Who was going to tell Alberto Carlos Rivera that France, Jacobin and centralist France, but also the France of values like democracy, freedom of expression and a cordon sanitaire around any far-right party, was going to end up turning into something more than a nuisance for him. Even into a true headache. Macron and Valls, two politicians who don't even speak, have managed to agree on one thing: Rivera is a mediocre and mendacious politician. And they've sent him a message that's easy to understand: C'est la guerre. The Republic's presidency came out to refute his euphoric statement of alleged congratulations from Macron for his post-election pacts. There's been no congratulations from the Elysée Palace: it's all in his imagination. It's not any old disavowal, it's a slap in the face from someone who just a few months ago he considered his patron internationally.
To find out about Rivera, to know exactly how he thinks, how he acts, was simply a question of time. In Catalonia, his political laboratory, we know more than well enough. Similarly, his position in the liberal family was a great farce: the leader of Cs doesn't have the making of a politician from that political family, nor does he share its ideas since he's significantly further to the right. Over the last few years, those when Mariano Rajoy was governing the country via political inaction and Pedro Sánchez seemed a true destabilising factor for the system, Albert Rivera was the political pampered by what would come to be known as, to put it simply, the Ibex 35, after Spain's main stock index. And by the deep state. Nothing is more admired in Madrid than a Catalan who renounces being one. Rivera was a discovery who'd fallen from heaven: he gave enthusiastic voice to the defence of Spanish, the frontal attack to the independence movement, the closure of public broadcaster TV3, the criticism of linguistic policy and the unity of Spain. This Rivera went from great to a pain at the same time Sánchez arrived in the Moncloa government palace, showed level-headedness in his decisions and made it clear that he hadn't come to change anything substantial.
They say in Madrid that one of the problems to understanding between Sánchez and Rivera is the former's profound disdain for the latter, who he still feels cheated by. It could be true, as the leader of Ciudadanos' ease to win adversaries is well known. That Macron and Valls should have declared war against him leaves him in a tricky position, since they were both allies of his and he leaned on them to present himself as a politician of deep convictions and with a European outlook. If some Catalan political leaders could have been consulted, all this could have been avoided. Now Macron's liberals are even threatening to expel him from the group in the European Parliament previously called ALDE, renamed Renew Europe for this legislature. That's unlikely to happen, because there are grants in the way (in other words, money) and the size of the group, but it's a demonstration of their enormous irritation with Ciudadanos.
Rivera's worries should be real and, without a doubt, a true headache: never had he spent so long without talking about Catalonia.