A new signing by the Catalan Republican Left (ERC) as the party assembles its candidacies for Spain's snap general election on 23rd July. University of Barcelona (UB) criminal law professor Joan Queralt will be ERC's candidate of reference for the Senate for the Barcelona constituency, ElNacional.cat can report. The party leadership will present its proposals to the executive today, before they are ratified on Friday at an ERC national council meeting.
Candidates for the Spanish Senate are presented as open lists ordered alphabetically - so that any voter can choose any selection of candidates - but the ERC candidate of reference in Barcelona will be Queralt, a doctor of law and currently director of the department of criminal law, criminology and international law at UB. Queralt is also a contributor to numerous media, including ElNacional.cat.
ERC fishing beyond the party
With this decision, ERC deepens the strategy of including people who are not part of the party in its candidacies or in positions that depend on its designation. This Wednesday morning it was revealed that the prominent journalist Francesc Marc Àlvaro will take the number three position in the ERC list for Congress for Barcelona, in a candidacy that will be headed by the tandem formed by deputy Gabriel Rufián and the until-now Catalan climate action minister, Teresa Jordà. The decision to incorporate Jordà was announced on Saturday by the president of the party, Oriol Junqueras, and made possible by Pere Aragonès's government reshuffle carried out on Monday, in which two more ministers, Juli Fernàndez and Josep Gonzàlez Cambray, left their portfolios.
As for the other constituencies, they will all be headed by sitting MPs: top of the list for Girona will be deputy Montse Bassa, sister of former minister Dolors Bassa; another sitting MP, Jordi Salvador, will head the party list for Tarragona; in Lleida, the head of the list will be MP Inés Granollers, from the town of Bellpuig.
Monday is the deadline for parties to submit their candidacies for the two houses of the Spanish Parliament for the July 23rd general election.