This is a translation of an article from Catalan newspaper VilaWeb entitled “L’eurodiputada Carolina Punset abandona Ciutadans criticant la dretanització del partit i la posició sobre Catalunya“. VilaWeb publishes some of their own articles in English here.

The MEP and former Ciudadanos (Citizens) organiser at the Corts Valencianes (the Valencian regional parliament), Carolina Punset has announced to the leadership that she is leaving the party. She did so in a strong letter, published by Spanish newspaper eldiario.es, in which she criticises the party’s turn to the right on economic and social questions, position towards Catalonia and change in energy policies.

Punset criticises that the party maintains a single political policy for a short period of time, which has made them forget ‘where they came from and where they are going’. ‘We have gone from holding mild policies against nationalism in order to look to secure the moderate catalanist vote to being “the most Spanish” of all,’ she says. According to Punset, from the beginning she defended ‘the idea of citizenship and civil patriotism across the territories’, which has been lost. ‘Walking with flags goes against the DNA of the Ciudadanos which I joined’, she laments.

‘I do not believe that anyone doubts my aversion to any form of nationalism or my Jacobinism, which I have unashamedly defended. However, that does not stop me from affirming that the situation of civil confrontation has reached the point where it is necessary to be open to listening to political opponents’, she says. Specifically Punset criticises the imprisonment of politicians and pro-independence civil society leaders: ‘Prison can never be good news.’

The MEP denounces that anyone who differs from Albert Rivera’s position is marked and spied upon, ‘as KGB agents did’. ‘They tell you off because you have spoken with Puigdemont, with people from ERC (the Republican Left of Catalonia), with anyone who is not from the 155 block. It’s a pity.’

Furthermore, she says that, as a feminist, she feels ashamed when they talk of ‘gender ideology’ or when ‘they consider acts which are really sexist terrorism as family violence’. She also criticises that they deny the need for electoral lists with parity of representation, ‘even though where they are not imposed there are not enough women represented’.

She adds that her guts churn when they suggest ‘regulation’ of prostitution, which she believes is a euphemism for legalisation, and legalising surrogate mothers. ‘Bearing in mind the cases of “women farms”, we must be more careful’, she believes.

She says that if it has taken her so long to leave the party, it is because she sees it as an injustice that it is her who has to leave ‘when it is the leadership which has made the political defection to be the white brand of the Partido Popular’. Punset will continue to be an MEP, now as an independent member of the liberal group.