Ciudadanos will have a two-headed structure, with an organic and a political leadership, but both must receive the joint endorsement of the party's militants at the next congress and Inés Arrimadas, if she wants to continue leading, will have to submit to the vote of the affiliates in January in primaries.
The president, according to some executive sources, wanted to avoid this situation by standing outside the organic leadership, for which a triumvirate headed by MEP Jordi Cañas had been proposed, and reserving for herself the political leadership and leading role in the Congress of the Deputies until the general elections at the end of next year.
According to the statutes, she would also have had to go through primaries to be elected as a candidate for the presidency of the Government, but Arrimadas intended to do so, according to these sources, after the refounding assembly that Ciudadanos will hold in January, with the hope that internal tensions that the party is going through were resolved throughout 2023 and that she could head a consensus list.
However, the executive held on Friday afternoon disrupted those hypothetical plans by approving "unanimously" this change in the structure, but forcing the applicants to present a joint electoral ticket, with a candidate for political leadership and another for the direction organic. In this sense, other sources of the executive assure that Arrimadas, since the subject was discussed at the meeting, said that he wanted the endorsement in the assembly.
Thus, Ciudadanos will have a spokesperson, who will be in charge of transmitting the ideological message, and a general secretary who will exercise internal management, discarding the presidentialism that until now had characterized the organization chart of the party and giving way to a greater transversality and territorial representation. .
The new secretary general, according to the statement issued by the management on Friday night, will not be able to stand for election while in office and for at least six months after leaving it. It is, therefore, an organic structure similar to that of the PNV, but with the difference that the Basque nationalists do not hold primaries.
At the meeting, which lasted from four in the afternoon until around nine at night, there were moments of heated debate due to the differences in model and leadership that have emerged among the members of the leadership in recent days. , in which there have been no shortage of interested leaks to the press as a prior taking of positions.
In the end, according to sources present at the meeting, there was "an agreement on all substantial issues" because "everyone made an effort" and there was "no disagreement", but other information suggests that Arrimadas was isolated in his strategy of avoiding submitting his leadership to primaries in January and that he finally had to give in.
Thus, management sources trust that between now and January the situation will be able to be redirected and the decisive refounding assembly will be reached with the united party, and they attribute the image of fracture that some media transmit to "the idea they want set from the parties of the PP environment" when they have seen that the process of debate and internal reflection to reinvent Ciudadanos has been "constructive", something that should not be put at risk by "ego fights".
