The Turn Of Ciudadanos Causes A Political Shake In Spain

The Spanish butterfly effect started in Murcia . The precarious balance in which the two great Spanish political blocs live has been completely broken by a initially local movement, derived from tensions over several scandals during the vaccination process and due to pressure from Vox, but with rapid national consequences.

In a few hours, a motion by the PSOE and Ciudadanos to remove the PP from power in Murcia has caused the fall of the Government of Madrid, one of the great European economic poles, in the midst of a pandemic, and threatens to destabilize other regions such as Andalusia and Castilla y León , where there is another motion of censure of the PSOE.

If the plans of the president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso , are fulfilled , Madrid will vote on May 4 and those elections will completely change the game board, especially on the Spanish right. Clearly none of the protagonists of the key decision, the Murcian one, which was forged three weeks ago and was known to the leadership of the PSOE and Citizens, had these consequences.

Especially the party of Inés Arrimadas, who in exchange for achieving his first regional presidency (the PSOE will give it to him so that the motion triumphs) sees how power escapes from him in the jewel in the crown, Madrid.

The motion in Murcia widens the distrust between PP and Cs in Madrid
Murcia has thus become the spigot that opens the definitive war in the bloc on the right. Ayuso once again throws himself into the pool against everything and everyone, because his colleagues who govern with Citizens in various autonomies, and even the mayor of Madrid himself, do not want to hear about breaking their governments in the middle of a pandemic.

Both in Castilla y León and in Andalusia they hastened to deny that they intend to follow Madrid’s path of an electoral advance, and they did so even with joint appearances between the PP and Ciudadanos to show that the pacts are moving forward. But Ayuso always goes free. And although the leader of Citizens in this community, Ignacio Aguado, insists that he had no intention of following the Murcian route,

These elections will be all or nothing for the party of Inés Arrimadas. If it manages to overcome the 5% barrier, one of the highest in Spain, Ciudadanos can become the axis of the balance and could even aspire to anything with a few seats that would be decisive.

But if it falls below and Ayuso manages to add a majority with Vox, Ciudadanos will have begun its definitive decline in the most politically important community that it governed until this morning. Ayuso plays it like this in a very risky maneuver to break up with Ciudadanos that only leaves him the option of governing with Vox.

With this strategy, the president also breaks the line that Casado had marked in the last months of separation from Vox, which will become even more necessary and very likely, according to the polls, will improve its position in the Community of Madrid, which opens the way to even think of a joint government with Ayuso.

She has already started the campaign with a clear message intended for the right: “Madrid people will choose between freedom and socialism.” In case there were doubts that Ayuso is going on his own, the message shortly after Juan Manuel Moreno, Andalusian president, of the PP, was antagonistic: “Andalusia is experiencing the worst crisis in its history and what it needs now is management.

This is a serious government. Citizens ask us for responsibility and for the legislature to last four years ”,

The advance takes a changed foot to the Madrid left, which in all these months has not been able to present a motion of censure against the president, because they were sure of losing it, but this morning it has rushed to present not one but two, one from the PSOE and another from Más Madrid, in a desperate attempt to stop the early elections.

The Assembly Table, in the hands of Citizens, has accepted to process the motions, which would stop the electoral advance, but the matter will undoubtedly end in the courts and Ayuso will say that she decided to dissolve before the initiatives were presented.

The Madrid PSOE did not have this electoral advance and in fact was in an internal process not yet officially declared to replace the leadership, since Ángel Gabilondo was already preparing to be the new ombudsman, something that was truncated with the failed negotiation with the PP.

The Socialists will now have to look for a strong candidate to stop Ayuso and above all to try to catch at least some of the votes that Citizens will undoubtedly lose. In Catalonia, this maneuver was very successful and Salvador Illa managed to collect most of the seats that Inés Arrimadas’ party lost, but the political reality in Madrid is very different.

Meanwhile, to the left of the PSOE the division between two groups continues, the Podemos of Pablo Iglesias and the Más Madrid of Íñigo Errejón, which could complicate the expectations of this sector if there is no unitary candidacy. The Madrid left was precisely now immersed in internal battles in the City Council, where Más Madrid has been broken in two.

This political earthquake shows once again that post-bipartisan Spain is not capable of having a period of calm. He does not know how to live without elections. After the Catalan elections on February 14, they expected up to two relatively quiet years without elections in sight until the Andalusian elections at the end of 2022, but that hypothesis has not lasted a month.

In theory, the governments of Castilla y León and Andalusia and the large capitals governed by the PP and Ciudadanos hold, and it is foreseeable that the motion of censure against Alfonso Fernández Mañueco will fail, but it is difficult to think that this unexpected break between those of Arrimadas and those of Casado do not have more consequences.

The leader of the PP has seen his plans to withdraw from Vox completely upset, whom he may now need more than ever in the territory that matters most to the popular, but also the president of Ciudadanos seems to have been left out of the game with the extremely risky movement of Ayuso.

Once again it will be the citizens who resolve the radical change of the political board. In the case of Madrilenians, in the last six years they will have voted in four general elections and three regional elections if the May 4 elections are confirmed. The umpteenth chess game of Spanish politics has just begun and it is only certain that it will not leave things as they are.