Planifica Madrid, the public company through which the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) bought the Chamberí penthouse, has an agenda. It is posted on its website and anyone can consult it. It is a very detailed calendar: it shows meetings, board of directors meetings, events, property visits, contract signings, tributes, project deliveries, and even when Christmas baskets were collected last winter or when they did television reports. Everything. There are months with a dozen activities and others frantic with more than 20. At least, that was the case throughout 2025 and until March of this year. In April, the month in which the Community of Madrid bought the 485 square meter apartment, there is nothing. The same happens with May, June, and July. According to the agenda, there have been no events of any kind in four months.
The public company began using this online agenda in July 2023 and entries were less frequent at first, but increased over the years. Since 2025, all kinds of activities were recorded and that has been the trend during the first three months of 2026. They recorded, for example, the collection of Christmas baskets “bread and fish” on December 4 at 1:00 p.m., the initiative for children to meet the Three Wise Men on the 23rd of that month, or a television report at the Picasso Museum in Buitrago de Lozoya on February 25. Also meetings with town halls, authorities of the Community of Madrid, and other companies, such as Indra.
This newspaper has asked a spokesperson from the Ministry of the Presidency, on which Planifica Madrid depends, about the lack of information since April, whether that means there have been no activities, and how they usually update the agenda, but has not received a response.
The regional government bought the penthouse to use as an “office” for 6.3 million euros on April 14. The last activity recorded in the calendar is from March 26: “FIRST STONE FIRE STATION COBEÑA. 11:00”. And the day before, the last board of directors meeting ―the governing body of the company, responsible for making decisions― before the strange acquisition. Since then, if the agenda is to be believed, they have not met again, and if they have, it is not known when or how many times. The statutes of Planifica Madrid indicate that the board of directors is competent to “buy and sell movable and immovable property, rights, and securities at the price and conditions it freely stipulates.”
The president of the board is Miguel Ángel García Martín, Minister of the Presidency, regional spokesperson, and a man of utmost trust of the regional leader. Also the one on whom Ayuso has placed the weight of the most complicated task: giving explanations. “I have to refer [the questions] to the Ministry because, among other things, it is the one that not only has detailed information but also the communication channels for that purpose,” he said on Wednesday in Villa del Prado, one of the municipalities affected by the fires.
Those explanations have not been given by García Martín, who on Thursday again entrenched himself in the same discourse as Ayuso, with which they intend to close the matter of the penthouse: once it was known that it could not be used as offices ―municipal regulations prohibit it―, they put it up for sale and that’s it. There is no bigger problem, both defend. The money from the sale of this luxurious apartment with a 199 square meter terrace, along with that of four other properties on Gran Vía that they have been trying to get rid of for a year and have now added to the lot, will be used for the reconstruction of the fires that have devastated the Sierra Oeste of Madrid. With the operation ―which is not as simple or quick as its announcement― they expect to raise between 20 and 22 million euros. “It is acquired to put it at the service of the needs that the Community of Madrid may have,” said the minister.
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Neither he nor the president have clarified what the initial need was to buy a penthouse at number 35 General Martínez Campos promenade, with five bedrooms and six bathrooms. Nor who gave the order, nor why it was not reported until EL PAÍS uncovered the purchase, nor why it did not appear in the company’s budgets, nor where the file is or if they considered other apartments. “Planifica Madrid buys and sells properties throughout the year,” Ayuso has defended on more than one occasion. But the public company does not usually sell and buy properties, much less homes. It does sell land or plots, manages public works, rents some of the buildings it owns to the Administration, or carries out commissions from the ministries, such as the rehabilitation of the Ventas bullring, for example. In fact, in the last five years, they have only acquired two properties: the offices of their headquarters, on Edgar Neville street, behind El Corte Inglés on the Castellana, for almost seven million euros; and the former house of the poet Vicente Aleixandre, Velintonia, for just over three million.
Almost everything related to the latter also appears in the agenda: the visits prior to the purchase, the key delivery, or the public opening event. They also recorded in the calendar the sale of one of their buildings last year, located on Santa Catalina street, near the Congress of Deputies, because these are unusual operations. On September 15, 2025, they visited the property and on November 28 at 1:00 p.m. they signed the contract and the building passed into the hands of a Mexican real estate company. There is nothing registered anywhere about the penthouse in Chamberí.
Faced with the lack of explanations about an operation that remains surrounded by unknowns, the opposition has intensified pressure on the regional government. Más Madrid has asked the Court of Auditors to audit the activity of Planifica Madrid and has requested access to all documentation related both to the purchase of the penthouse and to the decision to put it up for sale barely 48 hours after it became public. In addition, it has sent a burofax to the public company demanding transparency about the cost of the operation and has announced a complaint for a possible crime of embezzlement, and they have requested the appearance of the CEO, Pedro Corbalán. The PSOE, for its part, has requested to visit the property and has filed 22 information requests addressed to the public company and various ministries. Among other documents, it demands the acquisition file, the budgetary documentation that supported the purchase, the minutes and agreements of the board of directors, the legal and economic reports that supported it, the deed of sale, and the communications exchanged between the regional Presidency and Planifica Madrid.
Do you have something to tell? Write to the authors at lfranco@elpais.es and bolaizola@elpais.es
