The instructions were clear: a luxury penthouse was sought in Chamberí or nearby areas. Between January and March, a month before the acquisition by the public company Planifica Madrid of the controversial penthouse, the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso was already looking for apartments that initially had the following characteristics: “Between 250 and 400 square meters and a large terrace.” This has been confirmed to EL PAÍS by sources close to the operation. These details are very similar to those of the penthouse that the public company finally ended up buying for 6.3 million and which has 485 square meters and almost 200 meters of terrace. It was advertised on the real estate agency’s social networks since January 31 for 6.6 million and, even earlier, in its portfolio. It was at that time that a senior official from Planifica Madrid contacted the exclusive luxury real estate agency based in La Moraleja through an internet ad, these same sources detail. The agency showed them at least two properties.
The first, located in the Argüelles area, specifically on Pintor Rosales promenade, had about 350 square meters, with a 200-meter terrace. Its price was four million euros. It did not convince. The second was the winner: the now famous penthouse of the businesswoman Astrid Gil-Casares. Of these two, the more expensive option. “The process lasted about a month and a half before the signing of the deed,” these same sources assure, just enough time for a price negotiation and to reach an agreement. For its part, Planifica Madrid, when asked about this matter, limits itself to responding that it refers to the explanations already given.
The Presidency Department, on which Planifica Madrid depends, has not explained who gave the order to the public company to look for an apartment with those characteristics precisely in the Chamberí area, where Ayuso has always grown up and lived, or the neighboring district, just a few minutes on foot from the streets where she has spent her entire life. Nor why the company chose to look for said apartment in a luxury real estate agency in La Moraleja, which does not deal with office sales but with exclusive housing sales, including the aforementioned penthouse.
After this newspaper revealed the operation, the regional Government put it up for sale for 6.69 million euros with the argument that the money will be used to alleviate the effects of the fires that devastated the western area of the Community of Madrid during the summer. However, this is complicated, as the money obtained from that future sale cannot be directly or immediately allocated to those affected by the fires because the property does not belong to the Community’s coffers but to a public commercial company with its own assets and accounts.
The final amount, if sold, will remain within Planifica Madrid after the operation, so the only legal way to transfer it to the regional Government is through a corporate operation such as dividend distribution or capital reduction. The property has been put on the market for almost 400,000 euros more than it cost.
In any case, the Community of Madrid intends to close the matter after weeks of back and forth: “Chao, pescao,” the president said this Monday. The hypothetical sale, however, does not dispel any of the doubts raised by the purchase. Among them, why would Ayuso’s Government want a luxury penthouse with residential use located right in the Chamberí neighborhood, where the president grew up, and which is just opposite where Ayuso’s mother lives?
The regional Government referred to the property serving as an “office” while works were carried out in Puerta del Sol, but the apartment cannot have exclusive office use.
This Tuesday, the Presidency Department, on which Planifica Madrid depends, has not answered the question of who gave the order to look for a property with these characteristics and in that area of Madrid. The questions accumulate and the explanations seem scarce even within the PP itself. Sources close to the purchase emphasize that when these search specifications were given, it was never specified that it had to be a property that could house offices or workspaces.
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Promora, the real estate agency that closed the sale, is a company specialized for almost 50 years in luxury homes. Its catalog consists of chalets, townhouses, apartments, penthouses, and plots in some of the most sought-after areas of Madrid, such as La Moraleja, La Finca, Somosaguas, El Viso, the Salamanca neighborhood, Chamberí, or Almagro. It never sells offices, and municipal regulations prohibit offices from being created on the floors where the properties requested by the regional Government to visit at the beginning of this year are located. This Monday, Ayuso insisted again on this referring to the controversial penthouse: “It is a property intended for offices that can also house workspaces, by the way, as they have on other floors.”
As eldiario.es revealed, Ayuso had been looking for an apartment in Chamberí for some time. She first did so with the help of her chief of staff at the Presidency of the Community of Madrid, Álvaro Sanz. According to this media, he contacted a property, organized visits, and participated in the price negotiation. That first property Ayuso was interested in had about 100 square meters and was listed for 850,000 euros. Accompanied by her bodyguards, the president visited it for the first time on December 1. After a second look with her partner, Alberto González Amador, the purchase was ultimately not completed.
The information revealed by eldiario.es reached the Assembly on April 16, just two days after the signing of the purchase of the penthouse on Paseo del General Martínez Campos. The spokesperson for Más Madrid, Manuela Bergerot, reproached Ayuso for having used a member of her cabinet to negotiate the acquisition of a private apartment. The president had refused minutes earlier to answer her question about her Government’s plan for the coming months. “Life treats you well, Madam President,” Bergerot began. “Now your chief of staff puts on the Tecnocasa suit to get you your third little apartment,” she added. Ayuso responded that she would not offer any details about her Government plan as long as they did not stop “insulting her.”
For now, it is unknown whether Planifica Madrid examined other properties through different agencies and whether Ayuso went to see these homes. However, the real estate agency denies that the person who conducted the visits to the apartment on Paseo Pintor Rosales and the penthouse on General Martínez Campos was Sanz himself. The search for a luxury home with a large terrace adds new questions to the regional Government’s explanation that a penthouse that, in theory, was purchased as a temporary resource while works lasted. “It is a property that was acquired to put it at the service of the needs that the different departments might have and as support for the institutional headquarters of the Community of Madrid,” said this Tuesday the Minister of Presidency, the man pointed out by Ayuso and Alberto Núñez Feijóo to give explanations about the home, Ángel García Martín. He will soon appear before the plenary session of the regional Assembly to explain the controversy, but for now his version also does not fit with the search for a large home with a terrace.
It is also unclear why Planifica Madrid was used, a company that “buys and sells properties throughout the year,” as Ayuso has defended on more than one occasion since EL PAÍS revealed the purchase of the penthouse. That is also a half-truth. The company sells land or plots ―generally for protected residential, commercial, industrial, or institutional use―, manages all kinds of public works in the municipalities of the region, rents some of the buildings it owns to the Administration, or carries out assignments from the departments, such as the rehabilitation of the Ventas bullring, for example, but the buying and selling of properties for the offices of the Community of Madrid is not, by any means, among its usual attributions.
In fact, in the last five years, it has only acquired two properties: the offices of its headquarters, for almost seven million euros in 2022; and last year the former house of the poet Vicente Aleixandre, known as Velintonia, for just over three million, which will be the next House of Poetry. In 2025 it also acquired the protected land of 408 hectares of the El Garzo estate, in Las Rozas, for about five million. These last two purchases are included as recent acquisitions in the 2026 budgets. To carry them out, . None of this has happened with the purchase of a penthouse that, now it is known, was an object of desire months before its acquisition.
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