Gabriel Rufián leads candidacy ERC to early elections

O current spokesman of the Republican Left of Catalonia (ERC) at Congress, Gabriel Rufián, will again be head of the list of early parliamentary elections in Spain, scheduled for November 29, announced today the independent party.

In a statement, the ERC indicated that “the decision will be formalized today at a meeting of the National Executive of the Party”.

The party, chaired by Oriol Junqueras, adds in the statement that “in the coming days the details of the candidacy will be specified by holding the different regional congresses”.

The ERC recalls that on October 20, after the respective internal proceedings, candidatures to Congress and Senate will be definitively validated.

According to the established timetable, the leadership of the list should be defined this Sunday.

The candidates to take this place had two possible paths: to present 5% of the members' support (about 400 signatures) or to have the support of a third of the National Executive or a quarter of the members of the National Council.

If more than one candidate had run, a primary process would have been opened, whose votes were scheduled for October 17.

The leadership of the ERC has always expressed its desire that Rufián be the candidate.

“ I'm sure he'll be a candidate for the ‘Republician Esquerra’,” Junqueras said, before defending that Rufián is the “best candidate” the party has.

Rufián, whose media influence has grown exponentially in recent months, has, however, insisted on the need to weave alliances with the rest of the left, an opinion that has never been shared by the leadership of the ERC.

This, in addition to the difficult relationship he has maintained in the current legislature with much of the Republican group in Congress, led him to demand “a minimum of conditions” to the ERC to accept to be a candidate again.

Faced with the possibility of ERC’s deputy spokesman in Parliament, Jordi Albert, a person of Junqueras’ trust, also advancing his candidacy to Congress, Rufián expressed, through social network X, his willingness to be an ERC candidate and thus “accompanied by other leftist and anti-fascist forces”, because he argued, “this alone is not won”.

Housing, on the one hand, and Ceuta, immigration and border control, on the other, are the themes which predictably mark the pre-campaign and the campaign of Spanish legislative, taking into account the speeches of the political leaders following the call for elections last Monday.

The most recent polls give the election victory on 29 November to the People's Party (right), but without an absolute majority, which it would achieve in an alliance with the Vox (extreme right). The two parties have assumed that they will collide to remove the PSOE and the left of the Spanish Government.