For weeks all the opinion surveys have been in agreement: Ciudadanos (Cs) will be the principal loser of the Spanish general election on November 10th. Cs leader Albert Rivera, who in another era was the much-lauded pin-up of the media and business right, will, if the polls are right, become a victim of the bear hug from the Popular Party (PP). Cs is in dire straits: the PP's Pablo Casado is stealing votes from them on the right, Pedro Sánchez is very strong on his own Spanish nationalism flank and aspires only to improve his results, while Ciudadanos' continual electoral fireworks shows are becoming less effective and in their flag-waving against Catalan independence they have now been joined by four Spanish parties, from Vox to the PSOE.
In this strategy of desperation, Rivera has moved two pieces. The first, the no-confidence motion moved by Lorena Roldán against Catalan president Quim Torra, which will be considered in Catalonia's Parliament on Monday. The second, to open himself to a possible accord with the PSOE after the election, a possibility that up till now he had always denied. Let's look at the first of these. Lorena Roldán has had no chance of winning the motion from the start and despite everything, she has decided to turn Parliament into a TV show in the midst of the election campaign.
The most striking thing is that when Cs should have aspired to the Catalan presidency, as the most voted party in the Catalan election of December 21st, 2017, Inés Arrimadas said no. It's true that the party had no chance, but they don't now either. And it was Arrimadas who, having seen how her party was losing ground in Catalonia, took refuge in the Congress of Deputies in Madrid, passing on the role of opposition leader in Barcelona to Roldán. So what are the motives behind the no-confidence motion? Fundamentally, to place the PSC in a compromising position, since it will abstain, thus allowing Cs to spin a yarn about how Pedro Sánchez and the pro-independence parties look after one another. Practically zero credibility, but they haven't got many other cards to play.
This political move, by the way, is contradictory to what Rivera did on Saturday when he decared that Ciudadanos were open to enter into an electoral agreement with the PSOE and bolster the latter's parliamentary majority after 10th November if necessary. The fact that Sanchez has decided that in this campaign he will forget about the right and focus all his criticisms on the independence movement leads us to believe that an accord, either through Cs or through the abstention of the PP, is already cooked. The outlook looks to be for a mono-colour Spanish government and a likely short legislature in which PSOE, PP and Cs, with Vox as well, would only reach agreement on the management of the Supreme Court's verdicts on the Catalan pro-independence prisoners and on the level of repression to be applied in Catalonia.
With that, Pedro Sánchez, who is a tactical player with a vision which is more and more short-term, may consider he has enough. Especially if what he prefers above all else, as he has already shown, is a mono-colour government.