Looking on Wikipedia a bit, I have to say that UPyD sticks out like a sore thumb of sanity among the other unaffiliated parties, which seem to basically all be far-right nationalists.
Why aren't they in a group, and what sort of group would they be most likely to be a part of? It seems to me that they'd fit in well enough with the liberals/centrists, no? There have to be some other parties they would ally with.
I guess the reason why they aren't in the liberal group is that it contains the EAJ-PNV and CDC, who is the biggest party in the CiU coalition. UpyD wants a unitary Spanish state and does not want anything to do with the parties promoting a bigger autonomy or even independence for parts of Spain. They would of course not join the regionalists in the green group and the EPP contains UDC, the other part of CiU. Finally, the funder of the party Rosa Diez broke out from the Socialists, the PSOE, to start up the UpyD party so there's probably some mutual dislike between them. So this basically leaves no group for them to join.
If it wasn't for the various intra-Spain scuffles with CiU and PSOE, do you think they would or could join either of those groups? From a distance, it seems to me like they'd fit best on the left wing of the liberal group, but I'm not sure. And are there any other parties in Europe that have a similar focus as them, i.e. anti-regional, especially a liberal-progressive critique of regionalism?
(I'm especially interested to see if Hashemite has anything to say about them.)
