The Podemos candidate for President of the Government, Irene Montero, and the lead candidate of ERC for Barcelona to the Congress, Gabriel Rufián, urged this Saturday in Madrid to go to the polls with "memory and conscience", rejecting what they consider the useful-vote trap promoted by the socialists. "The PSOE, if they can, they eat you up," the purple leader said.
At their first joint rally in the capital, after the one held two weeks ago in Barcelona, the electoral partners showed complete agreement and advanced that they will organize a third event in Madrid to address, according to Montero, everyone who was left out of Espacio Delicias this Saturday.
This complicity was even noticeable in their clothing: both appeared in yellow sweaters without having agreed on it, as the Catalan deputy joked. Rufián's, in a more intense tone—"yellow Esquerra," he pointed out—and Montero's, a bit more muted, which she later covered with a Palestinian scarf of the same color. Both wore jeans, blue in his case and gray in hers.
Rufián, who this time served as a "warm-up act", emphasized from the start that Podemos' membership knows that standing up to the right "has a cost", but also confronting the PSOE, because the socialists "try to eat you up".
Criticism of the useful vote and the PSOE strategy
"The PSOE, if they can, they eat you up. But if we want our country to be like we dream, we can't let that happen. That's why they appeal to the useful vote," Montero insisted afterward, recalling that, in her view, this is the usual tactic of the socialists to "devour their left". "All of the Lord's life it has been like that. They tell you: we haven't done anything in four years, but when elections come, vote useful," she said.
According to the candidate, that message pushes citizens to vote what they "don't want". She emphasized that "the only moment in which the same power belongs to a person who lives in Carabanchel or in Usera as to Juan Roig (owner of Mercadona), that day he tells you no—that you don't do what you want, that you vote for the PSOE".
In the face of this, he has defended that "in an election people vote for what they want, what they feel, what is in their memory, for the one they know will defend their interests." He has reiterated that "you have to vote for what you want, for what you feel, for what you think, for what you dream. Your vote is not the people who ask you for it and then do not change anything, then do not solve any problem, then do the same thing as always."
Montero has wanted to make clear that on November 29, in his view, three paths open up: the "involution" represented by PP and Vox, the left that runs "on the same ballot as the PSOE" and the proposal embodied by ERC and Podemos, a "plurinational and feminist republican alliance" that he has described as an option that will not be "subjected".
"The front is us" and the ERC-Podemos alliance
"The front is us", the ERC candidate has proclaimed, who has resorted to words from the President of the Generalitat in the Second Spanish Republic, Lluís Companys, calling for the defense of Madrid in 1936. "Catalonia loves you, as a Catalan I want the best for Madrid", he has said, before quoting the former coordinator of Izquierda Unida, Julio Anguita, who in 2016 appealed to cooperation between the lefts.
With these references, Rufián has wanted to denounce the "toxicity" of those who cast doubt on his alliance with Podemos in Catalonia and has claimed this joint formula. He has stressed that "this was not about replacing Yolanda Díaz or a space that already existed and they have just changed the name", in reference to Sumar. "This was not about submitting to the PSOE by entering the PSOE, but about submitting the PSOE from its left, with the sovereignist forces as the engine", he added.
In his speech, the republican leader also launched criticism at Junts and, in Madrid terms, at the regional president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, especially for refusing, as he has denounced, to negotiate with the unions of public education. "Ayuso is the mafia", he has ruled, accusing her of dismantling public services and reproaching the PP and Vox for wanting to "criminalize the strike" because they have "fear" of the power "of organized people".
Call for a general strike and defense of housing
Rufián has encouraged participation in the strike call: "That is why this 11 November we have to fill the streets and paralyze the country. There must be neither production nor consumption. The country has to stop so that rents, the price of food and energy come down," he demanded, underlining that this general strike is also aimed at "the complicit governments that could have done something and yet have done nothing."
The ERC deputy has devoted part of his speech to the housing problem. He has summarized that "these elections are about being with the money of the one who asks you for the vote against your own people, or with the peace of mind that comes from having the keys to a house," and he has guaranteed that ERC and Podemos will be "savage" with those who align themselves with capital.
"Buy baseball trading cards, wines, comics, whatever you want, but with flats, don’t mess with me...", he exclaimed, before proposing "frying through taxes" for companies with large profits. At this point, he also took the opportunity to attack the Government’s decision to force the olive mills to remove 12% of the olive oil produced this campaign from the market. He has denounced that now that this product is "cheap" it can be "intervened in the market," while "when there was an alarm, you had to fry with water and it was sustainable."
Corruption and the use of the law
Corruption has also been present in the speeches. Montero has criticized those who, according to her, use the rules to "protect the businesses of those at the top, putting people’s lives at risk." She has argued that "bipartisanship in Spain is not bothered by corruption; it is bothered that corruption is known."
Rufián, for his part, has reiterated that the left "cannot steal." "We have principles; they have interests," he stressed, contrasting his political project with that of the traditional parties.