The recent turmoil experienced by Ciudadanos (Cs), the Spanish political party that I was heavily involved with over a decade ago, brought back some old memories from my time there, when the party was first set up.
By way of recap, I joined Cs as just about the first thing I did when I came out of hospital in mid 2006. Two main factors contributed to that arguably brash and definitely unusual decision.
The first one had to do with life choices. Having survived a life threatening illness via an organ transplant, I wanted to experience something radically different from Investment Banking, both in terms of impact sought and accompanying lifestyle. As someone who never quite saw himself naturally evolving into a Senior Banker role, for the almost ten years I stayed in the industry I felt that I was too idealistic, too critical and not obliging enough for IB to be the right career path for me. Plus, there was also the fact that looking up the ranks, I never saw the kind of inspiring figure that makes you convincingly utter “I want to be like that person”, which leads me to the second point.
Ciudadanos was being founded by a group of intellectuals whom I highly respected. They had identified a serious, damaging abnormality –a hegemonic, reactionary, romanticism-inspired nationalist political movement–, and were brave enough to do something about it with very substantial –at least I thought at the time– skin in the game. And of the kind that really hurts too. How many opportunities do you have in life to try to be a part of something like that? Not many, I though, as I became one of the first joiners, particularly outside Catalonia.
In a quick succession I became a leader of the party in Madrid –secretario de la Agrupación de Madrid, secretario de la Federación Centro–, and nationally –miembro del Consejo General, miembro del Comité Ejecutivo and presidente de la Comisión de Ideario in the party’s second congress, in 2007–.
I witnessed how, against most odds and beating the 3% legal threshold set, Cs obtained its first institutional representation in the Catalan parliament, and secured decent representation in the 2007 local elections. Then, in the 2008 general election, I coordinated the campaign in Madrid and was second in the electoral list for that jurisdiction, having declined being number one on several accounts.
But a competing party, UPyD, had emerged on the back of that early Cs success and I had first row seats to see how seasoned career politicians cunningly operate to occupy a new space: talking the collaboration talk in public, whilst walking the I-think-I-will-keep-this-for-myself walk in parallel.
The 2008 results were a big disappointment. UPyD secured the only seat available to newly created parties in that election. But this setback was nothing compared to realising the trap the party had fallen into as the 2009 European elections neared. Desperate to produce a competitive alternative to UPyD, Cs’ leadership agreed to a ridiculous manoeuvre involving Europhobes –Irish millionaire Declan Ganley’s Libertas–, a very conservative Spanish media group –Julio Ariza’s Grupo Intereconomía–, and a candidate that was the near perfect embodiment of everything the party was meant to stand against –ex nationalist, ethically dubious Miguel Durán–.
As a tribute owed to my three years of heavy involvement with Cs, I decided to suspend disbelief and emulate Saint Thomas: checking the evidence at hand by my own means. I will never remember the outcome of the dinner I had with Miguel Durán. By minute five he had already nailed it: “Who are these Brussels bureaucrats to tell us what to do with our Spanish olive trees?” This coming from the candidate of a party that was born to present an alternative to political nationalism!
I could not possibly vote for the candidacy the party, my party, presented to that EU election, so my exit was immediate. And I did it the best way I knew how to, trying to balance forces that pulled me in different directions. So if Toni Roldán now feels like he hasn’t changed, the party did, I have to say the message resonates deeply within me. Moreover, augmented by a 10x factor! I do not know about the specifics of his frustration. Listening to his explanations, the music rings right, but I also want to be cautious. What is his smoking gun in making such a bold political move? Maybe, and only maybe, Roldán realised –as I once did– that he simply is not cut out for a job in party politics, unable to take some of the compulsory compliance and mounting BS that such jobs inevitably seem to bring along with them.
