Ciudadanos

Ciudadanos
Party leader	Inés Arrimadas
Secretary General	Marina Bravo
founding	2006
Place of foundation	Barcelona
Headquarters	Alcalá, 253, 28027 Madrid
Youth organization	Agrupación de Jóvenes
Alignment	Centrism Liberalism Laicism National liberalism Centralism Pro-Europeanism
Colours)	orange
Spanish House of Representatives	10/350
Spanish Senate	8/266
Number of members	28,000 (as of Oct. 19, 2015)
MEPs	8/59
European party	ALDE
EP Group	RE
Website	www.ciudadanos-cs.org

Ciudadanos (German citizen ) is a Spanish political party that was founded as a regional party in Barcelona in 2006 and has been politically active throughout Spain since 2015. The full name of the group is officially Ciudadanos - Partido de la Ciudadanía (Spanish) or in Catalan Ciutadans - Partit de la Ciutadania (German citizens - party of citizenship ). It can be located in the political spectrum as a liberal center- and center-right party. The party emerged as a countermovement to Catalan nationalism and was confined to Catalonia for the first few years of its existence. After the regional elections in 2012 , it was initially represented by nine members in the Catalan Parliament. She ran for several elections in 2015 in other parts of Spain, including the national parliamentary elections , and (alongside the left-wing Podemos party ) caused a serious shift in the Spanish party landscape. The party's chairman was Albert Rivera from its inception until 2019 ; Since March 2020, the party has been led by Inés Arrimadas .

Emergence

The founding of the party was directly related to the reform of the Catalan Statute of Autonomy , which was initiated by the then center-left government in 2005. In contrast to this reform process, disappointment with the existing political parties gave rise to a citizens' movement of the same name as today's party. Some members of this movement, including the theater director Albert Boadella , were politically moderately left-wing, but also opposed the secession tendencies within Catalan politics, which would be reflected in the reformed Statute of Autonomy. Since there was no equivalent in the regional party system for this combination of attitudes, the Ciudadanos - Partido de la Ciudadanía (Cs) party was founded after the statute was passed in July 2006. When it was founded, the internal organs were determined and Albert Rivera was elected President.

In November 2006 the Spanish press reported, citing party documents of the PP, that Albert Rivera had been a member of the Partido Popular until April 2006 , of which he had joined the youth organization NNGG in 2002. Ciudadanos denied this report: Rivera was only interested in information about the party, which is why he appeared in the files of the PP without having become a member. The number two of the party Carina Mejías , parliamentary group spokeswoman and candidate for the mayor's office in Barcelona, ​​had been a politician of the Partido Popular since 1989, including as the conservative group spokeswoman in the Catalan parliament.

Election results

The party was able to celebrate its first success just a few months after it was founded. In the election for the regional parliament , she received three percent of the vote and entered parliament with three members. In the local elections the following year, the party received 67,298 votes, representing 2.35% of all votes. A total of 13 concejales (municipal councils) were set up in the following legislative period . In 2008, Cs took part in a national election for the first time. In the parliamentary elections , however, she only achieved 0.18% of the vote and thus clearly missed entry into Congress . Even in the home country Catalonia, only 0.74% of the votes were received.

The party leader Albert Rivera at the presentation of the campaign for the general election in Catalonia 2010

The following regional election in Catalonia went better . You could consolidate yourself as a parliamentary force, again put three members in parliament and even gained votes. In the following local elections, however, they lost votes, and in the national parliamentary elections in 2011 they did not run at all.

The best result to date was achieved in the next early regional election in November 2012. As a counter-positioning to the controversial Catalan independence movement, the proportion of votes was more than doubled and the number of mandates even tripled. Since then there have been nine members of the Catalan Parliament. The result was once again significantly improved in the 2015 regional elections, which were called for a plebiscite on the future political status of Catalonia . Under the leadership of Inés Arrimadas, the party achieved 17.9% of the vote with its rejection of the independence movement and was then the strongest opposition party in the Catalan parliament with 25 MPs behind the separatist Junts pel Sí unit list .

