The local assembly of Esquerra Gramenet has announced through a statement that it has unanimously ratified, this morning, the candidacy of Gabriel Rufián for mayor of Santa Coloma.
"I am determined to give the best years of my life to this project, to these acronyms. I believe that ERC is called to be even more important in the belt of the Barcelona metropolitan area", Rufián has wielded after being ratified as a candidate.
After his appointment, he has not wasted time and has already started the campaign, offering himself as an option "to progressive, anti-fascist voters, with shared republican values, such as democracy, freedom and social justice, who consider that enough of a party governs this city with an absolute majority in an insane way for 31 years".
Born in 1982 in the Fondo neighbourhood, Rufián takes on the challenge of leading the Esquerra Republicana municipal team ahead of the upcoming municipal elections, "with the aim of promoting and reinforcing the republican project in the city and in the Barcelona metropolitan area ", reads the statement released by ERC.
During the assembly held today, the new candidate for mayor has expressed "his willingness to make himself available to all the citizens of Santa Coloma to consolidate and advance an 8-year project, ambitious, useful and of profound change in the city" .
Rufián will combine this work with the position of spokesperson in the republican parliamentary group in the Congress of Deputies.
Esquerra today has three councilors in this town, a socialist fiefdom in which the mayor's office has been held by Nuria Parlón since 2009 and currently has 17 councillors. Between 2012 and 2015, Parlón made the mayor's office compatible with her seat in the Parliament of Catalonia.
Rumors about ERC's intention to place Rufián as number 1 on its municipal list in his hometown, as part of a Republican campaign to conquer territory in the metropolitan area from PSC and comuns, had been repeated for more than half a year, but the deputy had always handled that possibility to the extent that it was compatible with his current role as spokesman and president of the Republican Group in Madrid.
