Gabriel Rufián is a genius

The least that can be said about Gabriel Rufián is that he is a genius. For months, according to opinion studies, the Esquerra Republicana spokesperson appears as the most valued politician and the one who was desired as the unifier of the guerrilla war front that has proven to be the infantile left to the left. He has achieved this despite a double paradox. The first has to do with his connection to the project that created and catapulted him: it is not easy to decipher how an independentist has cajoled a conscious voter from Malasaña, making him forget that his main objective, in theory, was to achieve the secession of one of the richest regions of Spain, which would break interterritorial solidarity.

At the same time, a second paradox, his mastery of second-generation social networks has acted like a viral sleeping pill that has managed to erase from memory a key episode of his parliamentary activity. He – that man on the street who dares to tell the truth in investigative commissions and in the Congressional forum – was the leader who most seriously put at risk the most decisive social initiative of the Pedro Sánchez governments: the labor reform. On that occasion his guardian angel was a popular representative who was confused when voting. But if the person not then defended by Rufián had overturned that reform agreed upon by the Ministry of Labor with the social agents, would he have managed to complete the successful transformation of his character? I doubt it. But it would be a mistake to underestimate it. Four days ago he managed to reach an agreement with Podemos, despite the fact that Pablo Iglesias' party was clear in evaluating the main Republican Left project of this legislature in Catalonia. “She is born dead,” said Ione Belarra, regarding the reform of the financing model.

Rufián arrived at Congress at the height of the process after his meteoric rise in the independence movement. It embodied a strategy: incorporating the old immigration into secession with the promise of an improvement in the welfare state thanks to the end of Catalonia's fiscal deficit with the rest of Spain. Top of the general list for 2015. “In 18 months I will leave my seat to return to the Catalan Republic.” He obtained 601,782 votes and 632,234 in 2016. In the first of 2019, ERC took the big leap: 1,020,392 votes (number one was Oriol Junqueras in preventive detention). Then came the sentence of the process and Rufián, in Urquinaona's Damascus, must have experienced a revelation. He made an appearance on one of the nights of riots as a result of the conviction, but was insulted by the youth who rebelled against the forces of public order while repudiating the leaders who had scammed them. It gave them cringe. Perhaps he sensed that the function for which he had been created no longer had a future.

His vision was to metamorphose his character: to ensure that, more than a social democratic independentist, he was perceived as a Podemos activist who used the ERC microphone without being barely noticed. He was again at the top of the list in the 2019 seconds: 874,859 votes. Almost half in 2023: 466,020. Increasingly disconnected from the ideology of his party and its voters, even physically, he has understood the effectiveness of political communication better than anyone. The least important thing here is that his speech and his alliances denature the ERC project and degrade the public conversation. Vito Quiles, like the network in his day, has created the scenery for a perfect performance. What sells here is being a political genius as a simulacrum.