With the 2012 result, the party's expansion into the rest of the country began. After the Spanish representative of the right-wing European party Libertas, with 0.14% of the votes, still clearly missed entry into the European Parliament at European level in 2009 , the party received three percent of all votes five years later and sent two members to the European Parliament . These two parliamentarians, Juan Carlos Girauta and Javier Nart , joined the ALDE group. In 2014, it was announced that the following year, it would run for the first time in local and regional elections outside of Catalonia and in national parliamentary elections. In early 2015, the party confirmed candidacies in the regional elections in Andalusia, Aragón, Castile and León, Castile-La Mancha, Murcia, the Canary Islands, La Rioja and the Basque Country, as well as in 500 municipalities in the local elections of the same year. In the elections in Andalusia on March 22, 2015, the party achieved 9.28% and nine seats. The chances of entering the congress for the first time were accordingly very good; in forecasts from December 2015, the party was repeatedly predicted to have the third to second highest share of the votes of all parties. The party particularly addresses dissatisfied voters of the conservative Partido Popular.

In the regional and local elections in May 2015 , Cs became the third strongest party and since then has provided more than 1500 concejales across Spain . In addition, it was able to enter twelve regional parliaments. In the national parliamentary elections , the party under the leadership of Albert Rivera had to be content with fourth place and 13.93%, but nevertheless entered the House of Representatives for the first time with a respectable success and then played a key role in the formation of a government. Support from the socialists failed, however, as votes from the far-left Podemos party would have been required. Due to the close proximity of the positions of both groups in terms of content, the party has proposed several times to work with the UPyD in the form of joint electoral lists in order to avoid the loss of votes that inevitably occurs in the case of separate candidacies. Negotiations on the creation of joint lists for the elections in 2015 failed in autumn 2014 due to different strategic views.

After the failed government formation, Ciudadanos achieved a practically identical share of the vote in the Spanish parliamentary elections in 2016 , but lost 8 seats to 32 of 350 seats. After Mariano Rajoy had accepted the mandate to form a government from the king, unlike in the previous election, this time the party supported the conservatives, which after lengthy processes led to the election of a conservative minority government tolerated by the socialists. In the Catalan parliament , the party has been the strongest parliamentary group since the regional elections in 2017 and leads the opposition and has since been the mouthpiece of the opponents of independence in the Catalonia crisis . After the motion of no confidence against Rajoy in June 2018, which Cuidadanos did not support, but which led to the minority government of the PSOE (with the support of Podemos and the separatist Basque and Catalan parties) under Pedro Sánchez , Ciudadanos stood for quick new elections before the end of the legislative period. a.

In the April 29, 2019 elections for the Congreso de los Diputados , the party achieved its best results yet, but refused to support a PSOE government; it proved impossible to form a government coalition, leading to the new elections on November 10, 2019 , in which Cuidadanos suffered significant losses; this led to the resignation of the party founder Albert Rivera . In the elections for the new party leader in March 2020, Inés Arrimadas was able to prevail with 77% of the vote.

Party platform

The party divides its program into four areas: protection of fundamental rights, protection of social rights and the welfare state, protection of regional autonomy and the unity of Europe, and protection and expansion of democracy and regeneration of political life.

Fundamental rights

The basis of the program in this regard is the defense of the current constitution and the individual rights established in it. For example, language policy should ensure the use and preservation of both the Spanish language and the respective regional languages. Both languages ​​should be treated equally in the education sector and in state media. The choice of which language to use when dealing with authorities should be made freely and by every citizen.

