The shadow of the pro-independence abstention in the municipal elections is long. Up to 300,000 votes stopped accumulating ERC. The Republicans understand that there was no transfer of votes and they attribute it to the fact that a good part of their electorate stayed on the sofa. Esquerra believes it has found the recipe for mobilization and fuels fear of a possible PP-Vox government. At the same time, it has been proposed to combat the idea that the useful vote against "the extreme right (the PP) and the extreme right (Vox)" is the one directed at the socialists.
"There is a party" is one of the slogans repeated in Esquerra The Republicans were the first force in the 2019 general elections, with thirteen deputies and with Gabriel Rufián at the helm. The candidate is the same, but the polls change their aspirations and place them behind the PSC.
This Thursday the Republicans have opened the campaign for the elections on July 23 in Barcelona with the entire staff of the formation present. They have done it by hitting Sumar and its leader Yolanda Díaz with their canes. Sumar is going to pay the price, at least during the start of the campaign, given the desire of ERC to maintain a high representation in Congress. In addition, the Center d'Estudis d'Opinió (CEO) drew on Wednesday a transfer of votes from the Republicans to the purples.
Those of Oriol Junqueras have it easy: the Vice President of the Government assured in an interview in the morning on Telecinco that in Catalonia “it is not on the table”.
Rufián went straight for Díaz's jugular: “Long live, long live and long live Irene Montero. She can't add up leaving yours in the ditch ·. Teresa Jordà, number two in the candidacy for Congress, stressed that Sumar "is increasingly similar to the PSOE".
In any case, ERC considers that the mobilization of the vote attends to other reasons. To the advent, in his opinion, of "a black Spain PP-Vox or a gray Spain PP-PSOE or PSOE-PP", as Rufián has pointed out.
At this point, the Esquerra campaign acquires overtones of war. The motto is "Defend Catalonia!" and Pilar Vallugera, a candidate for Congress, spoke of the "Madrid front" to kindly rectify the number three of the candidacy, Francesc-Marc Álvaro, who remarked moments before that ERC intends to stop "the right, the ultra-right and the all those birds.
Junts will not be, a priori, the target of ERC's wrath. Marta Rovira has made an appeal to the independence unit that she has come across with the words of Carles Puigdemont in RAC1. The former president stated that a hypothetical transfer to Switzerland would not make sense of "exile" and that political activity is more productive from Brussels.
