The new address of Citizens leading the MEP Adrian Vazquez and the Balearic parliamentarian Patricia Guasp fired on Tuesday Carlos Squareveteran leader and considered the ideologue of the motion of no confidence in Murcia in March 2021, which gave way to the electoral repetition in the Community of Madrid and which destroyed the orange formation after losing two regional governments with a stroke of the pen.
Three days after that operation that the party considers the beginning of the end, Inés Arrimadas —who decided to continue counting on him and the other surviving veteran, José María Espejo, after the departure of Albert Rivera — took action and removed him from the permanent executive. He continued, yes, taking care of the party’s accounts, with a non-existent political profile and far from decision-making. Now, the new executive who was elected at the January congress has terminated her services. As EL PERIÓDICO DE ESPAÑA, from the Prensa Ibérica group, has learned, the decision was communicated to him this Tuesday and he he said goodbye to his entire team permanently.
Cuadrado was part of Ciudadanos from the beginning, when it was still a Catalan party, and He was always in Rivera’s leadership at the head of the Finance Department, although he was not in the strict confidence of the national president as José Manuel Villegas or Fernando de Páramo were. He was one of the very few leaders who stayed despite the leader’s resignation after the 2019 electoral disaster, but his name became famous after that operation.
The already former orange leader was in charge of the party’s strategy by decision of Arrimadas, who chose to keep people with experience that they did not jump from the orange boat to try to revive the organization, mortally wounded. He and, to a lesser extent, Espejo (still a deputy in Congress) led the organic life of the party on a day-to-day basis, to the chagrin of many other leaders who made up the executive and who often discussed their decisions.
With the arrival of Arrimadas to the leadership, Cuadrado always defended that Ciudadanos should recover its status as a pivotal party and abandon a stage in which the PP had been without any doubt the preferred partner. The strategy began in the Congress of Deputies (and became visible at key moments of the legislature, such as support for the Government of Pedro Sánchez for states of alarm and many other decrees, distinguishing his position from that of Pablo Casado’s PP) . And later, the road map was extended to the territories.
The motion of no confidence in Murcia had disastrous consequences for the party almost immediately after it was made public. Arrimadas always assured, despite being the president of the party, that she did not have all the information and that Cuadrado made many unilateral decisions committing the entire party and in direct negotiations with Moncloa.
The first step was to remove the regional president, Fernando López Miras, promote Minister Ana Martínez Vidal as the new president and close a coalition with the PSOE. In return, other mayoralties in the Region would also change sign. What Cuadrado did not count on was an internal rebellion in the Murcia party, starting with the regional vice president, Isabel Franco, who had been the candidate for the regional elections and who had a very strong enmity with Martínez Vidal and with Cuadrado himself.
López Miras, helped by Teodoro García Egea, who was the one who really managed to stop that operation, managed to stay in power, defusing the claim of Ciudadanos. The incomprehension of the majority of the orange party was absolute, convinced that they had made the biggest possible political mistake & rdquor ;. And after a few hours Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who also accumulated total animosity for her government partner, also Ciudadanos, decided to advance the elections in a strategic coup that no one counted on from the start either.
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The rest of the story is known: he almost touched the absolute majority, Ciudadanos was left without representation, the then vice president, Ignacio Aguado, is already out of politics, and the orange party broke relations with the PP completely. Casado and García Egea then began a hostile takeover bid to take over many orange positions throughout Spain, led by Fran Hervías, who had been the party’s Organization secretary for a long time, also sharing leadership with Cuadrado.
Both Cuadrado and Espejo resigned as deputy secretaries in a tense executive on March 15, 2021 in which Toni Cantó also resigned (later he would go with Ayuso) and many other leaders made their discomfort with Arrimadas visible. Since then he has been separated, but he continued to go to work every day at headquarters. Until this Tuesday, when the new orange leaders decided to put an end to it.