His outfit, so much talked about in the first joint event two weeks ago in Barcelona, allows Gabriel Rufián to start his speech with a joke: "Today we had to wear yellow. That's how connected we are, because we hadn't talked about this. ERC yellow, we've already fully signed her," he says, looking at Irene Montero, who is wearing a jersey of the same color as his. The leaders of the Podemos and ERC lists for the 29-N general elections presented their political proposal this Saturday at noon in the heart of Madrid with allusions to current events, such as the general strike for housing or corruption. “On November 11 we have to fill the streets and we have to paralyze the country so that rents, food and energy go down,” the candidate harangued four days before the call.
On a circular stage in the Espacio Delicias in the capital set up for the circus show Neverland Island – a location that had to be improvised in recent days after the event was canceled last week due to the Urda catastrophe – both have charged against the Government and the left-wing coalition (“the Front is us”, Rufián has challenged despite wishing “luck” to all the progressives). "We are in a peculiar place, where they leave us. But the thing is not about having everything, but about doing everything with what you have," the MEP justified, drawing applause from the public.
The event, presented by actress Kiti Mánver, who has called for “getting up and turning up the volume a lot following the example of the young people of France and those who made Maricarmen a symbol in Spain”, marked the official return to the party's pre-campaign and is the first for Montero and Rufián in Madrid, which has left hundreds of people outside due to capacity limitations.
The former Minister of Equality, whose motto in these elections is “Peace, home and work”, has spoken again about housing, calling to support the strike next Wednesday, questioning the businessmen who raise rental prices and also “the complicit governments that, when they could, have done nothing”, in direct reference to the coalition between PSOE and Sumar. "That is the great gap in society, not between right and left, but between above and below, between the 1% and the 99%. They make us look the wrong way and not up," he reiterated in one of the arguments deployed in these elections.
"The PSOE, if it can, will eat you up. They tell you: vote useful, that is, vote for what you don't want (...) But the left is needed. In these elections there are three options and the one that serves to raise salaries is the plurinational republican alliance," he defended.
Montero, who spoke with a kufiya on his shoulders brought to him by a supporter, has also referred to the corruption of the "bipartisan system", following the latest investigations by the UCO and the news that suggests that the PP offered one million euros to former Transport advisor Koldo García in exchange for information against Sánchez, something that the popular party denies. “The two-party system is not bothered by corruption, it is bothered that it becomes known and can take away votes,” he said.
"It is said that data kills story, [but] memory kills story. There are people who ask what a party like ERC has to do with all this," Gabriel Rufián asked at the beginning of his intervention, paraphrasing former president Lluís Companys to defend the alliance between Catalan and Spanish anti-fascist republicans during the Civil War, and also the historic former leader of IU Julio Anguita.
"This was not going to replace Yolanda Díaz, it was not going to lead a space that already existed and whose name has been changed. This was not about submitting to the PSOE by entering the PSOE," he stated in a clear attack on the Frente Amplio, despite the fact that for months the Esquerra spokesperson advocated for a single ballot in the space. "I would like there to be a left-wing force in this country that would beat the PSOE, but for the moment I want a PSOE Government subjected to left-wing, sovereigntist forces. We have been much more patriotic people from BNG, Compromís, Bildu and Adelante Andalucía than some who call themselves convergent," he noted in another message to Junts, a direct adversary in Catalonia. “I wish all the luck in the world to everyone, to all the left,” he added later to clarify.
With very simple language, accessible to everyone, Rufián has defended taxes on great wealth, on corporate profits, and that “every family has a house.” “The left cannot steal,” he has reiterated in another of his maxims in these elections. He has also referred to the railway system as “failed” and has reproached that the high speed system has “forgotten the worker who has to get to work on time.” “We ask for a comprehensive review of the system because it is unsustainable and a massive investment,” he claimed. The last time that Montero and Rufián were together on stage was the night before the train accident that left 69 dead, on the TVE program La Revuelta, which had its third best audience figure, only behind the interviews with President Pedro Sánchez and the singer Rosalía.
Except in the Valencian Community and the Canary Islands, where the party has been integrated into a broad left-wing coalition, and Catalonia and the Balearic Islands - with its candidates included as independents on the lists of ERC and other formations -, Podemos is presented alone in the entire territory except Ceuta and Melilla. Polls suggest that he could win up to three seats: Montero's for Madrid, the head of the list for Alicante (María Teresa Pérez) and the sixth for Barcelona (Alejandra Sandoval). But the road to 29-N is long and the tour, which in its performance this Saturday has fully hung the bill, has just begun.
Colau calls for a "turnaround" like Lula's in Brazil
The Frente Amplio candidate, Ada Colau, called this Saturday for a massive mobilization of the left to "turn around the polls" in the face of the next elections. During an event in the Barcelona neighborhood of Sant Andreu, the former mayor of the city assured that her candidacy is close to 8% in voting intention and has set the goal of reaching 10%, a figure that, according to her calculations, would allow the current parliamentary representation to be doubled and take seats away from Vox. Colau has appealed to the example of Lula da Silva in Brazil to vindicate the capacity of popular mobilization to alter electoral forecasts: "The last word belongs to the people, the town, the neighborhoods and the working social majority."
In economic matters, Colau has defended an increase in tax pressure on the highest incomes to reinforce the financing of public health and education. The candidate has also placed housing among the priorities of her program and has proposed the "expropriation of apartments to vulture funds" if the progressive forces manage to revalidate the central government after 29N.
