"We need to restructure the state to make it competitive"

One word permeates the entire interview: "De-ideologize." Territorial reform, fiscal reform, abortion legislation, nuclear power... Everything must be addressed without the taint of ideology, insists Rosa Díez, the prime-ministerial candidate for Unión Progreso y Democracia (UpyD). Just four years old, this small party made progress in elections at all levels, and its leader - a former Socialist who broke with that party in 2007 - says she wants to represent "the citizens" without defining herself as left- or right-wing.

Question. At rallies, when you ask people to break with the two-party system of PSOE-PP, you tell voters not to choose between "bad and worse." But which is which?

Answer. That depends on each person. In polls, people say they don't trust these two, yet they still say they will vote for them. It is the citizens who believe that both parties represent "bad and worse." I ask people not to vote against anybody, but rather in favor of ideas that they feel represent them.

Q. Do you believe, like Mario Vargas Llosa, that UPyD is "the ideal ally of the PP" to tone the latter's platform down?

A. I think we can be a conditioning counter-force. We can be the allies of whoever is willing to address the reforms I've mentioned. I'm a social democrat, but I lead a party that is based on the union of the liberal soul and the social democratic soul. It is very important to have a national party in Congress to defend the equality of all Spaniards. In recent times, the PP has copied some of the worse aspects of the Socialists. Both of them wish to get on well with the nationalists.

Q. Should we make more budget cutbacks if Spain is under threat of intervention?

A. Before making any social cuts, we need to trim our bloated structure. If we went after tax fraud we could collect 70 billion euros a year; if we put an end to the duplicate agencies and the waste, we'd collect 26 billion; if we merged municipalities, we'd save more than 10 billion euros. If, after making all these non-social cuts, we still had to ask people to tighten their belts, we would support that. But you can't start there, by cutting the health services, the pensions...

Q. What does UPyD propose to do about unemployment?

A. We need to restructure the state to make it competitive. Businesses are the ones who create jobs, but with 17 domestic markets [as many as there are semi-autonomous regions in Spain], you cannot ask them to invest. We've become foreigners within Spain. We've placed so many internal barriers that just by eliminating them, you'd make things much easier.

Q. What redundant agencies would you eliminate?

A. Do we really want to have three of everything? We need to eliminate the provincial delegations. There are dozens of duplicate agencies: foreign policy structures, ombudsmen, vaccination calendars... we've created 17 replicas of the state.