A new party enters this Saturday in the race towards the general elections of November 29. The lawyer Miriam González Durántez officially presents Democracia 21 at 12:00 hours in the Domo 360 space in Madrid, in an event that can also be followed online. The formation was registered in the Registry of Parties at the end of June, but the early call for elections announced by Pedro Sánchez on October 5 has accelerated its plans and turns the launch into the starting point of a campaign to try to reach Congress.
Democracia 21 defines itself as a reformist project that aims to "modernize Spanish democracy, recover the integrity of the political system, and place the citizen at the center." González argues that problems such as clientelism, bureaucracy, corruption, and the excessive influence of party structures are holding the country back. Her diagnosis is not limited to a specific government: she has criticized both the PSOE and the PP for the politicization of institutions and for not having undertaken, in her opinion, sufficiently deep reforms.
Who is Miriam González
Miriam González Durántez was born in Olmedo (Valladolid) in 1968 and has developed much of her professional career outside of Spanish politics. She holds a degree in Law from the University of Valladolid and later trained at the College of Europe in Bruges, specializing in international trade and European regulation. She worked for years in community institutions, was an advisor to the British Foreign Office, has worked in international firms, and during the 2021-2022 academic year taught international trade policy at Stanford University.
She has also held positions on business councils and is the founder of Inspiring Girls International, an organization that seeks to bring professional role models closer to girls and young women. In 2023, she launched España Mejor, a civil society platform designed to develop public policy proposals without initially becoming a party. That project ended up being the laboratory from which Democracia 21 emerged.
Her name has been linked for years to that of the British politician Nick Clegg, former Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and former leader of the Liberal Democrats, to whom she is married. González, however, has developed an independent professional career and has made it clear that Clegg will not participate in her new political adventure in Spain.
The politics is not completely foreign to him due to family tradition. His father was the first democratic mayor of Olmedo and later a senator of the Partido Popular, although González now arrives at the forefront without having previously held an elected position in Spain.
"Clean and modernize" Spain
The expression with which González summarizes his project is "clean and modernize". Democracia 21 aims to carry out an institutional reform that reduces the capacity of parties to control public bodies and opens the Administration to professional profiles that are currently kept away from politics. González argues that Spain has developed structures that are too closed and claims that politics should function again as a temporary service instead of becoming a permanent professional career.
He does not want, at least publicly, to label Democracia 21 under a traditional tag. "How many labels do we have in Spanish politics for so few ideas?", he recently posed. His team argues that the classic frameworks of left and right are insufficient and that the new formation aims to bring together people who may have different ideological positions but agree on the need to reform the institutions. Different analyses place the project within the liberal and reformist space, close to the political center that was partially emptied after the electoral sinking of Ciudadanos, although González rejects presenting it as a simple reconstruction of that formation.
Eliminate privileges and strengthen institutional independence
One of the most defined points of his program is democratic regeneration. From España Mejor, he already promoted a proposal to reduce or eliminate the privileges of public officials, arguing that politicians and citizens must respond before Justice under more similar conditions. González also demands to modify the appointment system of institutions and control bodies to reduce their direct dependence on the parties.
Among his proposals are also the professionalization of the Administration, greater rules on conflicts of interest, and a Ethical Code for the Government based on the 99 measures that España Mejor developed before the creation of the party. González believes that regeneration cannot depend solely on the individual behavior of politicians but on norms that more strictly limit the use of power.
The judicial independence constitutes another of its axes. It has criticized PSOE and PP for the way in which the General Council of the Judiciary has been managed and argues that the bodies responsible for controlling the Executive and the parties need a greater separation from those who govern. In contrast, it does not advocate for a general recentralization of autonomous competencies and bets on improving coordination between administrations.
Specialized courts against corruption
The fight against corruption occupies a central part of the discourse of Democracy 21. González proposes to create specialized courts in corruption, review the rules on party financing, strengthen the regulation of conflicts of interest, and advance in a clearer regulation of pressure groups. His argument is that the successive scandals should not be addressed only when they reach the courts, but through preventive changes in institutional functioning.
The candidate also maintains that corruption has a cost that goes beyond the money taken: it erodes citizen trust, consumes political resources, and blocks reforms. In her interview published this Saturday by El País, she warns that there are elements that, in her opinion, are calling into question the quality of the Spanish democratic system and places among the problems the difficulty of many citizens to participate in politics outside the structures of the parties.
Economy, pensions, and recovering the "social elevator"
Democracy 21 wants to transcend institutional regeneration. The platform Spain Better had worked before the electoral leap on proposals regarding pensions, economic education, and social mobility. One of them proposed to introduce basic financial education in the educational system to teach young people to interpret a paycheck, prepare a budget, understand taxes, or manage savings. Another opened the debate on the sustainability of pensions and equity between generations.
González also criticizes the Spanish model of low productivity and reduced wages and argues that one of the priorities must be to recover the "social elevator" that allowed previous generations to improve their economic position through education and employment. His bet is to modernize the Administration and the economy, although the complete detail of his electoral program will have to be known starting from the presentation this Saturday and during the coming weeks.
Is it the new Ciudadanos?
The comparison will be inevitable. Democracia 21 appears in an electoral space that Ciudadanos came to occupy strongly, and several former leaders of that formation have shown interest or collaboration with the new project. The former Madrid vice president Ignacio Aguado has publicly expressed his support and has encouraged the "orphans" of the center to observe the new formation, while former officials like Juan Trinidad have collaborated in its early steps.
That does not mean that Democracia 21 is a refoundation of Ciudadanos. González intends to build an organization with people from the professional, academic, and business world and has insisted that he does not want to base the party on the recycling of former officials. His declared aspiration is to attract both abstentionists and disenchanted voters from different formations, without being linked to one of the two major blocks.
On November 29, its first electoral test
The emergence of the party occurs in a particularly compressed calendar. Pedro Sánchez announced the October 5 dissolution of the Cortes after a legislature marked by difficulties in building parliamentary majorities, and the BOE confirmed that the general elections will be held on Sunday, November 29, 2026. Democracia 21 therefore has just over seven weeks between its public presentation and the polls.
The party also starts without parliamentary representation or a territorial structure comparable to that of PSOE, PP, Vox, or the already established formations. That point will condition basic issues such as the preparation of candidacies, provincial organization, and the ability to convey its message outside the large cities. The formation, however, wants to turn its status as a newcomer into a part of its proposal: to incorporate professionals who until now had not taken the step into politics.
The presentation this Saturday will serve to see how concretely Miriam González defines that offer and what names will accompany her. Democracia 21 arrives at the 29-N with a very defined main banner, the reform of the political system, but it will have to complete that proposal with answers on the economy, housing, healthcare, pensions, territorial policy, or immigration if it wants to present itself as a complete national alternative. For now, its presentation revolves around three verbs: regenerate the institutions, combat clientelism, and modernize the country.