ERC and Junts open 29-N campaigns with bitter attacks in Tarragona and Barcelona

ERC opens in Tarragona

Esquerra Republicana (ERC) opened its campaign for the 29 November general election on Thursday, 12 November, at the Port de Tarragona. El País put the crowd at about 900 people and La Vanguardia at about 800. Gabriel Rufián, the party's lead candidate for Barcelona, spoke alongside Oriol Junqueras, Elisenda Alamany, Francesc-Marc Àlvaro and Norma Pujol, the candidate for Congress in Tarragona.

Tarragona matters because ERC wants a second seat in the province, a result it last won in April 2019. El País, reviewing several polls, judges that ERC will probably win one of the province's six seats and is contesting another with the PSC and Junts. The rally was also framed as the start of a cycle in which ERC hopes to take the lead on the left from the PSC.

The campaign casts ERC as a brake on a PP and Vox government. Rufián warned that if the two parties reach 210 seats they would change the Constitution, and he named pensions and healthcare among the areas he expects them to target. He told supporters that ERC must be pro-independence, progressive and feminist, but above all antifascist.

“There will be constitutional changes.”

Rufián turns on Junts

Rufián's sharpest lines were aimed at Junts, which he accused of being a collaborator of Abascal's for placing itself in the middle of the two blocs. He described a Catalan right that imitates Orriols and Ayuso, pointing to Junts' votes against the last two housing decrees as proof that it sides with PP and Vox against Catalan workers. He urged Junts to return to common sense and told its voters that ERC is there to represent them. He defended running with Podemos, arguing that a party is not a tribe and must represent a diverse Catalonia, and said ERC embraces anyone who shares social justice, democracy, freedom and anti-fascism.

Junts starts in Barcelona

Junts opened its campaign the same day in the Poblenou district of Barcelona, with about a hundred militants and supporters according to La Razón. Candidate Míriam Nogueras, secretary general Jordi Turull and Carles Puigdemont, who joined by video, presented the party as the only force that is purely Catalan and free of ties to Spanish blocs. Nogueras answered the ERC alliance with Podemos with a line aimed directly at Rufián's voters.

“If you vote for ERC, you vote for Podemos.”

Nogueras cast the Junts vote as the useful vote for 29-N, saying its seven deputies helped block the right in 2023. Her central promise was that a Junts vote would stop a PP and Vox government from taking office.

“With us, neither Abascal nor Colau will be ministers.”

Turull went further, describing PP and Vox as those coming out of Francoism's closet, and rejected any arrangement with them.

Puigdemont and the wait for return

Puigdemont has decided to stay in Waterloo, Belgium, until after the 29 November elections, although El Periódico reports that no arrest warrant against him remains in force. He said something told him this would be the last campaign he runs from a distance. His return depends on the amnesty being applied definitively, a question that rests with Supreme Court judge Manuel Marchena and that could be resolved within days or weeks of 12 November.

What comes next

The general election is set for 29 November 2026, and both parties are competing for seats that could decide the next Congress. Surveys cited by El Periódico put most of the voters ERC is contesting with the PSC and the Comuns, while a few thousand are torn between ERC and Junts. Junts wants to make Spain's decisions depend on Catalonia, while ERC is trying to take the PSC's place. The ERC campaign caravan is due in Tortosa on Sunday, 15 November, according to El País.