The City Councilor of San Fernando de Henares, Alberto Hontecillas (i); the President of Contigo, José Enrique Agua (c), and the Mayor of Paracuellos de Jarama, Jorge Alberto Campos (d), this weekend in Madrid.CEDED
The mayor with the most votes for Ciudadanos in the Autonomous Community of Madrid in municipalities with more than 20,000 inhabitants, Jorge Alberto Campos, already has a target for the next elections in May. The City Council of Paracuellos de Jarama, with 26,450 inhabitants, will be present this time for a recently founded party, Contigo, with a strong “communalist” accent and “social-liberal” inspiration, founded in 2017 by ex-positions of then-critical Cs leadership . Campos – who was also the mayor with the most votes for Cs of any city of more than 20,000 people in Spain in the 2019 local elections – announced on Thursday that he is leaving Ciudadanos, unhappy with the re-founding process and the party’s drift. “Citizens have no future,” he said in a statement published on social media.
Campos will officially announce his signing for Contigo this Monday. “We found a party with a very communal project. A party that puts its neighbors at the center of politics and is very white. We will not be limited to the hours of agreement except to the extremes. They give you the freedom to create your lists, your program. It’s like a coalition of municipal parties,” the mayor of Paracuellos explained to EL PAÍS in a phone conversation revealing his future. But Campos isn’t the only one going to Contigo. The newly formed party is also joined by the first deputy mayor of San Fernando de Henares, who also left Ciudadanos on Thursday and became a non-attached city councillor. “We are exploring different possibilities, other platforms. But we think Contigo is the best project,” adds Alberto Hontecillas.
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With you was founded in 2017 by former Cs officials in the Valencian community who were critical of the management of then-leader Albert Rivera. “The founding base is people who realized that Ciudadanos was founded as a white label of the People’s Party and we rebelled. Albert Rivera had him kidnapped and we decided to create an independent alternative,” explains party leader José Enrique Aguar over the phone. “We are very liberal economically and very social-democratic in terms of rights and public spending,” he adds. Today they have 3,016 subsidiaries and are located throughout the territory. They stood in elections for the first time in the European and local elections on May 26, 2019. They won two mayoral positions and 22 councillors, including councilors in the consistory of the provinces of Seville, Gualadajara, Valencia and Salamanca. Usually the brand they register is called Contigo plus the name of the municipality. For example With you Cartagena.
But since those elections so far, they’ve added another dozen council members, thanks to accusations that they left the party they ran for in 2019 and joined Contigo. This weekend the executive held a meeting in Madrid to manage start-ups and other organic issues. In addition to Campos and Hontecillas, they will also perform in Coslada and Rivas-Vaciamadrid with ex-protégés of Cs. A total of fifty Ciudadanos fighters have joined this week. Now they will continue to form new groups. And they hope that the list will continue to grow, especially given the complicated situation of Ciudadanos, for which the polls predict very poor results in the May 28 elections.
In addition to the serious crisis of the CS, which has just completed the process of re-establishing itself with a general assembly and some preliminary struggles, Begoña Villacís’ movement was added this weekend and shook the national executive. The deputy mayor of Madrid asks that municipal officials be given freedom to decide whether to participate under a different brand or with different formations. “The words of Villacís themselves reflect the moment we live in,” says the mayor of Paracuellos de Jarama. Villacís also spoke with council members of his team and with other party members about his intention to join the PP as an “internal current”, as announced by EL PAÍS this Friday. An extreme flatly rejected by the majority of members of Congress.
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Speaking of national leadership, Adrián Vázquez – general secretary – and Mariano Fuentes – CS deputy secretary and councilor in Madrid City Council, from the Villac wing – met on Friday morning to address organic issues. Management sources confirm that the executive branch is weighing between presenting “lists in all places” and proposing “common lists”. “We talked about different possibilities. Anything from lists across all sites to shared lists and so on. But as a comment and never as a decision,” explains a member of the management board. The executive meets this Monday, like every week, with a matter as crucial as that of Villacís on the table. And also with the transfer of taxes from his party to Contigo. “We hope that people will continue to participate in the coming months,” predicts the president of the formation.
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