Gabriel Rufián and ERC seal peace and will once again lead the candidacy for the general elections of 29-N

Gabriel Rufián will continue to be the visible face of Esquerra Republicana in the Congress of Deputies. The party has confirmed that its current leader in the Lower House will once again be the head of the list for Barcelona in the general elections on November 29.

The decision will be formalized today in a meeting of the Executive and, in the coming days, the details of the candidacy will be finalized with the celebration of the different territorial congresses. On October 20, the various internal bodies of the party are scheduled to hold meetings that will approve the final candidacies for Congress and the Senate.

The tug-of-war between Rufián and the ERC leadership during the last year, which threatened to last for several months if the electoral advance had not been given, has come to an end. At least for now.

In addition to several public demonstrations, in recent months Rufián had held a round of public meetings with different leaders of the Spanish left to address the need to find a formula to converge electorally with the aim of avoiding a PP Government with Vox. In February, he did so together with the deputy spokesperson for Más Madrid in the regional Assembly, Emilio Delgado, in the Galileo Galilei Room, where they defended the optimization of the vote for formations to the left of the PSOE province by province.

At the beginning of April, the Republican spokesperson in the Lower House held an event in Barcelona with the Podemos MEP and former Minister of Equality, Irene Montero. Rufián insisted on unity and said that it was "essential" that this party be included.

The closing of this political tour came with the former vice president of the Generalitat Valenciana Mónica Oltra (Compromís), with whom she proposed that the left make an agreement province by province, proposing primaries where there was no consensus to bring together the useful vote around the strongest candidate.

Throughout this time, Rufián advocated stopping the dispersion of the vote against Vox in the distribution of seats in the medium and small constituencies. Which led to proposing a "plurinational coalition" with all the progressive forces to the left of the PSOE in view of the general elections. That is, the parties that in this legislature have included Sumar, más Podemos and the independentists ERC, EH Bildu and BNG.

But Rufián encountered the reluctance of the sovereigntist forces, starting with his own: "Esquerra will not tell a political force from another country how it should present itself," was one of the first responses of the Republican president, Oriol Junqueras. "Esquerra will present itself in Catalonia, as Bildu will do in Euskal Herria and the BNG in Galicia," said the ERC leader in February, citing two formations with which they have shared candidacy in the European elections. The main reason for doing so in that appointment is the unique constituency with which you vote.

The general secretary, Elisenda Alamany, also spoke in the same vein: "The best antidote against the extreme right and authoritarianism are left-wing projects like ours, of national defense and with territorial roots." And the same about hypothetical tutelage or dependencies on third parties: "The strategy is clear, we are a central force in Catalonia and without anyone deciding for us from Madrid." Of course, both Junqueras and Alamany have defended behind closed doors, and until this week, that Rufián was the ideal candidate to lead the Republican group in Congress in the next legislature.

Where ERC does boast collaboration between parties is in the joint candidacy with EH Bildu for the Senate announced yesterday, a formula that they already used in July 2023.