BARCELONA, Spain (AP) – Nearly a decade ago, Albert Rivera caused a stir in Spanish local politics by posing nude in campaign posters. These days, he sports Hugo Boss suits but his campaign on the national stage is no less eye-catching: His upstart Ciudadanos Party is cutting into support for the ruling conservatives, threatening to bust open Spain’s traditional two-party system.
Painful austerity has dented Spanish living standards, generating disillusionment with both Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy’s Popular Party and its rival Socialists, which have alternated power since the fall of the Franco dictatorship in the 1970s. Voters are gravitating to renegades such as Rivera’s business-friendly Ciudadanos, or Citizens, as well as the hard-left Podemos (We Can) Party, putting them virtually level in opinion polls with the traditional political heavyweights.
Rivera’s party entered the national political race only five months ago – having until then been a key voice of Spanish unity in the independence-minded Catalonia region. But in this short time it has captured Spain’s imagination with its brash talk that the political elite are a dinosaur-like class ripe for an electoral thrashing. By the end of the year, Rivera looks set to take on the role of political kingmaker.
“It’s a new political era in Spain,” Rivera told The Associated Press in an interview at the Catalan Parliament in Barcelona, where he serves as a lawmaker in between campaigning around Spain. “The latest opinion polls are giving a technical tie to the four parties and we’ll see whether that’s true or not. But at the very least, the political map is going to change substantially.”
The first big test for Rivera and Citizens comes Sunday. That’s when Spaniards angry about years of sky-high unemployment and seemingly never-ending government corruption cases elect leaders for 13 of the country’s 17 autonomous regions, which function much like U.S. states. Spaniards will also vote for councilors in thousands of cities and towns.