Inside the PP of Madrid, they summarize the situation very clearly behind closed doors. “Since Mexico, we haven’t recovered and all alarms are ringing. We have been overconfident and in politics, nothing should be taken for granted,” explains a source at the highest level. The party is experiencing a stormy summer due to the penthouse that the Madrid Government bought in the Chamberí neighborhood for 6.3 million euros, a real estate transaction that did not appear in the budget of Planifica Madrid, the public company through which it was acquired, nor on the Transparency Portal. Simply put, it was untraceable.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso initially assured that the property was going to be her temporary office while some works were carried out in Sol, the Government headquarters. These explanations were insufficient since that property cannot function as an office, not even as a presidential residence. The penthouse cannot have any public use according to the regulations. The circle around the president of Madrid assures that they did not know this when it was purchased in April, and that this error has been corrected by putting it up for sale for 6.7 million. “Goodbye and good riddance,” they say.
However, the mystery remains. In fact, it dominates almost all of Madrid’s political news. If the Government made public the file justifying the purchase, currently kept as a state secret, many questions would be answered, but for now, it has no intention of doing so. Ayuso and her people maintain that it will be shown “at the pace of the administration,” without giving further explanations. The existence of the penthouse was a secret known by only a handful of people around the president. “They were caught by surprise when EL PAÍS published it,” says a party member and adds: “Hence the chaos and confusion.” It has been the latest blow to the president’s image, who was already on a negative trajectory. When they want to point out the start of this decline — which she and her circle try to correct — almost everyone points to Mexico as the place where the bad streak began.
In the PP, they are aware of the communication disaster that trip in May turned out to be. If the idea was to strengthen Ayuso’s international image, the opposite happened. The president confronted Claudia Sheinbaum, the Mexican president, honored the conqueror Hernán Cortés, a very controversial gesture, and called Mexico a “narco-state,” a country where, according to her, you can be killed “on any corner.” The president was repudiated by the left and ignored by the right — no prominent conservative politician received her. She canceled the trip when she still had three days left on the agenda. Despite opposition demands, she refuses to reveal who financed her Mexican trip.
Not long after, it became known that businessman and commission agent Alberto González Amador, her partner, invoiced Grupo Quirón 4.4 million during their first three years of dating. Quirón is one of the main contractors of the Community of Madrid. Two consecutive setbacks that the Government wanted to tackle immediately. “They tried to pass the law of the conceived but unborn (from the moment of pregnancy, the fetus is recognized as another family member) to turn things around and win the narrative. But that has a very limited scope, very much for their own,” explains a PP member. He frames that measure within Ayuso’s policy of putting a dam against Vox, which could endanger her absolute majority next year if it continues to grow in Madrid. Ayuso’s team wants to avoid this by giving what for them is “the cultural battle,” a continuous drip of messages and gestures towards a harder right.
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The penthouse has put the spotlight on the Ministry of the Presidency, until now impermeable to any scandal. Minister Miguel Ángel García Martín has shown himself over the years as a serious and efficient manager with a sober discourse, more technical than political. He is Ayuso’s most trusted person, although he does not yet belong to the first circle that makes decisions, in which, for example, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, the president’s main advisor, is included. However, García Martín will be one of the protagonists of this new political term in September due to his role as president of Planifica Madrid, the place where the entire enigmatic real estate operation took place. Also, in Sol and in the PP, his latest appointments have created office buzz. He has included in his circle an advisor who until now worked in the Assembly of Madrid and has appointed Guillermo Kirkpatrick de la Vega as Director General of Cooperation with the State and the European Union.
The lack of strong explanations from the Community of Madrid has surprised many. Also, that they did not have a plan B or another thread to pull, as Miguel Ángel Rodríguez has often done to divert attention and win the narrative. In this, the former advisor to José María Aznar is recognized as a master by friends and enemies. This time he has not succeeded, although it should never be ruled out. If he managed to turn the alleged tax fraud case of Amador into the issue of the Attorney General of the State, who eventually had to resign after being convicted of revealing secrets, it is not unlikely that it will resurface.
Rodríguez and Ayuso have tried to bury the penthouse issue through social media, almost alone. Very few party figures have supported them, and they have had to ask their deputies to publicly back them. Privately, Rodríguez points to La Moncloa to change the subject. “Spain, invaded by Morocco (the entry of 70,000 immigrants into Ceuta); the shopping basket, through the roof; the ministers, fighting among themselves and looking for a top international position; president and family on kingly vacations; Zapatero, counting jewels; the socialist directive, about to be prosecuted; Marlaska in rebellion in the Senate… But we have an office for sale…“, he has written to people he tries to influence. Rodríguez talks about “an office” as if referring to the Kio Towers; in reality, a 250-square-meter home and another 200 of terrace in one of the best areas of the city and at a golden price. The narrative does not resonate nor is it credible, not even for their own party members. The PP of Madrid knows it has to speed up to get out of this crisis that gets more tangled every day.
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