Manuel Valls addresses his first press conference after local elections in Barcelona | Marta Perez/EPA-EFE Spain’s Ciudadanos breaks ties with Manuel Valls Liberal party angered by former French PM’s support for leftist mayor.

Spain’s liberal Ciudadanos has cut ties with Manuel Valls after the former French prime minister supported the leftist Ada Colau for Barcelona mayor.

Valls — who was born in Barcelona, grew up in France and is a French citizen — had himself run for mayor under a common banner with Ciudadanos, but Colau’s party and a separatist party came out on top.

Valls said he and his representatives supported Colau when city hall members voted for a new mayor over the weekend because he didn’t want a separatist in office, but Ciudadanos representatives opted to cast blank ballots, according to El País.

On Monday, a spokeswoman for Ciudadanos said it had officially cut ties with Valls and its representatives would no longer work with him, arguing there was “very little difference” between Colau and the separatists’ mayoral candidate.

Though Colau is not a separatist, Ciudadanos has taken issue with her support for Catalan secessionists jailed during a trial over their push for independence.

"We were right [not to support Colau] when we saw that her first decision was to put on the yellow ribbon," said Ciudadanos spokeswoman Inés Arrimadas, referring to a symbol that has been worn to show support for the jailed politicians and which Colau put up at city hall. Arrimadas said that if a pro-separatist politician became mayor, they would have done the same.

“We want our own voice in the city hall of Barcelona,"Arrimadas said.