The Secretary of Organization of Ciudadanos, Borja González, talks to our colleague Federico Quevedo on Capital Radio’s El Balance about the situation of his party. This weekend Ciudadanos is holding a campus with young people in Seville which, according to the secretary, will provide a space for young people to participate in politics.
Ciudadanos Campus for young people
González says that this event will focus on three fronts: what young people have to contribute to the country, what Ciudadanos will export abroad -knowing how young people want to organize themselves in the party- and team building. Inés Arrimadas, the current president of Ciudadanos, will open the conference on Saturday and Edmundo Bal will close it on Sunday. Around 200 people will take part in the conferences.
There is a lot of talk about the ‘Socialist Youth’ or the ‘New Generations’ of the Popular Party, but the youth of Ciudadanos do not have as much impact. For the secretary, this is because the young people in Ciudadanos are political activists and therefore there is no parallel junior organization.
New basis for Ciudadanos party
Ciudadanos was built very quickly and now needs a good structure. González praises the participation of the former president of Ciudadanos, Albert Rivera, who was “an indisputable leader”, according to the organizing secretary. “This rapid growth meant that the necessary mechanisms were not put in place to lay solid foundations”, González said. Now the party is renewed “in the midst of the pandemic, we are renewing all the positions in the party”, as the secretary explains, so that “the affiliates can participate”.
The prospect is to do what other liberal parties have done, as in Germany. According to González, this is the “party of Inés Arrimadas, the party that wins the elections against nationalism in Catalonia and the only woman who stands up to nationalism and beats them”.
Co-official languages in education
The latest Supreme Court ruling states that 25% of education in Catalonia must be in Spanish. The Secretary of Organization of Ciudadanos calls for children to be given the freedom to learn Spanish, “children do not go out to compete in the market under the same conditions”. For González, as long as the two-party system continues to make agreements with pro-independence parties in Catalonia or the Basque Country, it will not be good. Ciudadanos, in the words of its Secretary General, aims to provide a way out so that the parties in government do not have to make agreements with nationalism.
The latest polls
According to the latest polls, Ciudadanos continues to have problems to reach the percentage of votes it had in the last elections. For González, when a political party loses the favor of the electorate, “surely it has done something wrong”. However, he also adds that “nobody said it would be easy to defeat the two-party system”. The Secretary of Organization explains that it is possible to make other kinds of policies and avoid making pacts with nationalist parties.
Listen to the full interview in the audio below:
Through ‘El Balance’, a program hosted by Federico Quevedo on Capital Radio, Influence Spain is able to expand its network of contacts within the national, regional and municipal spectrum.
