WHEN Albert Rivera gave a talk at a regular breakfast meeting for business folk at the Ritz Hotel in Madrid last month, more than 600 people turned up, a record for the event. He has suddenly become Spain’s hottest ticket, almost three years after he leapt into national politics at the head of Ciudadanos (“Citizens”), a newish liberal party. In December Ciudadanos 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-party system last year. In Spain, Socialist and PP governments have alternated since the 1980s. This cosy duopoly was weakened by the long recession that…Continue reading
Source: The Economist – Europe