Citizens' political ideology was initially unclear beyond a strong opposition toCatalan independence andCatalan nationalism in general.[27][28][29] The party initially presented itself asleft-of-centre, holdingsocial democratic andprogressive liberal positions;[30] however, it removed any mention of social democracy from its platform in February 2017,[31] moving closer to thepolitical centre. By 2018, it was judged by commentators to have drifted further away from the left, as its focus shifted to competing against thePeople's Party (PP) as the leading party of the Spanish right.[38] Despite describing itself aspostnationalist,[39][40][a] it has been deemed by some journalists and academics as professing aSpanish nationalist ideology.[42][43][44] Since 2023, the party has been described as less focused on opposing Catalan nationalism, instead emphasising liberal policies.[45]
Founded inCatalonia in 2006, the party initially enjoyed growing support throughout the 2010s on a regional and national level, owing to its staunch opposition to Catalan independence as well as the PP's decline in popularity under then-Prime MinisterMariano Rajoy. Entering theCongress of Deputies in2015 in fourth place, it became the single largest party in theParliament of Catalonia in2017 and entered multiple coalition governments in autonomous communities. Citizens reached its electoral zenith at theApril 2019 general election, where it became the third-largest party in the country and pulled ahead of the PP in several regions. This popularity did not last long: after refusing to form a coalition with theSpanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE),[46] that year'sNovember snap election saw Citizens lose 47 seats and become the country's smallest national party, resulting in leaderAlbert Rivera's resignation and departure from politics.[47] This proved to be the first of a succession of electoral defeats that would set Citizens on the path to near-complete political collapse.
Citizens was preceded by the political platformCiutadans de Catalunya (Citizens of Catalonia), formed on 7 June 2005 by a group of fifteen academics, writers and other figures of Catalan society (includingAlbert Boadella,Félix de Azúa, andFrancesc de Carreras) in reaction to theGeneralitat's plans to reform theStatute of Autonomy. The group presented their manifesto at theCentre de Cultura Contemporània de Barcelona on the 21st of the same month, where they called on "citizens of Catalonia who identify with our proposal to demand a political party which will contribute to the restoration of realism", expressing their lacking confidence in the government to "address the real problems faced by the general public." In this manifesto, they declared that "the rhetoric of hatred promulgated by official Catalan government media against everything Spanish is more alarming than ever" and that "the [Catalan] nation, postulated as an homogenous entity, has taken over the space where an undeniably diverse society lives".[51]
Leading up to their formation as a political party,Ciutadans de Catalunya organised several round table meetings and conferences that were occasionally met with controversy; at one event held ahead of thereferendum on the 2006 Catalan Statute of Autonomy, several members of the group were assaulted by pro-independence activists.[52][53] A second manifesto was presented at theTeatro Tívoli in Barcelona on 4 March 2006.[54]
Their founding conference was held in July in Barcelona, where Citizens was formally incorporated as apolitical party under the full name ofCiudadanos–Partido de la Ciudadanía (Citizens–Party of the Citizenry).Albert Rivera, 26 years old at the time, was elected its first leader.[55]
Cs presented in 16 September its candidature for the2006 Catalan regional election, taking part in an election for the first time.[56] The party entered theregional parliament with three MPs, including leader Rivera, winning 89,840 votes, the 3.09% of the total.[57] The party voted against the investiture ofJosé Montilla.[58]
For the2010 regional election, Albert Rivera was chosen the party's candidate for the presidency of theCatalan Generalitat.[59] The party ended up winning 105,827 votes, the 3.4%, three tenths up from the previous election, maintaining its 3 MPs in the process.
