Planifica Madrid, the public company that acquired the controversial penthouse that has been dogging Isabel Díaz Ayuso since this newspaper revealed its existence at the end of July, is using the high number of information requests about this purchase operation as an excuse to delay the publication of the details. This is stated in a communication sent by the company to one of the applicants and consulted by EL PAÍS. In it, Planifica Madrid extends the deadline by 20 days to decide whether to grant access to the requested information under the Transparency Law, as it will likely do, after having consulted the other party affected by the request: the sellers. In this way, it is possible that the response, if it arrives, will overlap with the appearance before the Madrid Assembly of the Minister of the Presidency, Miguel Ángel García Martín, to explain the purchase.
“There is no reason to extend the deadline because the information we requested should have been published since April,” laments Hugo Martínez Abarca, Más Madrid deputy and one of the people who requested the information. “They don’t have to prepare reports, files, or anything: it is assumed that they already have that before buying the property,” he adds. “But Planifica Madrid’s response formalizes that Ayuso lies when she says she has already given all the explanations. On the contrary, it is precisely Planifica Madrid who ‘stretches the chewing gum’ by extending a deadline to continue hiding all the information.”
Martínez Abarca demands the documents that allow knowing who made the decision to buy the penthouse; the minutes of the Planifica Madrid Board of Directors meeting that endorsed the operation; the corresponding economic-financial report or feasibility analysis; the appraisal; or the public deed of sale of the property.
This is read in Planifica Madrid’s response: “On August 21, the start of the file and the suspension of the deadline to give hearing to interested third parties were communicated. On August 24, a response to said procedure was received, and the deadline for the file was resumed. Once the deadline to resolve was resumed, it is extended by 20 more business days due to the high number of requests of diverse content received in relation to this matter.”
In April, the Community bought for more than six million a 485-square-meter penthouse in Chamberí, one of the most expensive areas of the capital, for President Ayuso to use “during the rehabilitation of the Royal House of the Post Office, whose works will begin in August.”
The penthouse is located on the ninth floor of a building on General Martínez Campos promenade, a residential building on one of the main arteries of the affluent Chamberí district. The block borders the Sorolla Museum, just 300 meters from the Castellana promenade. The seller has been economist and writer Astrid Gil-Casares, according to two sources familiar with the operation. A couple lived in the property as tenants.
Since then, and given the consequent controversy, Planifica Madrid has put the property up for sale. It has also become known that the instructions given to find the desired property were clear: a luxury penthouse in Chamberí or nearby. Between January and March, a month before the acquisition by the public company Planifica Madrid of the controversial penthouse, Ayuso’s government 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 by sources close to the operation. These are details very similar to those of the penthouse that the public company finally ended up buying.
The Ministry of the Presidency, 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 grown up and always lived, or the neighboring neighborhood, just a few minutes on foot from the streets where she has spent her whole 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 the sale of exclusive homes, including the aforementioned penthouse.
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