• Public aid Vox goes from receiving 0 euros to 13 million in annual grants, in just one year
  • Results 10-N. The 'lost' papers of Albert Rivera

Citizens will have to tighten their belts starting next year. The electoral debacle entails the loss of more than 3.5 million annually in grants from the Ministry of Interior, as party sources acknowledge. Even so, the net savings that liberal training holds in banks - more than 12 million euros - will allow it not to undertake an employment regulation file (ERE) and continue using its 51 headquarters, including the national one, with more than 2,500 square meters and six floors, in the street Alcalá de Madrid .

This has been confirmed to EL MUNDO by the Secretary of Finance in the role of Citizens, Carlos Cuadrado . Year after year and, especially since the formation made the leap and became a national party (in 2015), the orange formation has managed to save more than one million euros annually. The party has maintained throughout this time a relatively small structure that has allowed it to undertake growth without becoming indebted. One more factor is that it has not spent all of its revenues, which have been increasing as Citizens grew and spread throughout the national territory.

Acting Standing Committee sources add that in 2020 Citizens are planning to use part of that 12 million euro box - the amount is yet to be determined - to maintain their current workforce, much smaller than that of the big parties.

The collapse of citizens from 57 seats to only 10 deputies will mean an annual economic loss of more than 3.56 million euros in grants from the Ministry of Interior on what was entered in 2018. This year is not taken as a reference because there has been two consecutive general elections and three different calculation bases - the results from January 2016 to April; the votes from April 28 from May to October, and those from last November 10 for the last two months of the year.

This economic loss -calculated by this newspaper and corroborated by the Ministry of Finance of Citizens- represents a drop of more than 20% in its annual income, which this year will amount to more than 18 million euros.

Carlos Cuadrado is, however, calm. He explains that with the accumulated surplus, they have a budget to stay for four years with the same level of expenditure that they have had so far, although that is not their intention because the expenses are going to be adjusted, especially in regard to the most important item, operating expenses, which will amount to 7,148,604 million this year.

In addition, Citizens have no outstanding credit or debt to pay to any financial entity, which makes their economic situation even more healthy.

The acting finance secretary acknowledges that the electoral result of 10-N has been very bad, but adds that "economically, we will not suffer." "The adjustment measures we face will be due to organizational causes, never to economic causes," he explains.

After the electoral catastrophe of November 10, a great fear had spread before a possible ERE among the 120 members of the party's staff or, at least, a fall in salaries. However, Carlos Cuadrado met last Tuesday with the workers and told them that management does not plan to do so. Do not even leave the national headquarters where they work.

The headquarters of Citizens has become the symbol of the growth of training. The orange building chamfers at number 253 of Alcalá street, in front of the bridge on the M-30 that is next to Las Ventas . The property has an area of ​​2,560 square meters, with a ground floor that is usually used as an auditorium and press room, a mezzanine and five floors in height where offices and meeting rooms are distributed.

Your rent amounts to a total of 30,000 euros net per month. And maintenance and supplies (electricity, water, heating, air conditioning ...) add up to a monthly cost of about 7,000 euros more, as sources of the party's management explain.

At this time, Citizens totally rule out changing headquarters or renting some floors of the building, which will continue to be used as headquarters now that the formation will only have 10 deputies in the Congress of Deputies.

In 2015, Ciudadanos only rented the ground floor and the mezzanine floor in anticipation of the December election result. Given its success in those elections -40 deputies-, Albert Rivera and Carlos Cuadrado decided to rent it whole, undertake a reform and make it the permanent headquarters of both National Cs and Cs Comunidad de Madrid .

In addition to this property, Cs uses another 50 locations throughout Spain . In general they are small and are all rented, precisely to avoid indebtedness, as Cuadrado explains. Management does not plan to do without any. In addition, since the May regional elections, the party entered almost all the regional parliaments of Spain.

As for salaries, Citizens allocate 4,497,780 euros to pay payrolls, which will not deduct anything. In the rental and operation of all headquarters, Cs spends 2,293,544 euros throughout Spain.

The management shuffles raise the share of public office

All Citizen positions allocate 8% of the salary that exceeds the minimum wage to increase the party budget. In total, Cs receives 1,049,039 euros for this item. The Statutes of Cs allow to allocate up to 10% of the salary of public office for training. Management has not yet decided, but if necessary, it will extend this allocation to that 10%, which would mean more than 200,000 euros extra, explain sources of the address.

Cs also expects the contributions of institutional groups to grow in 2020 thanks to the new parliamentary groups in the autonomous parliaments. With the good results obtained in the regional elections, Cs will enter next year 7,380,930 euros, which must be added what comes from Congress and the Senate - almost one million euros.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • Citizens
  • Spain
  • Congress of Deputies
  • Albert rivera
  • General elections

30th ANNIVERSARY the policy useful to the Congress of the vanities

Spain The PSC, center of attacks and reproaches of all others

Spain Pablo Casado does not believe in CIS and invites Pedro Sánchez to resign if he does not take 123 seats in 10-N