C's took part in the2012 snap election with Rivera as its candidate again.[60] Its campaign slogan was "Better united".[61] The party received 274,925 votes, the 7.58%, winning 9 MPs and tripling its votes.[62] The party's substantial growth in support was mainly due to its role as a counterweight to the growing public support for independence in Catalonia, with C's acting as one of its most outspoken opponents.[62]
Cs decided to contest in the2008 Spanish general election,[65] presenting lists all over the country, and expecting to win MPs at least inMadrid andBarcelona.[66] However, the party only won 45,750 votes (0.18%), being unable to achieve parliamentary representation.[67]
Cs participated in the2009 European Parliament election. The party initially tried to do so in a coalition with the ideologically similarUnion, Progress and Democracy (UPYD), but the offer was rejected.[68][69] The party's decision to take part in theEurosceptic and nationalistLibertas coalition was met with controversy and led to infighting in the party due to it being at odds with Citizens' professed ideology[70][71] and alleged irregularities in the process.[72][73]
The party took part in the2011 local elections, maintaining 10 of its councillors. C's initially tried to contest in the2011 general election together with UPYD,[74][75] but its offer was rejected for the fourth time,[76] leading the party to not contest in order to not divide the vote.[74]
In 2013, the party started organising in the rest of Spain with a manifesto called "La conjura de Goya" ("Confederacy of Goya") that took place in the Congress Palace ofMadrid.[77]
Citizens took part in the2015 Catalan regional election, where it obtained 734,910 votes, the 17.93% of the total vote, more than doubling its results once again. By winning 25 MPs, the party became the second largest faction in the Catalan parliament.[88][89]
In the2015 general elections, Cs entered parliament with 3,500,446 votes (the 13.93%) and 40 seats.[90] As PP'sMariano Rajoy refused the mandate to form a government, Citizens promised theSpanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) its support in parliament in exchange for a number of political concessions.[91] However, this pact would have needed the support ofPodemos, which Citizens could not abide by; this deadlock ultimately led to the2016 snap election, where the party lost 0.8% of the popular vote and eight seats. After these elections, Citizens struck a deal with the conservative PP in supporting its government in exchange for a number of political concessions.[92]After a 10-month political deadlock, PP leader Mariano Rajoy was able to win investiture as Prime Minister and retain power.
Following theillegal independence referendum in Catalonia and the unilateraldeclaration of independence in October 2017, C's supported the application of thearticle 155 of theSpanish constitution.[93] This led to the2017 snap election in Catalonia, where Cs received 1,109,732 votes (25.26%) and obtained 36 MPs,[94] effectively becoming the most voted party in Catalonia, being the first time in democracy where a non-Catalan nationalist party won a Catalan regional election.[95] Cs candidateInés Arrimadas did not present for investiture due to lacking enough support to be invested as President of the Catalan Generalitat.[96]
Cs became the third most voted party in the2018 Andalusian regional election, winning 21 MPs with 18.27% of the votes.[97] The party became the junior partner of a coalition government with the PP, which received the external support ofVox.[98]
Cs achieved its best result in a general election in theApril 2019 Spanish general election, winning 4,136,600 votes (the 15.86%) and 57 seats, becoming the third most voted party in the country.[99]
In the2019 European elections, the party obtained 12% of the vote, and won a total of seven MEPs (which became eight post-brexit).[100]
C's went through electoral collapse in theNovember 2019 general election, having lost 80% of its seats (going from 57 to 10) and maintaining only 1,6 million votes (the 6.79%, down from the 15,9% of the previous election).[101] This led to the resignation of Albert Rivera as party president,[101] who was succeeded byInés Arrimadas.[102]
In March 2021, Citizens, together with theSpanish Socialist Workers' Party, presented a surprise no-confidence motion in theRegion of Murcia against their own regional coalition government with thePeople's Party.[103] The motion failed due to defection of several Ciudadanos deputies, and triggered a "political earthquake" across the country, leading to a number of high-ranking members abandoning the party.[104] In the aftermath, Cs also lost all its 26 deputies in Madrid in the2021 Madrilenian regional election, and fell incountry-wide polls from ≈7% support (≈10 deputies) down to ≈3% (≈1 deputy).
In September 2023,Francisco Igea andEdmundo Bal were expelled from Citizens for criticising the party's decision not to contest the2023 Spanish general election. Igea did not appeal the decision and did not resign his seat.[105] This left Cs without any seats in Spanish regional parliaments, outside of Catalonia. The party would lose all of its seats in the Parliament of Catalonia in the2024 election, and all of its seats in the2024 European Parliament election a month later.[50] After the European Parliament election, the party was left with no members of the Congress of Deputies, Senate, European Parliament, or any regional parliament, but still retained 392 at the municipal level.
