Amidst the demobilization of leaders and officers of Ciudadanos (Cs), the party's main point of reference, Inés Arrimadas, has just announced a new political cartwheel and will propose to members that she leave the presidency of the party but retain her options to head its list at the next Spanish elections. Arrimadas says that Cs must move towards a two-headed model, copying that of the Basque Nationalists (PNV) in which two figures work together at the highest level, since the person in charge of the party is never the electoral candidate. She forgets to say that the PNV is a governing party, while Ciudadanos is a party in liquidation and that, if there is no room for one political leader, there will be less for two. This artifice that she seeks to install is only a way of trying to rebuild a party that has fallen into disrepute and become completely expendable.
It is a long time since Spanish nationalist politics wrote off Ciudadanos. Having fulfilled the function that was entrusted to it, which was nothing more than to act as a wedge in Catalonia on delicate issues such as the Catalan language and throw some bombs into the educational model and linguistic immersion system, it has ceased to be useful for those who protected it and rewarded it with a range of assistance as well as unlimited time on Spanish television. Albert Rivera had his chance and wasted it by not understanding that his role was that of a pivot party, not a replacement for one of the big two. Under Arrimadas, the Ciudadanos ship has sprung leaks all over and things have only gone from bad to worse. Today its deputies in Congress are languishing, in the Catalan Parliament they are irrelevant, and they have disappeared in the last two autonomous community elections held in Madrid and Andalusia and the Cs electoral outlook for next spring's municipal elections is non-existent.
Rivera and Arrimadas have shown the truth in the expression that more difficult than getting to the top is staying there. Today, the party is not only unnecessary but an annoyance for both the PP and Vox. The former need to finish devouring a significant part of the Cs electorate in much of Spain. The situation is different in Catalonia, where it is the PSC who are in a position to challenge the party for an important segment, especially in the greater Barcelona area. The harsh reality for Cs is that although its politics have always pretended to look liberal due to its alliances in Europe, it has been perfectly comparable with that of the PP, both with Rajoy first and now with Feijóo, and even sometimes with Vox in many of its initiatives. That is why it has become politically insignificant and irrelevant for the main Spanish media: its work is already done by others and its presence can only contribute to dividing the vote of the extreme right and, as a consequence, causing Pedro Sánchez to benefit.
That is why it has run out of space and also why in Catalonia, where it was initially strong, its end will be none other than that of disappearance. It is not about looking for new political formulas, or copying models that exist elsewhere. The party's time has passed and political confrontation as a flag, a way of doing things based on insult and hatred, has ended up taking its toll on them, taking them out of the political equation and leading them into irrelevance. Political marketing always allows new performances for outdated actors, but Ciudadanos is no longer in a position to continue fueling the division in Catalan society and spreading lies about a false Catalonia as it has done for almost 20 years with all possible media loudspeakers in its service. And that, however you look at it, is good news.