Adrián Vázquez: "Ciudadanos needs an urgent change of faces and ways of doing things"

• Politics Arrimadas' list guarantees that she will continue as leader in Congress and elevates Adrián Vázquez as head of Ciudadanos

• Primaries Arrimadas and Villacís support MEP Vázquez against Bal

Adrián Vázquez

(Madrid, 1982) has adapted his vocabulary to the situation he is facing: regenerate, restructure, relaunch, refound, redirect, renew... The head of the

' delegation in the European Parliament and one of the brains of the refoundation of the party aspires to be the next

secretary general

after the primaries of the formation and focuses on the short term.

May, he tells

, will be key for the liberals.

His candidacy, the official one that Inés Arrimadas closes, includes the prefix on which he plans to build the new Ciudadanos:

.

He has an important career in Brussels, but is unknown in national politics.

Who is Adrián Vázquez? I am a person who has always focused a lot on the international.

From a very young age I had a tremendous interest in international relations, history and diplomacy.

That has led me to be living abroad since I was 22 years old.

I have always believed in the European project.

Due to my political affinity with a liberal center party, I ended up working with Cs in the European Parliament.

Then I was campaign manager in the 2019 European elections, I became an MEP and, with the departure of Luis Garicano, I am now the head of the delegation.

Until now he has been cautious about what happens in Cs.

What has changed in the last few days? Those of us who have worked so hard on the refoundation,

the biggest listening exercise that any democratic party has done, we are not going to cheat by ourselves: the party is in a critical situation.

When the end of the refounding came to an end, there were discrepancies and more risqué statements that muddied the procedure a lot.

What I have said from the beginning is that the only way for the party to emerge from January with any chance of being a useful political tool again in May is to make it as united as possible.

In recent weeks we have called everyone to see how to agree on the most transversal candidacy possible.

Without unity there is no future.

We set ourselves the big goal of May.

Without May, the viability of Cs is much more complicated. Did Inés Arrimadas personally ask you to take the step? I have read that this is a list of Inés Arrimadas.

It is a consensus list.

completely new, regenerative.

The permanent Executive that we presented we were not in the previous permanent.

A cast of people who have skills in their professional life and in the party that are what we need now to restructure and completely change the way it works.

This is what affiliates have asked us for and what is essential to be competitive again in May.

This list is of consensus, of unity.

Patricia Guasp, Mariano Fuentes, Carlos Pérez Nievas and I are the ones who have put it together. Talk about a list of unity, but there are other candidacies.

Have you contacted Edmundo Bal in the last few days? Yes.

Also with Santiago Saura.

And with a lot of cordiality because I have a very good relationship with both of them.

If we win, and they have also offered it, I think that in a genuine way,

there will be free positions to integrate the list that does not win.

This has to be a healthy, democratic and transparent competition.

If our list does not win we will support the winner.

We expect the same from the rest.

"You don't have to talk about who, but about what and for what."

What does the new Cs need and for what? I have the idea that political parties cannot be an end.

The party is a vehicle to transform the society in which we live.

What we have wanted to eliminate is personalism.

It is a choral, transversal and, above all, regenerative list.

The party needs an urgent replacement, of faces and of ways of doing things.

The previous ones have had a very complicated context, that is true.

But we now have to try to develop the party that the affiliates have asked us for, who also agree with what we think.

We want to send a key message: if we don't change everything from January 16 to the end of May and make this a viable party once again and give hope again, we are leaving Spain and millions of citizens orphans of a liberal center option that it can eliminate so much trench. May will be crucial.

Should the party be prepared for all possible scenarios?

You always have to have a plan A, a B, a C and a D. It is true that with the critical situation in which the party is, May is going to be fundamental.

If in May we again show signs that we are turning the situation around and once again excite citizens throughout the Spanish geography, we will achieve a positive trend.

For this, the first thing to do is restructure the organization and give greater importance to the territories.

We have little time left.

Bal says that Cs must capture the disenchanted vote of the center-left.

What do you think? What Cs has to do, and I'm not saying it, it has come from the conclusions of the work of thousands of affiliates, is not to look anywhere.

We have to defend our programmatic proposals.

We cannot yield to what the right or the left thinks.

We have to define our path.

From there, we'll see. María Muñoz accused Arrimadas of "usurping" control of the list.

What future does she have as a speaker in Congress?

Would she be a national candidate?The other list has also said that it would keep Inés as spokesperson in Congress.

We all understand who is the best spokesperson today.

But she is not on the permanent one on our list, which is the Executive who is going to direct the new Cs strategy.

Neither Inés nor anyone from the previous permanent.

We must thank them for the generosity with which they have stepped aside.

It's not easy at all.

On the other list, for example, is the deputy secretary general.

For me, if there is a continuist option, it is the other.

Ours is an absolutely new and regenerative option.

But as the statutes say, it would be Patricia Guasp who leads the national interventions as of January 16.

And when there are generals we will have to do primaries again.

I will not present myself because the position of secretary general is incompatible with that position.

What I offer is restructuring.

And there will be Patricia Guasp, Guillermo Díaz and Nacho Martín Blanco as national faces.

And Inés in Congress as a spokesperson, just as there will be people as valid as Edmundo Bal or María Muñoz.

We are not here now to waste talent.

Because the turncoat seriously threatens Cs. The anti-turncoat pact does not matter exactly to the bipartisanship.

To maintain power they do anything.

The PP has been making a hostile takeover bid against Cs in the last year and a half.

There are always rotten apples in every basket.

If we have to refound the party and be reborn, we must also be radically clear: it is much better to put the party back to work from the grassroots and without rotten apples. What should Cs learn from his European brothers?

That if you can.

We have known parties that have been in situations even more critical than ours and have taken it forward.

With work, effort and above all strategy.

You have to understand why we want the game that we are going to revive.

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