Ciudadanos (Cs), the political party which sought to be the regenerator of public affairs in Spain and which has shamelessly introduced hatred and division into Catalan political life, mounting endless attacks on the Catalan language and its education system and referring to Catalonia's president and the rest of the pro-independence leaders in general as Nazis, coup plotters and supremacists, crossed a line on December 26th which its European partners had drawn in solid red. The triangular agreement reached with the far right party Vox and the Popular Party (PP) - under which a Cs representative will become the new speaker of the Andalusian Parliament and which in a few weeks will also be the basis of the new Andalusian government - is now a reality. The cordon sanitaire to shut out Vox, urged by the PSOE's Susana Díaz, has not worked, and this openly-Francoist political group now has the way clear to enter the institutions. Thank you, Cs leaders Albert Rivera and Inés Arrimadas!
It's over, this business of Cs defining themselves as liberals and pro-European and giving lessons wherever they go. Ciudadanos is a right-wing party that aims to absorb the PP and has no hesitation about making agreements with the harder right, with those who proclaim their support for Franco, show their xenophobia and call for the repeal of laws against gender violence. These are just some of the star policies of the Vox political group which, by winning a dozen seats, has now provoked a situation in which the true face of Ciudadanos has been revealed.
Andalusia does need a political change that puts an end to the government of Susana Díaz's PSOE, which impoverished the community with its politics of patronage and endowed the southern Spanish region with a very high level of institutional corruption. Two former Andalusian presidents are being prosecuted - Manuel Chaves and José Antonio Griñán - for the multimillion-euro ERO fraud scandal and the entry into prison of, at least, the latter of these two, for whom the prosecutors are asking a six-year sentence for continued embezzlement, seems almost certain. But Vox should not have been one of the foundations for that change.
When the Cs leader in Catalonia, Inés Arrimadas, rises to the lecturn of the Catalan Parliament and fires all sorts of insults at Quim Torra or any member of the Catalan government, her defence from now on will be almost entirely predictable. Making agreements with Vox will give power to Cs, and it will satisfy José María Aznar and the most hardline sectors of the Spanish state, beginning with the judiciary. Nazis and supremacists will, in any case, still be spoken about, but now by those on the pro-independence side. By Ciudadanos, never again.