need the adjective, carrying the same passengers from one election to the next. The motivation has to do with the fear of those who might come and the lack of motivation with the fact that there is no one to excite us. No one told us that voting was easy. They only told us to vote. And they will put up posters and banners as if we were walking down the street today looking up and not looking at our mobile phones, which is what we do with our necks bent. We don't see the clouds. We only turn off the ES-Alert. October. Elections are called in Spain, and in Catalonia, it rains buckets with lightning and thunder. October. It stops raining and a longed-for coolness arrives. So that we don't get too excited, since we are Catalans, they already warn that the coolness is temporary. A taste of autumn. Honey on the lips. I sweat just thinking that the heat of the summer that made us sweat through everything might return.

Ada Colau is not giving up on her crusade to unite the left at the national level. The former mayor of Barcelona has once again urged Gabriel Rufián, who has a good relationship with Podemos, to join the Broad Front left-wing coalition and to use "his leadership" to help her include the various formations to the left of the PSOE. In an interview on La Sexta, Colau considers that the republican spokesperson is a key actor to "meet the citizenry's demand": a single proposal for the upcoming Spanish elections on November 29th.

In France, since it was coined twenty years ago by socialist senator Robert Badinter, the expression “lepenization of spirits” has become popular as a way to designate the progressive diffusion of the ideas, themes, and vocabulary of the National Front—the organization founded in 1972 by Jean-Marie Le Pen and other former collaborators with the Nazis, today renamed as National Rally—within society, the media, and other political parties. The expression underscores the idea that, even without the need for the far-right to be a majority at the polls, its main themes (such as immigration, insecurity, or criticism of the European Union) end up influencing public debate and being normalized by the traditional political class.

The path for Ada Colau to be the presidential candidate for the Broad Front is becoming increasingly paved. The day after Més Madrid—a key player in this left-wing coalition—proposed her as a candidate for the upcoming Spanish elections on November 29th, the former mayor confirmed that she is willing to head the list. However, the founder of the PAH continues to put pressure on Irene Montero, the leader of Podemos, to join the Broad Front, to the point that she has set it as a condition to take the decisive step at the head of the coalition formed by Sumar, Més Madrid, Esquerra, and Comuns. "I have been asked, and I have said that if we are all there, I will be there too. But we must all be there," Colau said in an interview with TVE.

A social outburst, two emergency decrees, a snap election in Spain, and a general strike. The magnitude of the consequences of the Maricarmen case explains the shock over the death this Wednesday of the 87-year-old woman, who had become, following her eviction in Madrid, a symbol of the fight for the right to housing. Social movements have been mourning the passing of Maricarmen Abascal since last night and, as expected, her death has fully entered into the pre-campaign for the November 29 elections. Political messages of condolence have turned into crossed attacks between the parties, and the left has erupted against the PP, which has vetoed minutes of silence in memory of the woman in the Senate and in the Assembly and City Council of Madrid.

The People's Party is already muddying the electoral pre-campaign. And the chosen strategy, common among the right-wing, is to opt for social media. This Monday, the same day that Pedro Sánchez called early general elections for November 29th, the PP published a video on X against the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente. The tweet was a response to a post by the socialist in which he claimed that Feijóo "was already feeling the fear." The reaction of the populars was to publish a video from when the minister tore his quadriceps in 2023: "You were the one who was afraid of a sprain," they wrote.

The publication of the calling of early elections to the Official State Gazette (BOE) kicked off the pre-campaign this Tuesday. Pedro Sánchez seeks to drag the progressive vote mobilized by the housing crisis and turn around the result predicted by the polls, which give a majority to the right and the far right. Everything will depend, however, on the correlation of forces resulting from the polls on November 29, and much of the attention in the campaign will be on Junts, which already tipped the balance in this last Spanish legislature. A position of calculated balance and equidistance is expected from the Junts members in the campaign, but the spokesperson in Madrid, Miriam Nogueras, has already assured that they will not facilitate a PP and Vox government.