[LINK] "Spain's Potential Trudeau Offers Chance to Heal Catalan Divide"

[rfmcdonald]

Does anyone know anything about Spain's Albert Rivera? This Bloomberg article is unclear on the extent to which he actually is like a Trudeau, any Trudeau, apart from some broad similarities.

Albert Rivera aims to match Canada’s new prime minister and fellow liberal Justin Trudeau by completing a meteoric rise to power in Spain’s general election next month.

If he falls short, there’s a European leader from the same political family whose experience Rivera plans to avoid.

“Nick Clegg is a good example of what we don’t want to do,” Rivera said in an interview in Barcelona Monday, recalling the former British deputy prime minister’s humiliation in this year’s U.K. election after five years as the junior partner in a coalition with David Cameron’s Conservatives.

“I would prefer to look to Trudeau,” said Rivera, who turns 36 this week. “He got the victory.”

The parallels between the Canadian leader and the pro-market Spanish insurgent hoping to topple Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy go beyond their shared liberal ideology.

Trudeau upended Canadian politics last month, vaulting from third place to first over the course of the election campaign; Rivera is targeting the premiership in the Dec. 20 ballot less than a year after his group Ciudadanos set up a national party. Like Trudeau’s father Pierre, who governed Canada between 1968 and 1984, Rivera showed his political chops standing up to separatists in his home region who want to break his country apart.