Arrimadas' list, led by Guasp and Vázquez, beats Bal's in the Ciudadanos primaries with only 53% of the votes

• Politics Ciudadanos closes the primary campaign with a muddy debate that eclipses the end of the Refoundation

• Interview Adrián Vázquez: "Citizens need an urgent change of faces and ways of doing things"

• Primaries Bal sought the union 'in extremis' with the third way of Ciudadanos against Arrimadas

Patricia Guasp

and

are, as of this Thursday, the new leaders of Ciudadanos.

The militancy of the formation has chosen the coordinator in the

as political spokesperson and the head of the European delegation of the

as general secretary.

Both will pilot the new stage of the party, which is at stake in May for its survival in numerous regional parliaments and large mayors after accumulating a strong electoral decline since 2019.

Guasp and Vázquez lead the candidacy

, prepared by Inés Arrimadas, who closes the list and will maintain her position as spokesperson for Ciudadanos in the

.

The party, with this victory, assumes a new direction but one of continuity with the previous road map, and closes the door to the project proposed by Edmundo Bal, who was committed to "snatching the concept of progressivism from the left" and moving away from the postulates of the right.

Thus, the candidacy of Guasp and Vázquez has been imposed with 53.25% of support, compared to 39.34% obtained by Bal and his team,

, the third way led by

and

, achieved 7.41% of the votes.

The victory of Guasp and Vázquez reinforces the liberal line of the formation, which must be ratified this weekend by the bases in the General Assembly of refoundation.

An extraordinary congress in which the structural change of the leadership will also be approved, which will go from a "Cesarista" model to a two-headed one, with Guasp as political spokesperson and Vázquez as general secretary, a new figure who is in charge of the organic revival of the training.

A necessary restructuring after, in addition to the problems that the party is already suffering, the threat of internal fracture has been added in recent weeks after a muddy campaign that has confronted and divided the members of the party apparatus.

As this newspaper has been reporting, the relationship between Arrimadas and Bal, respectively numbers 1 and 2 of Ciudadanos, has deteriorated significantly, to the point that both currently believe in two completely different party models.

In fact, the internal earthquake that the party is experiencing continues to claim collateral victims.

This Thursday, just a few hours before knowing the results and in the middle of the primary voting process, the leader of Ciudadanos in the Valencian Parliament, Ruth Merino, has submitted her resignation after staying out of the dispute for control of training at the national level.

"Everything is going to stay the same," laments Merino, who has admitted at her farewell that today she would "have a hard time voting for Ciudadanos again."

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

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