BarcelonaCiutadans is again trying to refloat itself after the steep fall that led the party not to run in the 2023 general elections and then to disappear from the Parliament of Catalonia. The orange party has an assembly ahead of it to renew its political project on October 26 and 27, but it is already known who will lead this new stage. The only candidacy that has obtained sufficient endorsements to lead the formation is the one led by Navarrese lawyer and former deputy Carlos Pérez-Nievas, who will be the new general secretary. He is accompanied by Marina Boadella, daughter of Albert Boadella, who will take on the role of organizational secretary, and the Catalan Kevin Romero, who will be the new communications secretary.
All three occupy the power vacuums left after the last great scare of orange leaders (and the hostile takeover that the PP made them): the former general secretary Adrián Vázquez left the PP after trying integrate the party into the lists; the export spokesperson Patrícia Guasp folded after the party promoted her to great fanfare as the replacement for Inés Arrimadas; and many of the regional leaders left politics or joined the PP or even Vox – for example, Carina Mejías or Juan Carlos Girauta-. After making the jump to Madrid despite having won the elections in Catalonia in 2017, Arrimadas left the formation when she was a member of Congress after a tough confrontation with Edmundo Bal, who wanted to challenge her for the leadership and subsequently planted the oranges to found another party. Even then, Albert Rivera had washed his hands of it, who resigned following the Cs hecatomb in the 2019 electoral repeat: they went from 57 to 10 deputies.
Against bipartisanship
The new management considers that Cs, now residual, has “the obligation to combat bipartisanship” with a liberal project, which is thus detached from the social democratic theses of the party at its beginnings (although equally contrary to nationalism). Before joining Ciutadans, Pérez-Nievas had a political career in the Convergència de Mòcrates de Navarra and, in fact, became Councilor of Education for the community between 2007 and 2009. Raised in a Carlist family, during his time as a councilor he worked in favor of the Basque language in Navarre and even promoted a center for the promotion of the language in the community, the current Euskarabidea. Now, Pérez-Nievas will try to refloat what he considers the “legacy” of Ciudadanos from the time when the party made the leap into Spanish politics with Albert Rivera and then entered regional governments in agreement with the PP. “In no way will Cs dissolve. We are a fundamental asset to help build an alternative form of governance that Spain and its citizens deserve,” he said. Another unknown is who will take the reins of the formation in Catalonia, after Carlos Carrizosa folded and now has a new life outside the party.
