The new executive of Ciudadanos does not win for shocks. If last week he managed to appease the spirits in the parliamentary group of Congress with the decision to keep Edmundo Bal as deputy spokesman and place deputy Guillermo Díaz as liaison with the orange dome, this Monday he had to face Begoña's proposal Villacís of "sacrificing the initials" to join the PP in the municipal elections in May.
The deputy mayor of Madrid has been in the eye of the hurricane since El País revealed on Friday that Ciudadanos had considered the possibility of becoming an internal current of the PP, and today El Mundo has published an interview in which Villacís insists that it is "morally responsible to join forces in some places".
"Citizens are going to run alone in the May elections, as we have said actively and passively," said the political spokesperson, Patricia Guasp, at the press conference after the executive this morning. Even so, Guasp has indicated that she "respects" all opinions and has been convinced that Villacís will run in the primaries to be the candidate for mayor of Madrid. "We are talking with her and trying to understand many things," he has tried to settle.
"We will comply with the mandate that the affiliates gave us in the general assembly and we will defend our own space, the liberal space, and the only liberal party in Spain is Ciudadanos," argued the spokesperson, for whom the "bipartisanship" they represent PSOE and PP, parties that he has labeled as "conservatives of everything that does not work", will not implement "the reforms that Spain needs".
"Begoña Villacís is a great asset and a benchmark within Spanish liberalism and we count on her to be the next mayor of Ciudadanos in Madrid", explained Guasp after the executive, who has approved the calendar of primaries to choose the candidates in the eleven autonomous communities that hold elections on May 28 and in the cities of Madrid, still without candidates, and Barcelona, where Anna Grau has run, who has met this morning with the leadership of Ciudadanos to begin to define her program.
The discomfort of many public officials of Ciudadanos has been notorious on social networks these days and Bal himself published a letter to the militancy in a digital medium to express his rejection of Villacís's proposals, which contravene what was agreed in the congress of re-foundation, whose political paper establishes that the pacts with other formations will always take place after the elections.
"It hurts me that very valid and prepared people decide to abandon these ideals and the party. But those who stay are more important to me," Bal concluded after accusing Villacís, who was part, along with Inés Arrimadas, of the candidacy for which the deputy spokesman faced off in the turbulent primaries, selling himself out "for a bowl of lentils."
All in all, the president of the Community of Madrid does not seem very willing to incorporate Villacís into the PP candidacies. "The best of Ciudadanos has already come with me, that center-right union in Madrid already took place years ago," Isabel Díaz Ayuso has come to the fore, who in 2021 expelled the Ciudadanos advisers from her government and called early elections, al offer of the deputy mayor of the capital. "All this mess of the last four days I don't know what she's coming to," she said.
Regarding the recent meeting of Villacís with Elías Bendodo, general coordinator of the PP, which was known today, the Ciudadanos spokesperson has assured that she did not know anything and has not wanted to make statements. In any case, Guasp has insisted, "the policy of pacts was settled in the general assembly" just two weeks ago. "It was clear that we would defend our own space, differentiated from the PP and the PSOE, because neither of them is a liberal party," the spokeswoman concluded.
The executive, according to party sources, has called a meeting with Villacís this afternoon to try to redress the situation. In this appointment, in addition to Guasp herself, will also be the secretary general, Adrián Vázquez, who was in charge of putting the crisis of the parliamentary group on track. This weekend the candidacies for the primaries have to be made official and the deputy mayor has not yet announced bluntly that she aspires to repeat as mayor of Ciudadanos in Madrid.
