Isabel Díaz Ayuso peeked at the entrance of the event and saw Alberto Núñez Feijóo arriving in a blazer, jeans, and sneakers. They shook hands, exchanged a few words, and posed together for a photo. It was a peaceful morning in Getafe with a light breeze, full of kisses and hugs. It felt like a wedding. The national PP leader showed his support this Saturday to the president of Madrid at the event that marks, every September, the start of the political season for the party in the Spanish capital. “We are getting closer and closer,” Feijóo said referring to the upcoming general elections. In a difficult moment for Ayuso due to the penthouse crisis, her boss did not abandon her. The atmosphere was relaxed, pleasant, conducive to joking, to the point that the Madrid president joked that Pedro Sánchez is obsessed with her because of love matters. “If I were Begoña, I would be annoyed…,” she said amid laughter from the top brass, who fanned themselves in the front row.
The PP sees the Prime Minister as weak and already envisions his arrival at Moncloa next year. A certain feeling of euphoria ran through the Exe Getafe Hotel, where the meeting was held and where the party deputies in the Madrid Assembly will stay tonight, the same ones who were asked for greater involvement on social media when the controversy arose over the luxury home that the Community of Madrid bought for the president to use. The leadership saw them as too timid when defending the stronghold. The local PP wants to form a team against “external attacks,” the interferences that want to divide them and put them in the spotlight, always according to their view, against an Ayuso who until a few weeks ago seemed impregnable.
Feijóo did not refer to the penthouse at any time. The fact of not mentioning it already means burying an issue that haunts Ayuso and marks the return to activity of the Assembly next week and the talk of power circles in Madrid. The PP leader preferred to talk about the Ayuso who worked in August on the reconstruction of the mountain villages affected by the fires. “I have seen her suffering,” he said. He recalled that Ayuso will face a current socialist minister, Óscar López, in the regional elections, and the mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida, also present, will face the former minister Reyes Maroto. “You beat the ministers and I beat the president. We are going to beat them all,” he ventured.
The opposition leader was the most restrained of those who participated in the rally, but even so, he went after Moncloa: “This is Sánchez’s government, hostile to the invaded and docile to the invaders.” He said that in Ceuta sexual abuses have multiplied eightfold after the border assault, insecurity in the streets has increased, and women cannot go to work peacefully. “Spain does not have to ask for permission or forgiveness to maintain its territorial integrity,” he emphasized. He believes his goal of governing the country is not far off: “We are getting closer and closer and I am not here to ask for patience. Spain already has enough patience. I come to ask for strength.”
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Ayuso’s tone was less institutional and more combative. She reminded Sánchez that the King is taller than him and predicted a future “in one of those banana republic dictatorships he so likes.” She was so fired up that she had to correct herself mid-sentence: “In your f… f***ing life have you been seen in an official car, living beyond your means (…). Let go already, nouveau riche, it doesn’t belong to you.” She accused the president of insulting the people of Ceuta by calling them racists and said his government is “delusional.” However, she did not forget to point out that right there, the man listening to her in the front row, Feijóo, with that focused look of an old myope, was “the future president of Spain.”
It was not a dull event at all, quite the opposite, there was a relaxed atmosphere. “You better win, you better. I have already threatened him,” she teased the PP candidate in Getafe, the first to take the floor. José Antonio Mesa came out very excited and described his city as the cradle of Spanish aviation and the exact geographical center of Spain. His speech had a comic touch. He boasted that the Princess of Asturias studies at Carlos III and spoke about himself in the third person, calling himself J.
He did not hold back when talking about his political opponents. He asked Feijóo to dismantle “sanchismo piece by piece.” “Those who are fucking traitors, get lost,” he shouted enthusiastically, which amused and perhaps even slightly embarrassed the PP bigwigs listening in the front row. He said the current mayor of Getafe, the socialist Sara Hernández, is “unworthy” and “shameful” for not attending the march for Ceuta. He was sweating when he came down from the stage. After the event, Ayuso and Feijóo went their separate ways, but making it clear that right now, they are united and together in adversity. The PP believes it is not a time for cracks.
