ERC has found in the collaboration with Podemos demanded by Gabriel Rufián to repeat as a Republican candidate in the general elections a formula to weaken the Commons, the sovereigntist formation led by Ada Colau and that competes with Oriol Junqueras' party for the Catalan sovereignist and left-wing voter.
The loss of votes that ERC can generate in the Commons in the 29-N elections is not negligible, taking into account two factors. The first is that Podemos ran in coalition with Colau's party in the 2023 general elections. Together, they obtained 497,617 votes, which led them to be the second most voted list, ahead of ERC, which stood at 466,020 supports.
How many of those almost 500,000 Commons voters can now support the candidacy led by Rufián is a difficult calculation to make, but approximations can be made. The Center for Opinion Studies of the Generalitat (CEO) granted Podemos a 3.5% estimated vote in its latest barometer, prior to the announcement that the purple party will renounce presenting its own list in Catalonia, will integrate its representatives as independents in the ERC candidacy and will ask for the vote for the independentistas.
Based on that percentage and the participation figures for 2023, Podemos would obtain more than 125,000 votes, which would increase the coffers of ERC and allow it to overcome the Frente Amplio in which the Commons will enlist and which Colau will lead as a candidate.
From that figure we would have to discount, however, the number of ERC voters who want to punish ERC for sealing an alliance with a party that defends the holding of a self-determination referendum in Catalonia, but that is not in favor of its secession from the rest of Spain, but rather of a confederal formula.
But ERC's maneuver to weaken the Commons does not end in the general elections. Republicans are also looking at the municipal elections next May. Junqueras has not forgotten nor forgives that in 2019 Colau remained in the Mayor's Office of Barcelona after having lost the elections to the ERC candidate, Ernest Maragall, and thanks to the votes of the former French Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, who invested her so that there would not be a pro-independence first mayor in the capital of Catalonia.
For ERC, taking over the Mayor's Office of Barcelona is a priority objective. His candidate will be the general secretary of the party, Elisenda Alamany, and he knows that his options for victory involve attracting a good part of the voters of the Commons to overcome Jaume Collboni's PSC. Beginning to diminish the electoral muscle of the Commons just a few months before the local elections was tempting for ERC.
In this context, its spokesman, Isaac Albert, yesterday ruled out reaching a coalition agreement with the Commons to join the pact already signed with Podemos. Albert reiterated that ERC will present itself with its initials and that Podemos has renounced running with its own list throughout Catalonia.
The Republican spokesperson thus reacted to the request that Rufián himself made yesterday when he asked ERC and the Commons through social networks to "speak, listen and understand each other to resolve the situation" and reach an "agreement in Catalonia."
In practice, what Rufián demanded would mean that the formation led by Colau accepted a collaboration formula similar to the closed one between the Republicans and Podemos in the region: a dilution in the ERC list and that its candidates would be integrated as independents into the Republican candidacy. Something unaffordable for the Commons.
Furthermore, the relationship between Rufián and those of Colau is not going through its best moment, after this weekend the Commons issued a harsh statement against the ERC candidate in which they accused him of "doing everything possible to divide the left" and in which they expressed their "deep disappointment" at the unilateral agreement between ERC and Podemos that makes it difficult for the purple brand to be added to the Frente Amplio formed by Sumar, Más Madrid, the Commons and IU.