Citizens initially branded itself as acentre-left party holdingsocial democratic andprogressive liberal positions;[30] the party was commonly described associal liberal in its early years[106][107] and appealed to disillusioned members of thePSC who were strongly opposed toCatalan nationalism.[108][109][110] However, the party removed any mention of social democracy from its platform by 2017,[31] having joined the liberalALDE group the previous year,[106] and the party repositioned itself as acentrist, progressive liberal party.[108][111] By 2018, the party was judged to have shifted towardscentre-rightliberalism in order to compete with the PP.[25][26][33][37] Since 2020, the party has been described as shifting back to the centre,[23][45][112] emphasizing liberal policies over its opposition to Catalan nationalism.[45]
Cs displays a political discourse mainly centered around opposition toCatalan nationalism[139] and theCatalan independence movement,[140][8] to the extent that it has been frequently criticised as asingle-issue party.[141] As an originally Catalan party, it specifically opposes Catalan nationalism due to viewing it as an outdated, authoritarian and socially divisive ideology which fuels hatred among both Catalans and Spaniards.[27][28][29] Former party leader Rivera used the phrase "Catalonia is my homeland,Spain is my country andEurope is our future" to describe the party's ideology.[142]
Cs defines itself as apostnationalist party[40] and criticises any sort of nationalism, "including the Spanish nationalism that Mr.Ynestrillas defends".[143] However, it has been deemed by a variety of sources[42] to profess aSpanish nationalist ideology.[43][44] In a party conference held on 20 May 2018 to present its platformEspaña Ciudadana, Rivera said in a hall filled with Spanish flags:
I do not see reds and blues, I see Spaniards. I do not see, as they say, urban people and rural people, I see Spaniards. I do not see young or old, I see Spaniards. I do not see workers and entrepreneurs, I see Spaniards. I do not see believers or agnostics, I see Spaniards. [...] So, compatriots, with Citizens, let's go for that Spain, let's feel proud of being Spaniards again.[144][145]
One of the main issues raised by the party is the Catalanlanguage policy which actively promotes the use of the Catalan language as the sole working language in Catalan public administration.[146][147] The party challenges this policy and defends equal treatment of theSpanish andCatalan languages.[147] It also opposes the current language policy within the Catalan educational system in accordance with which all public schooling is delivered in Catalan.
Although reconsidering the current head of state is not a priority for the party, Rivera has said that Citizens is "arepublican party which claims that Spanish citizens are who have to decide whether they prefer a once-modernized monarchy or a republic through a referendum in the context of a constitutional reform".[148][149][150]
Cs supports a renewedState of Autonomies without concessions to separatism.[151] The party wants to reform theelectoral system with the aim of creating greater proportionality that would give less weight to single constituencies. Regarding the chartered autonomous communities' tax regimes, the party does not want to remove the Basque Country's and Navarre's chartered regimes because they're protected by theConstitution.[152] However, it criticises what it calls the miscalculation of the quota or contribution which is negotiated between governments and has been causing significant differences that they regard as having become outrageous.[153] It proposes a review and a recalculation of the Navarrese andBasque Economic Agreements in order to stop the Basque Country and Navarre being "net beneficiaries".[154][152]
Former Barcelona Citizens Headquarters (2015-2021) inSant Gervasi – Galvany. From 2015 to 2017 it also served as its Central HQ before its relocation toMadrid.
In 2006, the newspaperEl Periódico de Catalunya revealed that Rivera was a card-carrying member of the conservativePeople's Party (PP) between 2002 and 2006 and that he had left the PP only three months before running for election in Citizens. This was corroborated byEl Mundo andEl País.[173][174] Despite these revelations, Rivera denied having been a full member of PP and implied that he had voted for thePSOE until recently.[175] Past PP membership is common among Cs members. FormerPSC activistJuan Carlos Girauta had joined the PP[176] and became a prolific contributor to conservative journalism from hisLibertad Digital column[177] before becoming a Citizens member and candidate in the 2014 European election.[178] During his long tenure asLibertad Digital columnist and COPE debater, Girauta expressed strong sympathies for right-wingZionism (to the point of callingthen-President Zapatero anantisemite)[179] and lent credibility[180][181] to the now discredited book byVictor Farías[182] dismissing socialist politicianSalvador Allende as a racist and asocial Darwinist, without clarifying that the quotations about genetic determinism in Allende's doctoral dissertation were themselves quotations from other authors (mostlyCesare Lombroso) or the fact that Allende was highly critical of these conclusions in his thesis which was later published as a rebuttal to Farías' position.[183] Farías was later sued for this,[184] but Girauta never retracted his statements.