Carina Mejías, spokeswoman for the party in the Catalan Parliament and candidate for mayor in Barcelona

Social and economic policy

The fight against the economic crisis is at the heart of the economic program . In order to reduce unemployment, the party proposes to ban precarious and fixed-term employment relationships and, above all, to better support the long-term unemployed through further training measures. Companies that employ the long-term unemployed should receive tax breaks. The party also calls for a simplification and reduction of income tax , which it wants to counter-finance with an increase in corporate tax. The value added tax is to be reduced. To reduce poverty, she is calling for additional government benefits for wages below the subsistence level, and debt relief for individuals and companies should also be simplified. Reforms in the education sector, the dismantling of duplication in administration and the fight against corruption are also explicitly seen as measures to promote economic development.

autonomy

The distribution of competencies between the central state and the autonomous communities, which is not finally fixed in the constitution, is to be finally determined on the basis of equality and cooperation. The Senate , which has so far played a minor role in real politics, is to become a chamber for the direct representation of the interests of the communities at state level or to be abolished entirely. A reform of the financing of the autonomous communities is also sought; this includes the introduction of tax sovereignty for the autonomous communities in relation to some indirect taxes and the abolition of the special rights of the Basque Country and Navarre known as Fueros .

Democracy expansion

The group calls for a reform of the internal structure of political parties as well as their funding. All political parties are supposed to hold internal primaries in which the party members determine the candidates on the election lists. In addition, the incompatibility provisions of candidates for political office are to be tightened and the transparency of the party statutes and expenditures increased in order to fight corruption. For this reason, political parties should only be able to finance themselves through donations from natural persons in addition to public sponsorship, which must also amount to a maximum of 50,000 euros. Donations by legal persons and borrowing by political parties should be prohibited. As a further step towards strengthening democracy, the unbundling of powers is called for, especially the independence of the judiciary should be strengthened.

The party also calls for a reform of the electoral system. By introducing an additional level, the election results should be more proportional to the Congress and thus less disadvantageous for smaller parties. Voters should also have the opportunity to change the order of the candidates on the electoral list by means of preferential votes .

Ideological classification

The following parts of this section seem since 2016 is out of date to be : integration into political spectrum based on old studies / surveys (before 2016). Newer developments (e.g. Tuldung by VOX) and swivel to the right are missing.
Please help to research and insert the missing information .

The classification of the party in the classic left-right scheme turns out to be somewhat difficult. The party itself rejects classification into a political camp, but defines itself as progressive , democratic and constitutionalist and rejects radicalisms of all kinds. To this end, she also agreed to work with the German FDP in July 2018 . Voters in Catalonia, on the other hand, rate the party far to the right of the center (7.5 on a scale from 1 to 10) against the backdrop of the Catalan independence movement. It should be noted that “left” in Catalonia is often associated with Catalan nationalism, while prospective positions are more likely to be equated with “right”. Even among party supporters, classification as right (47%) outweighs classification as “center” (34%) or “left” (19%). In surveys across the country, the party, which has only recently been present nationwide, is placed pretty much in the middle of the political spectrum by voters (5.14 on a scale from 1 to 10), as is voters in Andalusia (5.0 on a Scale from 0 to 10).

According to a study by the polling institute GESOP ( Gabinet d'Estudis Socials i Opinió Pública ), the majority (81%) of the party's voters see themselves as politically moderate, with a slight tendency towards the political left . The party is also more likely to be elected by men (63%) and by middle-aged people with a higher formal level of education.

Controversy and hostility

As a party of Catalan origin with a strictly unionist stance, in particular a sharp rejection of the Catalan independence aspirations, the party and the positions represented by separatist opponents are often referred to as "fascist". The party got into a heated controversy when it called for a Spanish nationalist rally in Barcelona. On October 12, 2013, the Spanish national holiday , party representatives from Cs took part in a demonstration for the territorial unity of Spain. Right -wing extremist groups such as Plataforma per Catalunya (PxC), Casal Tramuntana and the neo-fascist Falange Española were also involved in the rally . The controversy over participation culminated in a scandal in the Catalan parliament. When a motion was then put to the vote, which provided for the condemnation of the Francoist dictatorship, the MPs of Cs refused to approve it on the grounds that political opponents would not take any lessons on democracy. They evaded the vote by - like the MPs of the People's Party (PP) - leaving the meeting room closed.

