The crisis of leadership and strategy in ERC is becoming more and more evident. In the municipal elections he lost 300,000 votes and in the general elections another 400,000 were left behind.. There are also other disturbing signs, such as Ernest Maragall getting 115,000 more votes than Gabriel Rufián this 23-J. Pasqual Maragall's younger brother was running as number two for the Senate and has not been chosen. Rufián, on the other hand, has obtained his seat as head of the list for the province of Barcelona. Things of the Electoral Law. However, the seven deputies achieved imply the loss of six parliamentarians compared to 2019. That data already implies a complication. But that difference generates more serious underlying problems that affect the power of Oriol Junqueras.
ERC was the fourth force in the province of Barcelona. The list headed by Rufián obtained 326,388 votes. The deputy carried out a complete campaign, perhaps the best in Catalonia, but the electorate no longer buys a certain product. Maragall, for his part, achieved 442,155 votes, 35% more. These supports have not been enough for him to be chosen. For the Senate, only the jurist Joan Queralt has won his seat.
With this situation, Esquerra held its extraordinary national council this Friday, where the situation of the party will be analyzed, which is losing popular support in each electoral call, while at the same time it had never occupied so much institutional space. In the council, the criticisms were diverted by asking the bases to channel them through the territorial assemblies, a way like any other to buy time.
Junqueras marked a good part of the electoral strategy in both the municipal and general elections, until halfway through the campaign of the latter Sergi Sebrià arrived from the Palau de la Generalitat to rectify the shot on the fly. But there has only been some criticism of Junqueras from some grassroots militants and mayors of small towns.. So far, nothing that can be considered structural. In fact, there have been more reproaches for entering the Barcelona Provincial Government through the back door than for the poor result in the elections.
Gabriel Rufián as number one for Barcelona was the decision of Oriol Junqueras. The same as putting Ernest Maragall as number two for the Senate, as a way of stopping the campaign of radical independence in favor of abstention.
The difference between Senate candidates who do not win the seat is not strange, but it is very large and shows the little pull that the candidates in question had. It has also happened to Míriam Nogueras, head of the JxCAT list for Barcelona. Antoni Castellà, candidate for the Senate, also number two, got 42,000 more votes than her. Again, too large a difference for elections like these. Republicans do not want to acknowledge that, de facto, their approach has little to do with the one held by JxCAT. According to ERC, it is not that his party renounces self-determination, as JxCAT is demanding, but that it understands it as “a gradual process” that lasts over time.
For this reason, it is now focused on demanding other things, such as new regional financing, the main bargaining chip of the Republicans in the face of a possible investiture of the PSOE leader. In the national council on Friday, it was approved that in case of agreeing to the investiture of Pedro Sánchez, this would be later ratified by the bases of the republicans as a concession to a dissatisfied and suspicious militancy.
lack of realism
From the Palau, they propose that the new financing be negotiated bilaterally with the Spanish Government, something unrealistic, because the financing systems are negotiated multilaterally and agreed upon with the rest of the autonomous communities, although it is true that whenever they have been modified has been because the change has been led by Catalonia.
The underlying problem is how to question Junqueras after he has spent three and a half years in jail. No one in the party dares to do it. That is why there are few critical voices within ERC. Everyone fears an electoral repetition in January with Gabriel Rufián at the helm, at this moment, the most plausible scenario. But no one is capable of assuming a movement of this magnitude.