In 2015, a member of the Citizens electoral list forGijón to the city council and regional elections posted pro-Falangist, pro-Blue Division and pro-Hitler Youth messages on Facebook.[185] Those same elections carried news of at least five other former card-carryingFalange and/orEspaña 2000 members.[186]
Prominent meetings of the party have been reportedly picketed byCatalan separatist groups on several occasions.[187] Its leaderAlbert Rivera has received anonymous death threats urging him to quit politics. Two members of theERC Youth were sentenced to prison for it.[188][189][190][191][192] Members of Ciudadanos have repeatedly taken part in violent attacks on Catalan targets[193][194][195][196] and far-right and ultranationalist groups are usually present in their demonstrations.[197][198] In one instance, aTelemadrid cameraman was assaulted, allegedly because he was mistaken for a member of Catalan broadcasterTV3.[199][200][201]
An altercation took place inCanet de Mar on 21 Ma, 2018 between pro-independence local residents, who had planted yellow crosses on the beach to honor imprisoned and fugitive politicians; and anti-independence individuals who decided to remove said crosses. The altercation left at least three people wounded, including an 82-year-old man and a localCUP councilor who explicitly accused Citizens andFalange militants from across thewhole region to be among the provocateurs. Citizens Member of Parliament Carlos Carrizosa dismissed the claim that either "councillors or party activists" from the party were involved in the incidents.[202][203][204] Four days later and despite admonishments and warnings by President of the ParliamentRoger Torrent, Carrizosa himself removed a yellow ribbon from the seats reserved for absent Cabinet ministers, forcing the President to suspend the entire session.[205]
During the2006 Catalan election campaign, the party's president Albert Rivera appeared completely naked in a poster in order to attract publicity to the party.[56][206] In the beginning, the party frequently complained about an alleged boycott on the part of Catalan media. In their opinion, the party was given too little airtime to present its views on the Catalan public television.[207]
In 2009, it was announced that Cs would run for theEuropean election allied with theLibertas coalition. The party's association withDeclan Ganley'sLibertas platform raised some concern on account of the coalition formed by the latter with nationalist and ultranationalist parties in each of its local European chapters, seemingly at odds with the professed ideology of Cs.[208][73][72]
According to some members of Cs, the negotiations prior to this electoral pact were led personally and secretly by the party leader Albert Rivera. This alienated the other two MPs (besides Rivera himself) and a significant part of the party from his leadership.[209] In turn, the official stance of Cs is that the critics are using the dispute as a pretext to canvass support for the ideologically similar UPyD.[210]
The party's economic spokesman,Toni Roldán, announced that he was leaving Citizens on June 24, 2019, in protest at the party's drift to the right and its alleged willingness to enter alliances with the far-right after regional and municipal elections.[211] Following Roldán's resignation, MEPJavier Nart and the Asturian leaderJuan Vázquez stepped down as well, leaving their political offices in the party's committee and theAsturian Parliament, respectively.[212][213]
Some days later,Francesc de Carreras, one of the party founders, and Francisco de la Torre, MP and economist, also announced that they would leave the party due to its stances against the PSOE and supposed inclination to alliances with the far-right.[214][215]
In 2017, theCourt of Audit found irregularities in the accounting books of several political groups, Citizens among them. In respect of Citizens, the irregularities included illegal expenses for advertising on local television in 2015.[218][219]
Cs memberJorge Soler appeared in December 2017 on theTV3 debatePreguntes Freqüents, during which journalistBeatriz Talegón [es;ca] addressed him about the 2.1 million euros spent by Cs in the21-D Catalan election campaign—higher than the budget spent by any other party on that election. Talegón inquired about the sources of this funding. Soler replied that this ample budget could be ascribed to the austerity of their party.[220]
^abAuzias & Labourdette 2014, p. 31: «Enfin, Ciutadans (C's), avec 9 députés au parlement, s'oppose aux nationalistes et défend le modèle de l'Etat des autonomies».
^Bonnie N. Field; Caroline Gray (2019)."The Spanish Parliament in Context". In Jorge M. Fernandes; Cristina Leston-Bandeira (eds.).The Iberian Legislatures in Comparative Perspective. Taylor & Francis. p. 53.ISBN978-1-351-06520-7.
^Marta Fraile; Enrique Henández (2020)."Determinants of Voting Behaviour". In Diego Muro; Ignacio Lago (eds.).The Oxford Handbook of Spanish Politics. Oxford University Press. p. 383.ISBN978-0-19-882693-4.Ciudadanos...competes with the PP in the centre-right of the ideological continuum.
