Begoña Villacís is not going to run in the elections on May 28 with the bulk of her fellow party members in the Madrid City Council. It was expected by everyone. But the news is that it will not be because the deputy mayor of the capital has abandoned them to align with the PP, as was planned just two months ago, but because more than half of her municipal group has abandoned her.
On Friday there were two, yesterday three, this morning four and at the time these lines are being written there are already half a dozen councilors on the run. The break is of such magnitude that it considerably hinders the participation of Cs in the next municipal elections of 28M for which Villacís has presented today his list of faithful among which the mayors Mariano Fuentes, Silvia Saavedra and Miguel Ángel Redondo stand out, with the support of Santiago Saura closing the candidacy.
Villacís's weakness became clear at the end of January when, after attempting an unsuccessful approach to the PP, she pretended that nothing had happened here and redoubled her commitment to the party that she herself coordinates in Madrid.
The next step was to appear in an internal primaries that he won. He did it without reaching the minimum of sufficient endorsements, but with the party on the verge of extinction, at the Ciudadanos headquarters they decided to skip their own statutes and look the other way.
This move left the municipal group of Cs very touched. The own WhatsApp group added deferred discussions that, after being leaked to El País, exploded with all their virulence in the subsequent face-to-face meetings held by the orange councilors on the fifth floor of the Cibeles City Hall. And the bleeding began.
Ángel Niño, José Aniorte, Sofía Miranda, Alberto Serrano, Martín Casariego and Concha Chapa are the six councilors who have already declined to continue in a political project that they consider exhausted and in which they do not believe, as they made clear by absenting themselves from an informative breakfast that Villacís starred in Madrid and was to serve as the first act of the pre-campaign. Regarding her march, the candidate for mayor has limited herself to pointing out this Tuesday that the councilors who have broken with the party were aware that she was not going to count on them.
There is talk of "betrayal", "disloyalty", "two-way games", "lack of ideas"... The every man for himself in the orange party in Madrid adds so many twists in the script that Netflix or HBO consider turning it into a fictional series based on real events. And almost all point to the same site. To the People's Party To the point that the national spokesperson for Ciudadanos, Patricia Guasp, has slipped that the turncoat is a form of "political corruption."
The speed at which the Ciudadanos councilors in the Madrid City Council abandon the orange boat is expanding the list of possible signings of the PP for the 28M elections at a dizzying pace, for which reason Isabel Díaz Ayuso has chosen to stop the rumor mill and leave in the air the hypothetical additions to the team of José Luis Martínez-Almeida.
The president of the Community of Madrid went on Easter holidays with the decision of the delegate of the social area of the Madrid City Council, Pepe Aniorte, and the head of the Department of Innovation and Employment, Ángel Niño, to resign from Cs. But this Monday she had breakfast with the determination of the Councilor for Sports, Sofía Miranda (CS), to ask for the vote for the PP, and not for her party, in view of the municipal elections. So the list already amounts to three candidates to change ranks.
Faced with the crowd of more or less indirect requests - the mayor's team has already sounded out with Ayuso the incorporation of Aniorte and Niño, while Miranda has directly asked for the vote for Almeida -, the president of the Community of Madrid has assured that they will not he will let himself be carried away by "dogmatisms".
Ayuso did not want to enter the names, but has warned sailors that whoever has been a "responsible and hardworking" person. However, he stressed that it would seem "disrespectful to the electorate" that these people have gone through "two or three parties" before joining the PP, or that "they have been people who have launched serious accusations" against the Genoa party.
Two premises that, among others, have accompanied the political trajectory of the former director of the Spanish Office, Toni Cantó, whom he had to give shelter in 2021 after being signed by Cs by the former popular leader Pablo Casado.
In return, Ayuso has assured that the door will be open "as long as they are people who have contributed and with whom we can do a good project." And he has given the Madrid government that he presides over and in which "not everyone has a PP card" as an example, which has directed his gaze to the Minister of Culture, Marta Rivera de la Cruz, recovered in 2021 for the legislature express that now comes to an end.
