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The noisy landing of Gabriel Rufián in municipal politics

2023-03-25T19:41:43.656Z


The Esquerra spokesman in Congress has already accumulated several controversies in his new role as head of the poster in Santa Coloma de Gramenet


The ERC spokesman Gabriel Rufián (center), and the Social Rights Minister, Carles Campuzano (left), at an event in Santa Coloma de Gramanet (Barcelona). 03/13/2023ERC GRAMENET (ERC GRAMENET)

“I am 41, I was born in Santa Coloma de Gramenet, everyone knows it.

There began the linguistic immersion.

Do you think it's hard for me to speak Spanish?” Esquerra spokesman Gabriel Rufián snapped last Tuesday at the candidate Ramón Tamames in the debate on the motion of no confidence promoted by Vox.

From his seats, several deputies shouted yes.

"Oh yeah?

That's new.

Is it costing me? ”, He replied, sarcastic.

Ruffianism in its purest form.

Defense of multilingual Spain, done.

Electoral ad for the municipal elections in which he debuted, too.

But not everything has gone so well in the debut of Rufián's local politics.

The landing of the Republican in the race for the Santa Coloma rod, with an absolute majority of the PSC since 1992 and where ERC only has 3 of 27 councillors, has already had several controversial episodes and some have even come against the Government.

Junts registered last Thursday in Parliament a motion to disapprove the Social Rights Minister, Carles Campuzano, whom they accuse of promoting the agreement with Rufián for the construction of a nursing home in the Barcelona municipality if Esquerra "was decisive in the next mandate".

📢💡 The head of the llista d'Esquerra Republicana @gabrielrufian and the Minister of Social Rights, @carlescampuzano 🤝 agree on the 2nd public residence of gent gran 🏠👵🧓 to Santa Coloma de Gramenet if the republicans 👥 are deciding on the next mandate.

#SantaColomaMereixMés pic.twitter.com/SEfF6xDhZa

— ERC Gramenet (@ErcGramenet) March 13, 2023

The idea of ​​this electoral marketing emerges from a tweet published on March 13 in the ERC Gramenet account.

From the department that the ex-convergent now leads, they insist that in the video it is clear that the construction of the building depends on the Consistory and that, once finished, the Government would study the concertation of places or the relevant agreement.

The PSC took advantage of the situation to denounce that Campuzano attended the ERC event in Santa Colomna, having canceled a meeting with its mayor Núria Parlon on two occasions.

To make matters worse, during the budget negotiation in the Generalitat, the Government rejected an amendment from the PSC that asked to guarantee the resources for said equipment.

The entire opposition sees a partisan use of the Government and, in the control session last Tuesday, the

president

Pere Aragonès (also the ERC national coordinator) refused to disavow Campuzano as requested by Junts, considering that "no agreement had been reached with candidates”.

“Not everything goes in the campaign.

We will not go down to the mud ”, assured Parlon after the controversy.

The disapproval will be voted on in plenary session on April 18, it will warm up the electoral campaign and will focus on the municipality of almost 118,000 inhabitants, with the lowest available gross income within the Metropolitan Area (14,800 euros) and with only 19% of the population with higher education.

Whether sought or not, ERC thus manages to give prominence to an electoral contest that is vital to its roadmap.

It was Oriol Junqueras himself, president of ERC, who asked him to present his name.

The spokesman did not hide a certain discomfort: his chances of winning are few (in 2019, the party obtained 9.9% of the votes compared to 50.9% for the PSC) and there are many voices inside and outside the party that see him amortized .

Junqueras believes that the success of the independence movement depends on his thesis nesting in Greater Barcelona, ​​where even the population coming from other parts of the State and mostly Spanish-speaking is more reluctant.

Rufián landed in 2015 on the lists for the ERC general elections precisely because he represents that group and the party hopes that his great media pull will allow him to put a pike in Flanders in one of the strongest fiefdoms of socialism.

Rufián's particular style of communication has been refined with his change of role in Madrid and on occasion it has gone against him.

In June 2022, the party forced him to rectify after calling

former president

Carles Puigdemont live on TV-3.

A certain more traditional sector of ERC is uncomfortable that he goes it alone in many aspects and that, for example, he publicly showed his dissatisfaction with the task entrusted to him in Santa Coloma, giving the feeling of "looseness", says a leader, in his role in Madrid.

However, no one denies that his profile serves as a speaker for a campaign that would otherwise go unnoticed.

The party's bet is such that even one of the most important territorialized investments that ERC agreed to in the General Budgets is precisely in Santa Coloma: five million for equipment in the Can Zam park.

It is the traditional practice of political parties to take advantage of the amendments in the accounts to irrigate their fiefdoms and from the independence formation they defended that it showed Rufián's commitment to the municipality where ERC had not achieved representation until 2015.

Rufián has always made reference to his origin, although he later moved to Sabadell and later to Madrid.

Being registered in a municipality is not a condition to be a candidate, but his main problem is his image as a paratrooper.

Accustomed to the great speeches of national politics, the big question is how he will approach the great little world of municipalism.

For now, Parlon focuses his attacks and hints that he will exploit the vein that his predecessor, Bartomeu Muñoz, is in jail after the conviction for the

Petroria case

urban corruption.

He blames him for things like the ultimate responsibility for a poster war last week (posters with an agenda of municipal activities were pasted on those of the Republican pre-campaign) even for not providing him with spaces for political acts, something he denounced from the press room. Congress last February.

The City Council denied him, assuring that it was only aware of an informal consultation to record a television program that the deputy produces and presents.

The socialist slogan is not to give room to “noise”.

To answer him, they consider, is to help him.

But the power of the Republican's speakers makes it difficult to continue with that idea.

In Parlon's environment they believe that it will be in the campaign where Ruffian will be seen as a paratrooper and that will reduce their expectations of improving the result.

There are no nerves, they assure, and they register the visit of the PSC ministers within the activity of the pre-campaign.

The outcome will be known on May 28.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-25

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