^Ciudadanos – Partido de la Ciudadanía."Citizens' Ideario"(PDF).ciudadanos-cs.org (in Spanish). Archived fromthe original(PDF) on 22 January 2015. Retrieved27 September 2016.Tercera, por el vacío de representación que existía en el espacio electoral de centro-izquierda no nacionalista
^abDiari de Terrassa (9 April 2009)."Javier González: 'Nuestro objetivo es impulsar una tercera vía política en España".ciudadanos-cs.org (in Spanish). Retrieved27 September 2016.Somos postnacionalistas y no queremos luchar contra un nacionalismo con otro. Vamos sin banderas, casi desnudos, abriendo camino sin fronteras desde la Constitución
^Dudda, Ricardo (20 June 2019)."El espacio de Ciudadanos".Letras Libres (in Spanish). Retrieved16 February 2025.
^abc"Spain's centrist Ciudadanos are on the march".The Economist. 10 February 2018.His party was formed by disillusioned Catalan Socialists who disliked temporising with nationalists. Last year Mr Rivera repositioned it as a centrist, progressive liberal party.
^abDelgado Ramos, David (2011)."Elecciones al Parlament 2010: fin de ciclo en Cataluña"(PDF).Revista de Derecho Político (in Spanish).80. UNED. Retrieved28 May 2015.El incremento se produjo a costa del PSC, donde en algunos de sus tradicionales «feudos» su electorado optó por votar a Ciutadans como opción «españolista» y de centro-izquierda más adecuada para no votar a su otra opción, el Partido Popular, más alejada ideológicamente de sus postulados.[permanent dead link]
^Castillo, Jésus (18 March 2015)."Spain: Podemos, or how to square a circle".Flash Economics, Economic Research (243). Natixis: 2.ISSN2117-9387. Retrieved30 January 2016.C's - Ciudadanos - Partido de la Ciudadanía (Citizens - Party of the Citizenry). Creation: 2006. Positioning: Republican centre
^Gómez Fortes, Braulio; Urquizu, Ignacio (23 September 2015)."Political Corruption and the End of two-party system after the May 2015 Spanish Regional Elections".Regional and Federal Studies.25 (4). Routledge:379–389.doi:10.1080/13597566.2015.1083013.ISSN1743-9434.S2CID153736868. Retrieved2 January 2016.Yet the real change that makes these elections so groundbreaking has been the emergence of two change that makes these elections so groundbreaking has been the emergence of two new political forces in all the regional parliaments—one leftist party, Podemos, and one centre-right party, Ciudadanos—which have accounted for 20% of the regional vote and proved decisive in forming regional governments in the 17 autonomous communities, whether via coalition pacts, investiture agreements or legislative pacts
^Medda-Windischer & Carlà 2015, p. 178: «It should be said that not all political parties and social entities signed the Agreement: the People's Party (center-right) andCiutadans (center-right, recently-created pro-Spanish party in the Catalan Parliament) rejected the Agreement on the basis that it had been conceived in a clearly nationalist fashion, whereas the NGO SOS-Racisme and the Trade UnionCommissions Obreres considered the document not progressive enough».
^Ancelovici, Dufour & Nez 2016, p. 86: «The voters have been turning to either Podemos, a new radical left-wing party that grew out of the Indignados movement, or to Ciudadanos, a new center-right party that originated in Catalonia but has mobilized more broadly in recent years».
^Ferrán & Hilbink 2016, p. 144: «Ciudadanos is a center-right political party launched in Catalonia in 2006 by a group of self-styled intellectuals (who had published a “manifesto” in 2005) that extended across Spain after the Catalan elections of 2012».
^Butler 2016, p. 24: «On the centre-right of the political continuum, the Ciudadanos ('Citizens') party had less impact in the Basque Country or Navarre».
^Cohen & Muñoz 2016, p. 6: «A center-right party in Spain also emerged, which is called Ciudadanos (“Citizens”), whose base is primarily young and urban and whose focus for addressing income disparity and unemployment is by concentrating on growing the innovation economy in cities throughout the country».
^Gutiérrez Díez, José Manuel (January 2014)."A case of misreckoning: the Catalan election of 2012"(PDF).BORDA: Working Papers (University of Salamanca). Retrieved8 August 2015.Cs (Ciudadanos). Catalan party (in practice), without reference in Spain. Centre-left
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