The parliamentary head of Germany's right-wing Euroskeptic party Alternative for Germany (AfD) in the Berlin Senate, Frank-Christian Hansel, has stated that at European level his party identifies with parties that he calls the "new political centre", a current that AfD relates to Spanish party Ciudadanos.
La incomoditat de l’ultranacionalista i populista de dretes “Alternativa per a Alemanya” (#AFD) amb certes etiquetes i la seva identificació amb els partits #Ciudadanos i #VOX a Espanya. #TNTV3 https://t.co/nUu3uWXJ5S
— Oriol Serra (@oriolserra) 30 de març de 2019
Translation:
"The discomfort of the right-wing extremist and populist party "Alternative for Germany" (#AFD) with certain labels and their identification with the #Ciudadanos and #VOX parties in Spain."— Oriol Serra
When asked by Catalonia's TV3, Hansel said he felt close to Ciudadanos because it is a "new", "pragmatic" and "bourgeois" movement. However, the Alternative for Germany leader admitted that recently it has also been impressed with the rise of the far-right Vox party in Spain. The TV3 report notes the many ideological strands present in AfD, from right-wing populism to holocaust denialism.
All the other German parliamentary parties maintain a cordon sanitaire with respect to the AfD, discarding any pacts with the right-wing group.
A recent CIS survey in Spain showed that Ciudadanos is regarded as an extreme right party by most people in Catalonia and in Basque-speaking regions (Euskadi and Navarra), while in the rest of the Spanish state it is frequently considered to be centre-right.