2023-06-22 22:45:13
Ciudadanos accelerates its internal decomposition. The earthquake that caused the unusual decision of the Executive – endorsed by the National Committee – not to stand in the next general elections on July 23 after the debacle suffered in the last municipal and regional elections is leading some of its leaders and public officials to abandon the ship before its definitive shipwreck. The leaks have started in Catalonia and Madrid and all of them, for the moment, are going in the same direction, that is, towards other parties of the right and the extreme right.
Vox signs the former Cs and PP deputy Carina Mejías as number two in Barcelona
Further
PP and Vox – and even the new party of Macarena Olona – are fighting to keep the million and a half votes that the formation that now calls itself “liberal” achieved in 2019. Those of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, above all, believe that they will be able to attract part of those disenchanted with Vox and those Ciudadanos voters who now say they have been left “orphans” after the decision of the new leadership not to go to the polls . And the parade has only just begun.
The most notorious case has been that of Marta Rivera de la Cruz, who made the leap from Ciudadanos to the PP, first with Isabel Díaz Ayuso as Minister of Culture and in these municipalities she was placed by José Luis Martínez-Almeida on his list for the City Council of the capital as number 3. The surprise came shortly after, when Feijóo decided to place it as number two in his candidacy for Madrid on 23J. Despite this, the mayor of Madrid, who was caught by surprise by Feijóo’s decision, has appointed her as a delegate for the Culture area, waiting to see what happens in the general elections. If the leader of the PP manages to govern, the future of the former Citizens could be in a ministry.
But the recent leak that has done the most damage to the party now led by Patricia Guasp and Adrián Vázquez has been that of Nacho Martín Blanco. The until now spokesperson for Ciudadanos in the Parliament of Catalonia went up to the speakers’ rostrum at the beginning of the month and, before beginning his speech, paid an emotional farewell tribute to what has been the party’s leader for many years and a benchmark In Catalonia, Inés Arrimadas, who had just announced from Madrid that she was leaving politics after the 28M debacle. The former leader of Ciudadanos had been one of the most fervent defenders of the formation not concurring in the general elections on July 23, as endorsed by the national committee.
Despite having agreed with that decision, Martín Blanco that day still defended the need to keep Ciudadanos alive. “Our party is certainly going through a delicate situation, but our party has a future, it has a transcendental importance in Catalonia that I think Inés Arrimadas embodies probably, along with Albert Rivera, better than anyone.” “Inés has been a politician of historical scope that will always be remembered by the constitutionalists of Catalonia,” he stated, to the applause of his group, who in the last regional elections, with Carlos Carrizosa as a candidate, went from 36 deputies to only six .
Today, in Parliament, I wanted to pay my particular tribute to @InesArrimadas, a policy of historical scope that will always be a symbol of the defense of freedom and democracy and the fight against nationalism in Catalonia. Thanks for everything, Ines. pic.twitter.com/fwOJ9x4WIY
— Nacho Martin Blanco (@Nmartinblanco) June 1, 2023
Eight days later, on June 12, Martín Blanco announced that he was leaving the party, admitting that he was “pessimistic” about the “viability” of the project. “I am leaving Ciudadanos because I have lost hope in the capacity of this party and its future viability”, he explained at a press conference. A few hours later, the news broke that he had signed for the PP to compete as number one for Barcelona in the next generals of 23J replacing Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo, whom Feijóo has secured a position on the list of popular in Madrid.
Many of his fellow rank-and-file members were not surprised, since they assure that he had been “cherishing that idea” for a long time and in recent days he was negotiating his fit on the popular lists. The party leadership was quick to react to express his “deep discomfort and disappointment”. In a harsh statement, they pointed out that “each one puts a price on their dignity and commitment”, while they revealed that after their decision to leave for the PP it was “better understood” why, during the debate that took place in that national council on whether to attend or not on 23J, the Catalan deputy, who also held a vice-spokesperson in the Citizens’ Executive, defended the dissolution of the party and the political project.
Others have called him a “traitor” and he responded to them on Twitter: “I have spent years doing politics in my land, Catalonia, for the sake of freedom and the unity of Spain based on reason and respect. I hate intrigues and cainism, so today I can only say that it is an honor to join Feijóo to bring sanity back to the Government of Spain”.
Nacho Martín Blanco had been the star signing of Albert Rivera on the eve of the historic regional elections in December 2017. The journalist and talk show host was a partner of two of the party’s most prominent figures at the time: the one who was spokesperson in the Parliament and in the Senate, Lorena Roldán; and the spokesperson for the Barcelona City Council, Carina Mejías, with whom he was in tune from the beginning. Curiously, the first is in the PP and the second, in Vox. Roldán was scared of her in 2021 when she saw that Arrimadas relegated her with a stroke of the pen as a candidate for the Generalitat and they placed Carlos Carrizosa in her place without primaries or anything. And Mejías has just learned that she is number two on the list for Barcelona headed by the Vox deputy in Congress Juan José Aizcorbe.
Carina Mejías left Ciudadanos in 2020 after eight years of militancy in the formation. She did so after showing her disagreement with the pact sealed by Inés Arrimadas with the Prime Minister, Pedro Sánchez, to extend the state of alarm in the last phase of the pandemic. At that time, she no longer held any public office but had been a deputy in Parliament between 2012 and 2015. For the next four years she was the spokesperson for Ciudadanos in the Barcelona City Council and later held the seat in Congress that Toni Roldán vacated when he resigned. Mejías’s political trajectory is similar to that of other comrades –such as Juan Carlos Girauta– who have gone through various parties. Before she was a member of Ciudadanos, she had done so in the PP, with which she was also a deputy in Catalonia. She and now she has ended up at Vox. Abascal’s new signing has argued that Catalonia “needs an alternative to the policies of separatism and the left that have done so much damage.”
The escape of the eternal critic
The Ciudadanos leaks towards the PP have not stopped there. Another former member of the formation, Pere Lluís Huguet, will head the PP list for Tarragona. Huguet was a spokesman for Ciudadanos in the provincial council and an opposition councilor since 2019 in the Salou City Council, where he attended as number one. But at the end of last February, he left the party. That same month, Senator Ruth Goñi, who now appears as number two in the Senate for Navarra with the PP, where she has been a member since then, also resigned as a member.
He is also in the popular candidacies as number 14 of the PP to the Aurora Nacarino Congress, who was a deputy for Burgos with Ciudadanos but lost the seat after the dissolution of the Cortes and the electoral repetition of November 2019.
In addition, the PP already incorporated the economist and former Ciudadanos MEP Luis Garicano into its ‘Reformismo21’ foundation in May, who in July of last year resigned from his parliamentary act to take up a teaching position at Columbia University, in New York. Alberto Núñez Feijóo had been courting Garicano for some time, whom some already place as the future super-minister of the Economy if the PP manages to govern.
The culmination of Ciudadanos leaks to other parties has been put –for the moment– by the economist and commentator Juan Carlos Bermejo, who has just been signed by Macarena Olona to go as head of the list for Madrid on 23J in his new party, Caminando Juntos. The affiliate of Las Rozas was in the critical candidacy of Edmundo Bal in the duel that the State lawyer had with Inés Arrimadas for the reins of the party. Since Bermejo has not announced that he is leaving Ciudadanos, the party leadership has threatened to open an expulsion file for him.
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