Urtasun ratified in Barcelona
The national council of Los Comuns met in an extraordinary session on Friday, 16 October, and ratified Culture Minister Ernest Urtasun as the number two on the Frente Amplio list for Barcelona province. Members backed him with 94.1% of the votes, the party said in a statement issued on Saturday, 17 October. Ada Colau, the former mayor of Barcelona, will head the same list and is the coalition's candidate for prime minister. The 29 November general election will be the first Urtasun has contested, and he is expected to take a seat in Congress in the next legislature if elected.
The council also approved the electoral coalition agreement inside the Frente Amplio with 94.8% support. The Congress candidacy will run as Comuns-Front Ampli, while the Senate list will carry the name Comuns-Front Ampli per la democràcia. The deadline for registering coalitions expired at midnight, according to El País, so the lists for the vote are now closed.
Urtasun presented the decision in a video shared by the party, saying he had chosen to step forward and join the candidacy. He called the election a 'batalla trascendental', a decisive battle, and framed it as a defence against the right.
We cannot allow Catalonia to fall into the sphere of influence of Donald Trump with a government of PP and Vox, and we will not allow it.
Urtasun's role in the campaign is expected to be significant. Because Colau will travel across Spain during the 15-day campaign, La Vanguardia reports that the culture minister will take on much of the coalition's work in Catalonia and is likely to take part in the Barcelona debates with other list leaders. Aina Vidal, who led Comuns Sumar in the 23 July 2023 election, when the space won 14% of the vote and seven seats in Catalonia, could follow them on the list.
A left split at the deadline
Podemos and the Frente Amplio, which groups IU, Más Madrid, Comuns and Movimiento Sumar, managed to file joint lists only in the Valencian Community and the Canary Islands. El País reports that the attempt to reach a state-wide agreement failed after ten days of negotiation. Podemos accused the IU leadership of blocking deals in Murcia, Extremadura, Castilla-La Mancha, Cantabria and Andalucía. Podemos insisted on pacts territory by territory and objected that the Frente Amplio's late six-point offer, presented in writing on Thursday evening, would have meant breaking its agreement with Esquerra Republicana.
In Madrid, two candidacies will compete. Irene Montero, backed by Gabriel Rufián, will face Emilio Delgado, a regional deputy for Más Madrid. Montero won an unopposed Podemos primary with more than 24,000 support votes, one of the lowest turnouts in a vote driven by the party, according to El País.
Rufián said on Friday that his project had failed and that he had considered leaving his post.
I put forward a project and that project has failed.
Colau and what remains at stake
La Razón reports that Colau, 52, returned to front-line politics after accepting the Frente Amplio's candidacy for the presidency of the government. Earlier this month four parties had proposed her to lead the government, and she offered to withdraw and even rename the Frente Amplio, the paper says. El Mundo reports that Colau is seeking to occupy the whole space of the left, while Rufián and Montero keep their own spaces.
The left bloc won 31 seats in 2023 and holds five ministries, El País notes, and it enters the campaign weakened and locked in a public dispute over who blocked the pact. El Confidencial reports that left-wing voters have tired of the wrangling over lists and vetoes. The paper says the left's main pitch is to stop the advance of right-wing forces it calls Trumpist, a goal the infighting has complicated. The general election takes place on 29 November, and the coalition will contest it with several separate lists in the largest regions.