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Inés Arrimadas and Francisco Igea , the two main candidates to lead Citizens, fought on Wednesday night in a hard duel in the only debate organized by the party before the primaries held this weekend. And they did it in a sour duel, without concessions, in which both of them put the mistakes of the past in their faces and accused themselves of being "self-destructive," as Arrimadas told Igea, or of "not assuming mistakes or making self-criticism." , as the vice president of Castilla y León said to the spokeswoman in Congress.

The two knew how to maintain the forms and not enter into personal disqualification. But neither of the contestants gave up attacking the adversary with their mistakes.

Igea started the debate asking for forgiveness "for the wrong decisions" adopted by the Executive of Citizens to which he belonged and led to the party, he thinks, to sink from the 57 deputies of the general elections of April to the 10 they got in November .

Inés Arrimadas, on the other hand, admitted the electoral "slip", but preferred to "look to the future": "We had a slip on 10-N and that is why we are going to change our shoes and we are going to look to the future," said the favorite candidate to lead citizens.

Throughout the debate, Arrimadas tried to raise an optimistic, forward-looking discourse, trying to contrast with an Igea that he called several times "critical" and "destructive."

Arrimadas promised, if he loses the primaries, to support Igea and "not to say that the party is dead or that it is not democratic." He asked him, however, to be critical of his mandate and to tell him in public and in private what he thinks he is not doing well.

Clash between candidates

In a debate moderated by journalist Juan Fernández Miranda , Arrimadas repeatedly accused Igea of ​​"doubting the primaries", of "questioning the results" of the votes to compromisers or of being "destructive" in his criticisms.

He, for his part, accused Arrimadas of "not listening to the militants" and of "not doing self-criticism or analyzing errors and strategies."

The two leaders of Cs also clashed frontally on the newly approved policy of seeking coalitions with the PP. The Castilian-Leonese Vice President brought up the issue first and said bluntly: "We are not the PP; we have to be a different project."

In his opinion, coalitions such as that of the Basque Country or Catalonia "do not add up", as evidenced by the surveys that are being known these days. On the contrary, in his opinion, the sum of Cs with the PP "blurs our project and our brand".

The agreement with the PP

Igea also criticized that Cs has reached an agreement to go along with the PP in the Basque elections without having previously reached a joint programmatic agreement: "Where is the program, the limitation of mandates, transparency, where is the liberal Cs program that excited the whole country? "

Arrimadas was "agreed to add" with the PP above the acronym because "we must put the interests of Spain above those of the party."

"I don't know if Paco wants to break Navarra Suma, " he told her, "but it is supported by people who are so suspicious of following partisan interests such as Fernando Savater or Maite Pagaza ." Arrimadas defended that Cs according to the PP "a constitutionalist list that does not lose a single vote."

As for the party model, Arrimadas rejected the "model of 17 PSC" or "impose the baronies" of Igea. He defended for Cs "the same thing I propose for the outside": a more democratic and participatory system.

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  • Citizens
  • PP
  • Inés Arrimadas
  • Spain
  • Catalonia
  • Castile and Leon

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