PSC Targets Vox and ERC in Red Belt Rallies in Terrassa, Sabadell
Salvador Illa and Jordi Hereu took the PSC campaign to Terrassa and Sabadell, aiming at Vox and at ERC voters. Polls, criticism of Rufián and local stakes.
The Partit dels Socialistes de Catalunya (PSC, the Catalan Socialist party) spent Saturday campaigning in the cinturó roig, or “red belt,” the ring of industrial towns around Barcelona where it has long been strongest. Jordi Hereu, the party’s head of the list for Barcelona, opened the day with a morning rally in Terrassa, and Salvador Illa, President of the Generalitat (Catalan government), was due in Sabadell in the evening, according to the Catalan daily Ara.
The aim, Ara reports, is to stop former Socialist voters in the metropolitan area from drifting to Vox on the right and to Esquerra Republicana (ERC) on the left.
Factory towns and the far right
Hereu, who is the acting Minister of Industry and Tourism and a former mayor of Barcelona, told the Terrassa crowd that these areas sum up what the Socialist project stands for. He leaned on the region’s working-class identity, pointing to the 19th-century factory chimneys still standing in Terrassa and across the province, at a time of deindustrialization and a rising far right across Europe.
Most of the party’s attacks are aimed at Vox, the party led by Santiago Abascal. At rallies, Hereu and Illa say Vox threatens Catalan self-government, the Catalan language and the welfare system in a way that “had not happened in the last 50 years,” in their words as reported by Ara. They also present the PSC as the only party able to protect the current pension system and to tackle the housing crisis by stepping into the market. “The market does not guarantee rights,” Hereu said.
Why it matters for the PSC’s left flank
The Socialists have also sharpened their tone against the alliance between ERC’s Gabriel Rufián and Podemos leader Irene Montero, which they fear could take votes from them. Some polls, including one by Ara, show Esquerra closing the gap with the PSC, mostly thanks to gains in the red belt.
The latest barometer from the Centre d’Estudis d’Opinió (CEO, the Catalan government’s polling office) puts the share of Socialist voters moving to ERC at up to 11%. Movement in the other direction stands at 8%, three points lower.
The PSC’s main complaints are that Rufián has split the parties to the left of the PSOE and is too critical of Pedro Sánchez’s government. “They use a tone that surprises me a bit,” Illa said on Saturday. He added that the Socialists will not let any party bring them to heel, a goal Rufián and Montero say they have, and that they do not need anyone to drag them into passing measures such as the labor reform, which ERC voted against.
The Front Ampli (Broad Front) gets gentler treatment from both leaders. Polls place that grouping well below its result in the 2023 general elections.
A pitch to concentrate the progressive vote
Socialist leaders are asking supporters to turn out and to concentrate the progressive vote on the PSC. Illa has told several times the story of a neighbor who describes herself as very far to the left and has always voted for parties to the left of the PSOE. This time, he says, she will back the Socialists because they can secure another Sánchez government.
Terrassa and the May municipal elections
The PSC is also using the campaign to promote its candidates for the municipal elections in May of next year, which is why it picked towns with symbolic weight for its rallies. Terrassa stands out because it is one of the few cities in the metropolitan area the Socialists do not control.
The party lost the mayor’s office after the current mayor, Jordi Ballart, left the PSC in 2017, during the period of the Procés (the Catalan independence push), and has not won it back since. Illa has already introduced Javi García, who leads the PSC in Terrassa, as the city’s next mayor.
Source: Ara
