Perhaps it is time to know a
little more about Ciudadanos (their webpage here) and their leader (and probably
Spain’s next president) 38-year-old Albert Rivera (Wiki). As we have seen
with the recent Women’s Strike, Albert is a fast learner. His party had
said just before the event that they would not support the protest as ‘it
was anti-Capitalist’. Only a few days later, Ciudadanos billed
itself as ‘delighted to lead the feminist debate’.
Like many modern Spanish
politicians, Rivera speaks reasonable English (video here). In the video,
shot during a meeting by the European liberals ALDE (Ciudadanos is a member), Rivera comes across as pro-European and
he is supported by Emmanuel Macron. A recent piece from Spiegel reports
that Macron ‘...has begun putting together a network of pro-European powers. En Marche!, for example, has
established contact with Ciudadanos, the liberal party in Spain that is
currently leading in the polls. And party leader Albert Rivera looks a lot like
a Macron clone: a young and handsome economic liberal...’.
Albert Rivera is certainly
(and demonstrably) a unionist in Spanish terms, despite being born and raised
in Barcelona. Indeed, his anti-Independence
stand is bringing him popularity across Spain (in Catalonia, the largest party
in the recent regional elections is Ciudadanos). As to Ciudadanos being a
liberal democrat party, it is generally seen as behaving rather more like a
conservative one (Politico: ‘All-out
war on the Spanish right’ here).
Whatever is happening, it’s
working, with Ciudadanos now heading in the polls (the party leads with 28.3%
with the PP lagging at 21.9% according to La
Vanguardia here).
Alfonso Guerra, an old-guard
PSOE leader, says in an interview here
that ‘Ciudadanos, the party that acted with total coherence in Catalonia, is
going to find itself rewarded across the whole of Spain."
Presidents of various Ibex 35 companies have quietly been
meeting with Rivera according to El
Confidencial here.
As Mariano Rajoy begins to
unwind (a gloomy Conservative article here),
the chances are that Spain’s next president will be Albert Rivera.
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