A deadly silence seems to have settled around the leader of the opposition in Catalonia, Inés Arrimadas, over the possibility that her political future might not focus on Catalonia but on Madrid. The fact that she was chosen to be Ciudadanos' spokesperson for the whole of Spain in the party's latest conclave was the first clue. She hurried to deny it and said that her wish was to make her career in Catalonia. But what's certain is that her presence in Spanish politics has grown ever more frequent, becoming a decisive part of the campaign for the Andalusian election to be held on Sunday. Arrimadas, in Albert Rivera's absence, kicked off Cs' campaign in Andalulsia and, for example, this Wednesday she was in Cádiz, on Tuesday she was in Seville...
In recent hours, a new clue has fanned the debate about Arrimadas' departure from Catalan politics. Her husband, Xavier Cima, has decided to redirect his professional career towards Madrid and has even left a consultancy firm he ran alongside another politician from the defunct Unió Democràtica party. Everything suggests that the couple is planning to move to Madrid and she would travel to Barcelona a number of days a week, for the Parliament's plenary sessions and the political events she might have to attend, but would make Spanish politics her priority. Going as far as to substitute Rivera? In the short term, certainly not, but in politics nothing should ever be counted out.
Many Ciudadanos leaders think that the opportunity of last year's Catalan elections won't come around again. Even with the Catalan government fired, Catalan autonomy seized, the president and his ministers in exile or in prison, and the whole unionist vote concentrated in a single political candidacy, it wasn't enough to snatch the independence movement's parliamentary majority. Moreover, Arrimadas for all those months when there was no Catalan government didn't carry out even a single political initiative to put together an alternative even though she had won the election.
That momentum is unlikely to come back and the winds of Madrid, they think, might be more favourable for her.