The Andalusian electoral night of June 19 can represent for Ciudadanos the beginning of the end or prolong his agony for indefinite space in the shadow of the more than probable context of a PP in minority or with support from the extreme right. In both cases, the predictable scenario that presents itself for the orange formation leads it to consider whether it is convenient for it to continue sailing to try to survive far from port; if swimming at the mercy of the currents with little chance of not dying of hypothermia; or whether to tie oneself definitively to the rope of salvation that the popular baronies have been throwing at their leaders for months.
In any case, everything indicates that the project born more than a decade ago from the initiative of Albert Rivera and other founding members is doomed to fade into memory from a notorious part of the electorate that, excitedly, bought their speech, the one that placed them to the left of the PP and to the right of the PSOE, the sociological center that determines success or failure in voting.
Citizens swim in insignificance, although not in irrelevance. He is inconsequential in that he has ceased to matter to his electorate going forward, but continues to be relevant in municipal governments and in some provincial councils where it still supports the Executive branch, either his own or propping up other formations. In many cases, his unconditional support for the party from which it has come to seem like a split is evidence of the end of the adventure, but – it has already been said – there are still places where he continues to be indispensable to the PP in matters of governability, even at the cost of to look sideways or to cover your nose in situations of suspicion, as is happening now in Madrid. We’ll see for how long.
The truth is, as a result of the failed motion of censure in Murcia a year ago, with Inés Arrimadas since that day dedicated to internal work and busy putting out fires far from the spotlight, Francisco Igea abandoned like a jilted couple in Castilla y León, Toni Cantó in his Madrid beach bar and Juan Marín convinced of the expiration of its services in Andalusia, the main showcase of the formation that came to regenerate the political center is reduced to Begona Villacis in Madrid. There is nothing more to listen to his intervention in the last plenary session of the City Council, during the debate on the alleged scam of the Cayetanos with the masks and other anticovid sanitary material, to warn the difficulty in drawing a differential line between Almeida’s speech and that of the Cs spokesperson. Isabel Díaz Ayuso, group partner of the mayor of Madrid, has never defended the mayor of the capital so passionately or with the passion with which Villacís did days ago. Once Ayuso is consecrated as regional president of the PP, it will be necessary to see how the leader manages her good relations with Vox in the face of the disaffection that Martínez Almeida seems to project in the capital of Spain towards the ultra party.
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The history of Cs is known, therefore, it is gratuitous to repeat it. We will never know what would have happened to the organization in the event that an alliance had taken place between Albert Rivera and Pedro Sánchez to form a government. What we do know is how the story of some minority parties -regionalist in this case- that listened to the siren songs of the Popular Party has ended, see the examples of that disappeared Valencian Union of González Lizondo or the deep wound caused in Unión del Pueblo Navarro, when two of its deputies fell tempted by the poisoned apple that Pablo Casado offered them in the debate on the labour reform.
Now, and in anticipation of what happens in Andalusia, Ciudadanos is evaluating whether to concur in conjunction with the PP in future electoral lists of the Valencian Community, Navarra or the Balearic Islands. This Popular Party, however, is no longer the same as Pablo Casado. Núñez Feijóo is little friend of coalitions, as he demonstrated in Galicia or when he supported former Basque leader Alfonso Alonso in his opposition to forming alliances in Euskadi, which ended up costing him his job. The Ciudadanos countdown began months ago. The erratic behavior of Albert Rivera activated the timer and in Castilla y León the first charges were already detonated. It is only a matter of a couple of months to see what capacity for destruction the next explosion will have for the game, on June 19 in Andalusia.