The key to these general elections for ERC is to try to convince voters that the dichotomy between PSOE-Sumar and PP-Vox accommodates other preferences. So the republicans try to implant in the imagination that the question in Catalonia “is not to give strength to the PSOE to stop what it has on the right, but to give strength to ERC to force the PSOE to agree with what it has on the right his left”.
This is how candidate Gabriel Rufián summed up the usefulness of his party in Congress yesterday. “The people who want a left-wing government and think of Catalonia or Euskal Herria, let them vote for ERC or EH Bildu”, and nothing of “branchism”, he said in reference to En Comú Podem and PSC, “nor of frivolity, nor empty slogans; politics, politics and politics”, he received.
Esquerra Republicana held yesterday the central event of the campaign in front of the symbolic Cultural Center of Born, converted since 2013 into an icon of the independence claim after investing 12 years of works and 84 million euros. The event featured a large line-up of nine speakers, including the president of the Generalitat, Pere Aragonès; the general secretary of the party, Marta Rovira; Rufián himself; the national coordinator of EH Bildu, Arnaldo Otegi, and the president of the Catalan training, Oriol Junqueras. And in all the parliaments, the role that the pro-independence left has to play was very present.
In the case of Otegi, to “tilt the balance towards progress and national freedom against the reactionary bloc”, and in the case of the ERC leaders to attack the PSOE and Sumar who, as Rovira said in connection telematics from Geneva, “they have resigned from being left-wing” and “they have not stopped being Spanish right-wing”.
Rovira was particularly belligerent with Yolanda Díaz, whom she accused of “bending” to the Spanish right in the face of the “ray of hope” that in her opinion Unides Podemos represented.
The prescription of the ERC vote “in front of the Spanish left that has decided to go right” was claimed by Rovira, but also by President Aragonès, who did not miss the opportunity to denounce the possible appeal before the Constitutional Court (TC) of the Catalan anti-drought law, approved in Parliament with PSC and commons. The head of the government accused the Catalan socialists and the commons of having “two masters” and criticized the “hypocrisy” of these parties because “between defending the interests of Catalonia or the unity of Spain, they always choose the unity of Spain “.
Junqueras also questioned the progressive nature of the PSOE and the commons and recalled that ERC has always “been there” to defeat the right, while the socialists invested Rajoy and the commons “made an agreement with the right of Manuel Valls” and ” once again with the PP and the PSOE to impose on us a mayor that the majority of voters had not voted for”.
The president of the party insisted that the only way to achieve independence is “to be more to be stronger” and in his idea that Euskadi and Catalonia should one day hold “simultaneous” self-determination referendums.
At the event, no one made an express mention, or by omission, of Junts, their direct rival at the polls. Rufián had already done so hours before, in statements to the ACN, to extend his hand to them. As the candidate pointed out, the day after the 23rd, Catalan independence should meet to agree on how to “defend Catalonia”. That’s why he asked Junts and the CUP for “sense of the Catalan State” and bet on setting a “consensual and higher price” in the event that their votes are required to invest Sánchez. And “get out of the toxicity loop” with Junts, because people “neither deserve it nor understand anything” and “don’t encourage anything good”, he alleged.
