The disappearance of Citizens confirms the historical impotence of Spanish liberalism, always caught between the frustrated modernity of the country, the centrifugal impulses of the peripheries and Spanish nationalism nostalgic for imaginary past glories and, therefore, literally reactionary.
Ciutadans, the last failed attempt to create a Spanish liberal party, was born, like other previous liberal impulses, in Catalonia, initially with a renewing and open spirit. The title of his founding manifesto of 2005, “Citizens of Catalonia”, was a thinly disguised reference to the revisionist greeting of President Josep Tarradellas on his successful return from exile, which had avoided the exhortation “Catalans!” typical of its predecessors.
Of the fifteen teachers and writers who signed the manifesto, I have worked with six of them in different positions and I have personally met four others, with half of all of whom we have always spoken in Catalan. When Albert Rivera gave a lecture at Georgetown University, in Washington, I was asked to introduce him; there was a lively discussion and at the closing I pointed out that the most repeated word during the session had been Macron; the guest appeared as a potential leader inspired by the liberal-democratic and renewing spirit of the president of France.
They proclaimed themselves “citizens” of the world and decidedly pro-European. Since the party reached the European Parliament, it has been part of the Alliance of Liberals and Democrats for Europe and its recent reconversion to Renew Europe, whose members have presided over the European Parliament for almost a third of the time, currently chair the European Council and lead or are currently in government in a dozen countries. Ciutadans became the only Spanish party in this parliamentary group after the expulsion of the post-convergents accused of corruption.
However, as in so many previous attempts, Spanish liberalism has found insufficient bases of internal support. Historians, politicians and philosophers have characterized the Spain of the last 200 years as localist, particularist, fragmented, invertebrate, plural, multinational, frustrated in its attempts to become a modern French-style nation according to the liberal concept of citizenship, shared institutions and cultural community.
Maestro Juan J. Linz summed it up with insight when he presented the various liberal attempts to break with tradition as insufficient to establish a new model, but alarming enough to provoke reactionary responses. “Traditional legitimacy was weakened without successful modernization,” he summarized.
Here we are: in the most recent period, the establishment of democracy and external openness have undermined the dominance of many traditions, but they have no longer been able to impose a uniform, stable and efficient liberal model that does not depend on the table of permanent salvation of the European Union.
To these historical factors, let’s call them structural, there have been added bizarre miscalculations by the leaders of Ciutadans. The day after bipartisanship was quartered in the 2015 elections, I published an article in El País in which I speculated on the opportunity for pluralist Spanish politics to approach the democratic uses characteristic of Europe: the formation of a super grand coalition government with populists, liberals and socialists.
The good example came from the vast majority of European countries, where there are always coalition governments, many with right-wing, center-wing and left-wing parties. Likewise, both the stable legislative majority of the European Parliament and the Commission are formed from these three parties. The super-grand coalition is the basis for broad consensus decision-making and inter-institutional cooperation.
I even ventured to suggest that the King could play a discreet but effective role in pushing towards the formation of this government. He had already suggested it on the occasion of his proclamation, but these were the first elections since Felipe VI had taken office and had produced a more fragmented Parliament than ever.
However, after signing an “agreement for a reformist and progressive government” with the PSOE, Rivera declined to be Pedro Sánchez’s vice-president, apparently to give priority to ousting the PP and becoming leader of the opposition. He almost succeeded in the first elections of 2019, in which Cs came third, less than a percentage point behind the PP. following the same year and precipitated the right-wing and suicidal drift of the liberal party.
Meanwhile, Ciutadans had come first in the elections to the Parliament of Catalonia in 2017, immediately after the divisive independence referendum. But Inés Arrimadas did not even dare to present her candidacy to Parliament, which could have made her the main anti-independence point of reference. The party founders’ main raison d’être was abandoned in a strange combination of incompetence and stage cowardice.
Since then, centrist liberals have been gobbled up by the right and far right. Lacking a sufficiently modern Spanish nation to lean on and after senseless tactical errors, the initially renewing liberals have once again taken refuge in traditional Spanish nationalism.
