The top of the ERC list for Congress, Gabriel Rufián, has accused Junts of “toxicity” after the number one of the party for the Senate from Barcelona, Josep Maria Vila d'Abadal, attacked the alliance between ERC and Podemos and said that the former president of the Generalitat, Francesc Macià, would kill all those of ERC if he were to rise again.
Rufián spoke this Sunday at a rally in Tortosa (Tarragona) accompanied by ERC’s general secretary, Elisenda Alamany; the candidate for Tarragona for Congress, Norma Pujol; the number one for the Senate from Tarragona, Noemí Llauradò; the number 2 for the Senate for the same constituency, Xavier Faura, and the mayor of Tortosa, Mar Lleixà.
During his speech, the Republican leader recalled Macià’s 1932 phrase, “Left-wing ideals can only be represented by left-wing parties, and there are no more real, more true left-wing parties than ERC,” and accused Junts of selling magic, fantasy and toxicity instead of offering real proposals.
Before some 1,200 people, he claimed ERC as an independence, progressive, feminist, ecologist and, above all, antifascist force, and he labeled Junts as collaborators for, as he put it, positioning itself as a false center while voting in Congress together with the PP and Vox: “Cursed be you, petty-bourgeois patriots, who sell your people in exchange for a flag.”
Criticism over pardons and promise to defend ERC
Rufián criticized Junts for, when the prisoners in the independence process were pardoned and they left prison, accusing ERC of betrayal and of making an “agreeement with the socialists” “in exchange for nothing,” and he lamented that there had been a “complicit silence” within the Republican ranks.
“I promise you that you will have a party that will defend you, that won’t look at the floor or the ceiling when a convergent, a ‘pepero’ or a ‘voxero’ comes after us. I swear it, it won’t happen again,” the candidate emphasized, pledging to stand up to the attacks against ERC.
The leader pointed to housing as the main problem in Catalunya and has called for action against large property holders and for “frying people with taxes” who try to enrich themselves with the real estate market, thanking the head of the Frente Amplio list, Ada Colau, for calling for something that, he recalled, he has been defending for two years.
He is not aspiring to be a minister and warns of the PP and Vox
Rufián has asked for the vote to achieve “a government of the PSOE subjugated to the sovereignist left,” and has insisted that he does not aspire to be a minister or to govern Spain, but rather that the country be governed well from a progressive perspective.
“Because I am useful and realistic. There is no airtight bubble called Catalonia that nothing reaches, mainly if you have a fascist with an ‘estelada’ named Silvia Orriols,” he has said, defending the need to influence national politics.
He has also criticized that Junts positions itself “in the middle” in the event of a PP and Vox executive: “When someone is in the middle, you have to move them aside,” he has warned, alerting that, if Feijóo and Abascal’s side reaches 210 seats, they could push constitutional reforms that would affect basic rights in healthcare, education, and pensions.
The republican has also taken aim at certain media for not reflecting literally the insults that he claims he has received from Junts in recent days, such as “idiot, useless, illiterate, abuser,” and he has said he is tired of demanding that Junts recover rationality, stop voting with PP and Vox, and that, even so, they are accused of attacking them.
Alamany reproaches Vila d'Abadal’s past in Vic
For her part, Elisenda Alamany has criticized the words of Vila d'Abadal, former mayor of Vic (Barcelona): “What would make Mr. Macià feel bad is that you approved budgets in Vic, as you did, with a lame party like Plataforma per Catalunya.”
The general secretary of ERC has defended that Junts is uncomfortable that the republicans no longer allow themselves to be intimidated: “We are a big party, open, self-assured, and the times when ERC turned the other cheek when they were beating them have passed into history.”