The Economist Asia - February 10, 2018

The EconomistFebruary 10th 2018 47

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1

W

HEN Albert Rivera gave a talk at a

regular breakfastmeeting for busi-

ness folk at the RitzHotel in Madrid last

month, more than 600 people turned up, a

record for the event. He hassuddenly be-

come Spain’s hottest ticket, almost three

years after he leapt into national politics at

the head ofCiudadanos (“Citizens”), a

newish liberal party. In DecemberCiuda-

danos became the biggest single force in

Catalonia at a regional election. Now it is

jostling the ruling conservative People’s

Party (PP) at the top of the national opinion

polls. That has made the government of

Mariano Rajoy, the long-serving prime

minister, palpably nervous.

“The big question is whether it will be

like France,” Mr Rivera told The Economist

this week. There Emmanuel Macron, to

whom he feels politically close, swept

aside an ossified two-partysystem last

year. In Spain, Socialist and PP govern-

ments have alternated since the 1980s. This

cosy duopoly was weakened by the long

recession that followed the bursting of

Spain’s housing bubble in 2007. At first the

Socialist vote looked the more vulnerable

to a takeover by Podemos, a far-left upstart.

Ciudadanos surged in the opinion polls in

2015 but managed only 14% and 13% in elec-

tions that year and in 2016. ThePP clung on,

albeit as a minority government. Ciudada-

nos has facilitated this but has not joined it.

sought to join Ciudadanos, according to Mr

Rivera. Not all are admitted.

The PP looks tired and old (most of its

voters are over 55). Mr Rajoy has governed

since 2011 and has led his party for 14 years.

He can claim credit for an economic recov-

ery which has seen three consecutive

years of growth of over 3% and a big fall in

unemployment (though at 16.5% it remains

high). But his governmenthas struggled

with Catalonia, where the separatist ad-

ministration of Carles Puigdemont unilat-

erally declared independence after an un-

constitutional independence referendum

in October. Mr Rajoy, with the backing of

the Socialists and Ciudadanos, deployed

emergency powers to dismiss Mr Puigde-

mont, but too late to prevent a crisis.

The PP has also suffered from a string of

corruption scandals. Many are fairly small-

scale and occurred yearsago. Neverthe-

less, corruption acts like “a fine rain that

could erode the capacity of the PP to resist”,

says Sandra León, a Spanish political scien-

tist at York University.

By contrast, Ciudadanos looks young

and energetic. Mr Rivera is 38, a fast-talking

lawyer who already has a dozen years’ ex-

perience in politics. His party was formed

by disillusioned Catalan Socialists who

disliked temporising with nationalists.

Last year Mr Rivera repositioned it as a cen-

trist, progressive liberal party. “We have to

move away from the old left-right axis,” he

says, echoing Mr Macron. “The big battle of

the 21st century is between liberalism and

the open society, and populism-national-

ism and the closed society.” Ciudadanos is

keen on fighting monopolies and on vigor-

ous Scandinavian-style labour reforms to

help the unemployed retrain and find jobs.

It wants to shake up the political and elec-

toral systems, and education, to tackle

Mr Rivera (pictured) admits that his

party’s success in Catalonia, where it won

25% (the PP got just 4%) thanks to its reso-

lute opposition to separatism, helped its re-

cent poll bounce. But he also thinks a struc-

tural political shift is under way. Many in

Madrid’s political world agree.

Mr Rajoy does not have to call a fresh

election until 2020, but there will be mu-

nicipal and regional polls in May 2019. Ciu-

dadanos now looks more likely than in

2015 to displace the PP as the main party of

the centre-right, just as Mr Rajoy’s party in

the 1980s replaced the short-lived Union of

the Democratic Centre of Adolfo Suárez

that presided over the transition from dic-

tatorship to democracy. Some PP activists

(as well as some Socialists) have recently

Spanish politics

On the march

MADRID

A would-be Macron makes ground

Europe

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49 Reforming the French bac

49 Ksenia Sobchak, Putin’s challenger

50 Nobbling Romania’s watchdogs

51 Charlemagne: History wars

Catching up

Source: Electograph *Weighted average of past 30 days

Spain, voting intention, %

February 6th 2018*

0 5 10 15 20 25

PP (Partido Popular)

Ciudadanos (Cs)

PSOE (Partido Socialista

Obrero Español)

Podemos