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The Congressional spokesperson for Ciudadanos, Edmundo Bal, will stand in its leadership primaries, thus confirming the break-up of the internal unity of the once-mighty Spanish political party. This Friday, Bal formalized his intention to preside over a party which has gone from being a potential king-maker to disappearing from some parliaments in little more than three years. The party will hold primaries at the beginning of January and, according to the refoundation documents approved by the party leadership, it will opt for a bicephalic model with one person in charge exclusively of the General Secretariat to carry the reins of the organization, and another who will lead the election candidature. Right now, one of the great unknowns is whether or not the current leader Inés Arrimadas will appear in these primaries, at a time when even her most loyal supporters are turning their backs on her. Arrimadas put her confidence in Bal to try to save the furniture in Madrid after the People's Party populist Isabel Díaz Ayuso broke up the coalition government with Ciudadanos in the autonomous community, but the defeat could not have been more resounding: with Bal at the helm, Cs went from 26 deputies to losing all of their representation.

"I want to lead this project", affirmed Bal before the cameras at the doors of the Spanish Congress this Friday. The parliamentary spokesperson, who has the support of a large part of the deputies of the group, has made a call to approach the refoundation of Ciudadanos through unity: "We must all come out united, all stronger." However, Bal's candidacy will have to be ratified in the next Extraordinary Assembly that Cs will hold in January, just like the new structure that was approved on November 26th.

The decline of the party

It has been a long time since polls began predicting the collapse of Citizens. Following the party's nose-dive in the November 2019 Spanish general elections, it achieved even worse results in subsequent autonomous community elections, and the party's current abysmal poll ratings are evidenced by the massive abandonment of party officials and members, and some images of clear decline.  A few days ago, the Alicante branch of a party that once challenged to lead the Spanish right had to sacrifice its party headquarters due to the cost, and for that reason, during the month of November, it held meetings in a local McDonald's restaurant. In addition, a particularly painful defection over the last few days has been that of Luis Garicano, the great economist of the party during the era of founder leader Albert Rivera, and one of its most visible faces when they triumphed in the polls and had the option to be part of the Spanish government.

Meanwhile, after the candidacy of Edmundo Bal to preside over the party has been confirmed, all eyes are now on both Inés Arrimadas - with whom he sits in Congress - and Begoña Villacís, who for years had been a good friend of the Catalan and is now seen as her great rival. At all times she has affirmed that she is focused on the party in Madrid, where she is deputy mayor, in one of the party's remaining coalitions with the PP. Yet in the Spanish capital the party is disintegrating and there are doubts that it will even present a candidacy for the municipal elections of May 2023.

 

Below: Tweet by blogger Alfonso Grueso: "The meetings of the Ciudadanos leadership in Alicante are held in a McDonald's."