A little over a year ago Ignacio Aguado (Madrid, 1983) abandoned his positions in Ciudadanos and announced that he was leaving politics and joining the long list of prematurely retired party leaders. He did it without making much noise, just a few days after learning of the dismal electoral results of the autonomous elections on May 4 that Isabel Díaz Ayuso had forced after the failed motion of censure in Murcia – where her party allied with the PSOE to blow up the Government that he formed with the PP–, accusing his then Vice President of the Government of forging a similar operation in Madrid to unseat him.
The operation was never proven, it was denied by Ciudadanos and also by the PSOE, but it served Ayuso to get rid of an uncomfortable partner: he dismissed his vice president and all the Ciudadanos councilors and called elections, with the known result. Before that appointment with the polls, Inés Arrimadas had also decided to remove Aguado, burned by his disputes with the regional president, and place the parliamentary spokesman, Edmundo Bal, in his place as a regional candidate. It was a desperate attempt to save the furniture and for this Bal had to be convinced, who resisted until the last minute.
Finally, Aguado and the state attorney on leave appeared at the party’s headquarters to announce the replacement. The vice president tried to appear that everything had been agreed between the two and said that he would help his replacement in any way he could. “I have personally asked him to take on the challenge,” he even said in a strange staging, with a forced rictus. The procession was inside. And Aguado disappeared from the map. He was only seen at a rally, sitting next to his former colleagues from the Executive. Almost in the final stretch of the campaign he was kind enough to participate in an act held in the Plaza on May 2 where he launched harsh volleys against Ayuso while Bal, on the contrary, held out his hand to collaborate in the future. A future that never was
Ciudadanos lost the 26 seats that Aguado had won in 2019 and was left without representation in the Madrid Assembly. The PP almost touched the absolute majority, which allowed Ayuso to agree on the support of Vox but not include it in his new Executive. A few days later, Aguado said goodbye to Inés Arrimadas without a single criticism, much less against Bal, with a kind tweet in which he thanked everyone.
Shortly after, it was learned that he had returned to the private sector to work in strategic consulting for companies, as a member of the Executive Committee of the Madrid Business Forum and that he collaborated as an external professor at the European University of Madrid, teaching classes in the Master’s Degree in Communication and Business Affairs. Publics.
In his track record was the entry of Ciudadanos in 2015 in the Madrid Assembly with 17 seats that, four years later, in the 2019 regional elections, became 26 deputies. In the two calls with the polls, he formed an electoral tandem with the current deputy mayor of Madrid, Begoña Villacís. After the good results obtained that year, the then leader of the party, Albert Rivera, decreed an agreement with the PP and both leaders formed government coalitions in the Regional Assembly, with Ayuso, and in the City Council, with José Luis Martínez-Almeida. Those alliances with the PP have now been questioned by Arrimadas once the party has been falling more and more after his predecessor left them in Congress with only ten deputies of the 57 they had.
Since he took over the reins of the party in Madrid and later became Vice President of the Government, Aguado had managed to create many enemies, both internal and external. Although with Villacís he always presumed to maintain cordial relations, the rivalry between the two for the plots of power in Madrid always existed. Each one had their ‘clique’ and frictions arose from time to time. then they were popular voice his constant fights with Ayuso, which in the end almost ended up being an open war. They disagreed about almost everything: about the management of the residences, about how to deal with the pandemic, about Telemadrid, about the terraces, about the elimination of crowds or about the creation of investigation commissions for cases of alleged corruption in which the PP was was involved. The party leadership, led by Arrimadas, was aware of this. But while the coalition lasted, nobody was going to put sticks in the wheels of the Madrid leader.
Nor was there much between the party leader and Aguado. feeling. In fact, Aguado even tried to take over the reins of the formation as soon as Rivera left, when all eyes were already on the Jerez native and asked her to take a step forward. His gesture did not like many of the faithful to Arrimadas. But she wanted inner peace. Even after the failure of the motion of censure in Murcia, she wanted to heal her wounds by expanding her Permanent Committee, the hard core of the party, which included, among others, Aguado.
On the occasion of the first anniversary of that unmitigated defeat of Bal in Madrid, the former Madrid leader granted an interview with El País. In it he displayed exquisite elegance and did not launch himself against Arrimadas, who did not resign then either and announced the holding of a National Convention for the middle of the following July. Being held in Madrid, that conclave should have been organized by Aguado’s team, but since he had already resigned, it was Villacís who did so, having also held his responsibilities in the capital.
“Citizens paid in Madrid for the mistake that was made in Murcia. The expansive wave swept us away,” Aguado said in said interview, in which he denied a bad relationship with Ayuso and that he was preparing a motion of censure against her: “It is completely false that there was going to be a motion.” He also predicted: “The Ciudadanos brand is terribly damaged. I wish them the best.”
The new failure in the elections in Andalusia on 19J made him break his silence. He also on Twitter called for the resignation of Arrimadas and the entire Executive demanding the convening of an Extraordinary Assembly. This Monday he finished off the job by announcing that he is leaving the game. In his letter he accuses Arrimadas of not taking responsibility for all his failures. “The leadership of the party has decided to undertake a flight forward, which I do not share, disguised as a refoundation in which I do not believe”, he affirms.
While Villacís and Bal himself claimed to “respect” his decision and did not criticize him, one of his old rivals in the primaries for the Community of Madrid, Juan Carlos Bermejo, launched himself against him on Monday. “Aguado and his clique always blamed Arrimadas for his misfortune. The reality is that they were the real culprits of the debacle in Madrid, first agreeing against the voter’s decision and then betraying Ayuso. Personally, good luck to him” , wrote the economist and talk show host on his Twitter profile.
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