In particular Inés Arrimadas , leader of the Ciudadanos parliamentary group in Catalonia, is regularly the subject of political hate speech (referred to as traitor and fascist) and misogynistic insults (such as "cheap hooker" by a comedian from the Catalan public) because of her non-Catalan origins and her political positions station TV3 , Toni Albà, or call for their mass rape on Facebook); Because of the hostility, she has been under constant personal protection ever since.

After the elections to the Catalan regional parliament in December 2017, from which Ciudadanos emerged as the strongest individual party and has since led the opposition to the separatist regional government, verbal and physical attacks on the party and its representatives intensified. In the summer of 2018, for example, the party took the lead in a movement that tried to remove separatist symbols, especially “yellow ribbons” , from public space. This led to escalating arguments, which often ended in fights and violence.

Structure and financing

The highest organ of the party is the Asamblea General of the members. This elects the members of the General Council ( Consejo General ), the Executive Committee ( Comité Ejecutivo ) and the Guarantee Commission ( Comisión de Garantías ). The General Council consists of up to seventy members and determines the party's policy within the guidelines set by the decisions of the General Assembly. The General Council is headed by the party chairman ( Presidente ) and is in turn divided into various commissions, such as the Comisión de Control Económico y Transparencia , which is responsible for controlling expenditure. The policy is implemented by the Executive Committee, which consists of 20 to 40 members. The guarantee commission, in turn, is responsible for ensuring that party work proceeds democratically and that the rights of the members are observed.

At the local level, the party is divided into groups ( Agrupaciones ), subcommittees ( Subcomité Territorial ), which consist of several groups, and Autonomous Committees ( Comité Territorial Autonómico ), which bring together several subcommittees. All positions in the party are elected directly by the members in a secret ballot.

The party attaches particular importance to campaigns in social media, also due to a lack of funds for classic forms of political agitation. Volunteers are trained to work on social media, based on Barack Obama's campaigning . All of their candidates must also activate their own social media channels and use them regularly. Accordingly, one of the party's slogans is Hacemos política 2.0 (German We make politics 2.0 ). Not only does this serve to spread political messages, it also makes it easier for voters to participate in the party's politics. In order to further facilitate the participation of potentially interested parties, the party created not only the status of a member but also the possibility of registering as a sympathizer ( simpatizante ). However, they have no right to vote in internal ballots.

The party is mainly financed by public funding, which accounts for around 80% of its revenue. Other sources of income are membership fees (15%) and payments by their officials who give part of their salary to the party (5%). This contribution amounts to 10% of the net income that is paid to the respective public official in the course of his work. Income of 1,486,108 euros was offset by expenses of 1,377,672 euros in 2014.

Despite the party's commitment to disclosure of funding, Transparency International Spain rated its transparency low in 2014. The NGO complained, among other things, of the lack of detailing of the costs and the lack of information about internal controls of expenditure. In a later transparency ranking, however, the party received the highest possible number of points from the same organization in April 2015, as otherwise only PSOE and UPyD .

Election results

Results in the parliamentary elections

year	be right	proportion of	Mandates	space
2008	46,313	0.2%	0/350	13.
2011	-	-	0/350	-
2015	3,514,528	13.9%	40/350	4th
2016	3,141,570	13.1%	32/350	4th
2019 (Apr.)	4,155,665	15.9%	57/350	3.
2019 (Nov.)	1,650,318	6.8%	10/350	6th

Results in the European elections

year	be right	proportion of	Mandates	space
2014	497.146	3.2%	2/54	8th.
2019	2,731,825	12.2%	7/54	3.

Results of the regional elections in Catalonia

year	be right	proportion of	Mandates	space
2012	274,925	7.58%	9/135	6th
2015	734.910	17.93%	25/135	2.
2017	1,109,732	25.35%	36/135	1.

