Published by POLITICO.

MADRID — Ciudadanos was the future of Spanish politics … until it wasn’t.

Now, just three years after it seemed on the verge of a major national breakthrough, the party faces a crunch election in Madrid that could decide its future — and according to the polls, it’s not looking great.

In early 2018, Ciudadanos was riding high. In Catalonia, where the party was born a decade earlier, it had just defeated its pro-independence adversaries and won a regional election. On a national level, it was leading in opinion polls. With much of the media, business community and electorate behind him, its young leader, Albert Rivera, looked every bit a future prime minister.

“I’d like to govern this country,” he told a meeting of local leaders in Barcelona, explaining that he envisaged himself heading a “modern, reformist government with a future.”

But there was no such future for him or for Ciudadanos.

Three years later, Rivera has gone, his party crippled by strategic mistakes and humiliated in a string of election debacles. The upcoming regional ballot in Madrid could be the death knell for a party that has experienced a dramatic rise and fall. (See article)

Spain’s governing partners show bad blood in public

March 2nd, 2021. Published by POLITICO.

MADRID — Spain’s biggest political party and its leftist governing partner are making history. They’re also at war.

The Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) and Unidas Podemos (UP) formed the first national coalition government of the modern era in January 2020. The PSOE, of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, is the senior partner and UP has five Cabinet ministers. Together, they have pushed a barrage of legislation through parliament, much of it in response to the coronavirus, while fending off a wave of hostility from the political right.

However, in recent weeks simmering discord within the coalition has reached fever pitch, due to a combination of political differences and personality clashes. The wrangling, much of it played out in public, threatens to overshadow the government’s legislative agenda. (See article)