Republican Left of the Valencian Country
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Republican Left of the Valencian Country (Catalan: Esquerra Republicana del País Valencià, ERPV) is a historical Valencian left nationalist and republican party founded in 1933, then refounded in September of 2000 by means of the merging of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya's (ERC) Valencian section with the Front pel País Valencià (Front for the Valencian Country).
ERPV is currently the main explicit sponsor of the Països Catalans idea in the Valencian Community.
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[edit] 20th century and demise
The party was founded during the Spanish Second Republic and became established under the leadership of Gaietà Huguet, in Castellón. In 1935 he impelled a merging with the party Esquerra Valenciana (Valencian Left, EV), founded on 1934 and led by Vicent Marco Miranda (ex-Mayor of Valencia), Josep Benedito, Miquel Duran de València and Manuel Sanchís-Guarner. After Vicent Marco obtained in 1936 the act of deputy in Valencia within the candidatures of the Popular Front both parties joint in a common parliamentary group in the Spanish Congress with the name of Catalan Left.
In 1935 ERPV disbanded and merged as a fraction in EV. The Spanish Civil War truncated many political projects in which Esquerra Valenciana participated, the most important of which it was a project of a Valencian statute of autonomy with the official name of País Valencià (rendered in English by some as "Valencian Country", see names of the Valencian Community) which would have granted similar autonomous powers as with the other so-called historical nationalities in Spain (namely, Andalusia, Basque country, Catalonia and Galicia). In spite of it, Esquerra Valenciana, the main party in which ERPV had dilluted, reached their maximum growth in this period, arriving to exceed 10,000 affiliated.
Under the regime of Francisco Franco, Esquerra Valenciana (the party which ERPV had merged with in 1935) was suppressed. Then, after Franco's death, the Spanish Transition and the advent of democracy in Spain, ERPV was not revived.
[edit] Refounding and current events
In 2000, a group of Valencian members of Esquerra Republicana de Catalunya (ERC) which had been running for elections under that acronym, decided to revive the ERPV one and, led led by Agustí Cerdà i Argent, claimed to have refounded the party as the Valencian branch of ERC.
Then, 2003 saw ERPV comeback to democratic elections in the Valencian Community, after more than 60 years of its last electoral contest. The party was able to participate in elections in a number of Valencian cities. It did not achieve representation elsewhere other than in Sueca.
ERPV run in the 2007 election to the Valencian regional Parliament under the "Esquerra" plain name, achieving 0.49% of the total votes[1] which was far to get them any MP due to the 5% threshold to win representation. Out of some five hundred Valencian municipalities, ERPV is currently represented in four of them: Sueca (2 councilors), Vall de Laguar (1), Simat de la Valldigna (1) and Xixona (1).
Despite its status in Valencia, at the Spanish general election, 2004 ERPV's leader Agustí Cerdà was elected as an MP himself at the Spanish Parliament. This was made possible by including him in the ERC electoral ticket in Catalonia instead of running for a Valencian electoral constituency.
Then, at the following Spanish general election, 2008, which saw ERC overall results halved, he was one of the incumbents who lost his seat.