See also

• Political parties in Spain

Web links

Commons : Ciudadanos-Partido de la Ciudadanía  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Party website (Spanish, Catalan, Basque, Galician, Valencian)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Ciudadanos no tiene techo: los sondeos le otorgan un respaldo de 80 diputados
2. ^ Elcano Royal Institute
3. ^ Parties and Elections in Europe
4. ↑ Citizens - Party of the Citizenship (Cs) ( Memento from July 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
5. ↑ Marco Giugni, Maria T. Grasso: Citizens and the Crisis: Experiences, Perceptions, and Responses to the Great Recession in Europe . Springer, 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-68960-9 ( google.com [accessed June 13, 2019]).
6. ↑ De Ciutadans a Ciudadanos in: El País , March 3, 2015
7. ^ Orígenes
8. ↑ [1]
9. ↑ El Diario March 3, 2015
10. ↑ Cs desmiente la supuesta militancia de Rivera en el PPC ( Memento of September 28, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
11. ↑ El Diario March 3, 2015
12. ↑ Spanish Ministry of the Interior ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
13. ↑ Spanish Ministry of the Interior ( Memento of the original from June 21, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
14. ↑ List of MEPs on the Parliament's website ( memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
15. ↑ Albert Rivera: Ciudadanos estará en las municipales, Autonómicas y generales
16. ↑ El Consejo General de Ciudadanos (Cs) aprueba presentarse a las elecciones autonómicas en Andalucía
17. ↑ Election forecast on electograph.com December 11, 2015
18. ^ Elcano Royal Institute
19. ↑ The Times March 4, 2015
20. ↑ Resultados electorales 2015 in: El País , May 25, 2015
21. ^ Anatomía del choque entre UPyD y Ciudadanos in: El Diario , 23 November 2014
22. ↑ Arrimadas gana las primarias y se convierte en presidenta de Ciudadanos. El País, March 8, 2020, accessed March 9, 2020 (Spanish). 
23. ↑ Ideario
24. ^ Cultura y lenguas de España
25. ↑ http://vozpopuli.com/blogs/5779-juan-r-rallo-ciudadanos-liberales-iii ¿Ciudadanos liberales?
26. ^ Propuestas de Ciudadanos para devolver a España su futuro
27. ^ La España autonómica
28. ^ Regeneración democrática
29. ^ Reforma de la ley electoral
30. ↑ “Queremos construir un proyecto de mayorías, más allá de unas siglas”
31. ↑ FDP and Ciudadanos agree to work together against populism in Europe. In: handelsblatt.de. Handelsblatt , July 23, 2018, accessed on July 31, 2018 . 
32. ↑ [2] CIS, 2013, cit. in: El País, August 17, 2013
33. ↑ CIS: Barómetro de Enero 2015
34. ↑ Estudio general de opinión pública en Andalucía, Invierno 2015 ( Memento of the original from April 2, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
35. ↑ Ciudadanos, ¿estamos ante un Podemos de derechas? in: El Periódico , April 27, 2015
36. ↑ El Pais: PP y Ciutadans abandonan el Parlament en una votación sobre el franquismo , October 10, 2013, accessed on August 30, 2018 (Spanish)
37. ↑ El Español: "Malparida", "cerda", "que te violen en grupo": Arrimadas, bajo la escalada del odio 'indepe' , July 16, 2018, accessed on August 30, 2018 (Spanish)
38. ↑ El Periodico: Ciutadans explota en la calle la tensión por los lazos amarillos , August 29, 2018, accessed the following day (Spanish)
39. ↑ Organización
40. ^ Cómo ha conseguido Ciudadanos plantar cara a Podemos en las redes
41. ↑ Statute, Article 2.7.
42. ↑ Ciudadanos obliga a candidatos a firmar carta ética para estar en las listas in: La Vanguardia , February 10, 2015
43. ↑ Presupuestos 2014
44. ↑ Transparency International (Spain) ( Memento of the original from November 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
45. ↑ Transparency International (Spain): Evaluación del nivel de transparencia de los partidos políticos (April 2015) ( Memento of the original of May 13, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
46. ↑ El País