According to the Ciudadanos (Cs) candidate for the Catalan presidency, Lorena Roldán - who has stepped into the leadership of a party in decline with, first, the election disaster and, afterwards, the resignation of former leader Albert Rivera and the departure of most of his senior figures in Madrid - the negotiation table between the Spanish and Catalan governments "is not about dialogue but rather extortion". Cs leaders have a curious manner when it comes to politics and to understanding what conflicts are and what dialogue consists of. This must be the reason that, when it comes to talking, they talk to no one. Under Rivera, not even among themselves.
Seen like that, it's easier to understand why nobody wants anything to do with Ciudadanos and they wander around ever more marginalized: in Catalonia, dialogue is extortion; in Galicia, Feijóo shuns Arrimadas' proposal for a joint Popular Party list with Cs out of his wariness that their toxic approach to politics might can end up damaging him; and in the Basque Country, something very similar applies, although whatever they do there, they will end up being irrelevant.
And indeed, Cs' situation is such that the whole house might come tumbling down. Surveys published this weekend give them no representation in either the Basque Country or Galicia. Even Vox is ahead of them. In Catalonia, the polls are not quite so bad, but it is only a matter of time before a collapse here as well, as more and more of their shouts fall on that icy ground occupied only by those who, despite their shrill voices, can't carve out a niche.
In addition, the other unionist parties - Catalan Socialsts (PSC), the PP and even Vox - have begun to throw lifebuoys into the Cs space. Miquel Iceta's PSC need a significant fraction of these voters to be competitive in Catalonia's electoral battle, because with their own existing voters they have no option of improving the third place they currently hold. And all this with the Catalan electoral battle barely underway, with a schedule that's on the back-burner until after the summer, unless the Supreme Court decides to turn up the heat with the disqualification of president Quim Torra.