The elections on the upcoming November 29 will again call nearly 75,000 people who will have to constitute or replace the more than 8,000 polling stations that will be in Catalonia. The draws were held between October 31 and November 4, and during the following three days, the town councils will communicate this to those selected by postal mail. If, by chance, you are one of those chosen, perhaps at this moment you are asking yourself the following questions: is there any way to avoid going and to appeal against the decision? What exceptions does the electoral law provide for? And what happens if, ultimately, I decide not to show up even though I have been called? Below we answer these questions.

Most likely, the evening of November 29th will repeat the script of every election night. At 8:00 PM the polls will close and television stations will keep us entertained for a while with the results of a survey commissioned in the last few days. About an hour later, we will begin to see partial results on the screen with 1%, 2%, 5%, or 10% of the vote counted. Journalists and analysts will be forced to comment on these results. And citizens might watch it confused and disoriented, because it is very likely that the results of the first half of the count will bear little resemblance to the final ones. This is because the polling stations that are fastest to count usually report first, which are those in small towns. Then, small and medium-sized cities enter, and finally, the bulk of the large cities is incorporated. It will be at this moment that the partial results will begin to approach the final ones, although until the end of the night there will remain the doubt of whether some seats could shift.

"The press may not be very successful in telling people what to think, but it is stunningly successful in telling its readers what to think about." The phrase, pronounced by political scientist Bernard Cohen in the sixties, admits many nuances adapted to the current world, in which the media no longer monopolize what is known as agenda-setting (basically, the determination of which topics are most relevant). And during the last few days, in political and journalistic circles, there was talk of nothing else but the 30 rental apartments with which the partner of the PSOE spokesperson does business.

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.

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.

On November 29th there will be no Aliança Catalana ballot at the polling stations and there is a good number of potential voters for the party presided over by Sílvia Orriols who will look for alternatives. Who benefits most from this situation? For some time now, surveys have been drawing a scenario in which there are two parties that stand out as option B for citizens who, when the time comes for the Catalan elections, are clear that they will choose Aliança. Almost 4 out of every 10 of these voters will opt for either Vox (18.5%) or Junts (18%), according to the latest barometer from the Centre for Opinion Studies (CEO), published this Wednesday.

Not only is it prepared for the elections, but Alberto Núñez Feijóo's PP has been calling for them for at least a year. Vox even symbolically opened the electoral pre-campaign a few weeks ago in Catalonia, with Santiago Abascal as the undisputed leader of the candidacy. The right-wing parties are eager for the polls —despite the strategic warning that the Spanish government could try to manipulate them— because they are convinced that, this time yes, the doors of the Moncloa will open for them. On the left, however, there is a vacant lot with everything to be done in a rush.

If we were to stop a few people on the street and ask them if they have the perception that society has become more conservative, the answer would surely be affirmative. This feeling would possibly arise with more force if we reminded them of the projected electoral support in the majority of PP and Vox districts, which are on the path to taking a significant part of the pie of seats. The events in Ceuta, the increasingly visible contrary responses in the media and on social networks regarding immigration or gender equality or the visibility in some circles of influencers or conservative public figures, also in terms of taxes or the welfare state, push to reinforce the idea that we are living in a conservative period.

With twelve years of delay, in the month of January, the then Minister of Finance, María Jesús Montero, presented a new autonomous financing model. It was the first time that such progress had been made since the 2009 reform, also promoted by the PSOE, although that reform arrived with the consensus of all the communities governed by the socialists –those of the PP voted against it– and also with the specific endorsement of the tripartite that was then piloting the Generalitat. A very different situation from the current one, because Montero presented a reform that only Catalonia and the Canary Islands have endorsed and that has had to overcome an adverse electoral cycle for the Moncloa. "Do you want me to wrap myself in an estelada in Andalusia?", the former minister said to ERC, recalls a consulted source. The Andalusian elections in May –with Montero as the socialist candidate–, in fact, caused the calendar to be delayed. So much so, that it has not even reached the council of ministers table.

This Wednesday, the nearly fifteen million Moroccan citizens registered in the electoral census are called to participate in legislative elections held in an atmosphere strained by the Ceuta crisis and all its ramifications. In a political landscape dominated by monarchist parties, which govern in a coalition executive led by Prime Minister Aziz Akhannouch, the election results are not expected to bring any significant political change to the House of Representatives, which consists of 395 members. One of the main questions surrounding the elections is what the abstention rate will be, which analysts predict could be very high given the disillusionment with the political class among a large part of the population.