Spain's centre party, Ciudadanos, gives up
Where will their 300,000 votes end up at the snap general election in July?
Another political project in the centre of the board in Spain has failed. Ciudadanos has given up after the disastrous results in the regional elections on Sunday, when they lost all their seats in the regional parliaments. They will not stand at the general election on July 23.
The party's general secretary, Adrián Vázquez, insisted yesterday that Ciudadanos was not giving up: “We are not giving up. We are undertaking an organisational and intellectual rearmament”. Last summer, Inés Arrimadas announced to the country that Ciudadnos had begun a renewal of what was left of the party, and that they had been working on the plan for five months.
When asked twelve months ago by ABC about the party’s aims for the local elections that have just taken place, Arrimadas replied that the goal was "to hold the liberal space, that is what Spain needs". After more than a year of renewal announcements, voters handed down judgement on that liberal project on Sunday. “Right now”, Vázquez admitted—as he tried to defend non-surrender in order to continue with the never-ending renewal —“Spaniards do not see us as a transformational political alternative for our country”.
Not everyone agrees with the decision. Edmundo Bal, who lost the battle for the leadership of the party in the middle of the long renewal in January, railed against the party's leadership on a breakfast news show this morning: "I am really very, very angry and I am not going to shut up", he said. "They, the leadership of my party, have orphaned 300,000 voters, including me, myself, my party has made me an orphan, I have no one to vote for", with no centre party in July. Ciudadanos voters, he added, "have been brave, not like the cowards who are running this party".
“Ciudadanos thus turns off the lights for an indefinite period of time”, writes El Español in its editorial: “in a more sensible manner than UCD, CDS or UPyD, the other centrist parties afflicted by the same evil as Ciudadanos: the extreme polarisation of Spanish politics and a national sociology that is extraordinarily reticent to liberal principles”.
ABC thinks it is a sensible decision that will accelerate Pedro Sánchez’s departure from government: “Although it is technically wrong to extrapolate local election results to a general election, last Sunday, Ciudadanos won more than 300,000 votes. It is very likely that a large part of those votes now ends up going to MPs in the centre-right block”.
Thanks for reading. Subscribe now:
🔥 Understand the stories changing Spain better
📝 All the articles
💪 Guarantee this independent analysis & commentary