The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, faced uncomfortable questions again this Monday about the controversial purchase of the penthouse in Chamberí for 6.3 million revealed by EL PAÍS, initially intended to install “a temporary office” while works are carried out in the Royal House of the Post Office. Ayuso pointed out that, in these eight years of regional government, she has neither needed nor requested an official residence, a service that only the presidents of five of the 17 communities have, often unused. “And I will not need it 10 months before an election,” Ayuso added. “You can turn it around as much as you want, but I am focused on what matters, which is being here,” she said during a mid-morning visit, not on her agenda, to the Las Moradas de San Martín winery in San Martín de Valdeiglesias, during her tour of the municipalities devastated by the Sierra Oeste fire last July. There, she announced aid of 500,000 euros to support the wine sector affected by this environmental disaster.
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When asked about the purchase of the 485 square meter apartment by a Madrid public company on General Martínez Campos promenade, the Madrid president said she has been leading the Community for eight years without an institutional residence: “I have not needed an official residence nor have I asked for one and I will not ask for one 10 months before an election.” Ayuso criticized that many ministers have official residences and complained about the different “measuring stick” applied to her case, which causes her “embarrassment.”
Questioned about whether she feels supported by the national leadership of the PP, Ayuso did not say a word and relied on management to assure that, after the success of the Pope’s visit and the arrival of Formula 1, her efforts are focused on recovering the areas affected by the fire and “organizing” the capital for the major upcoming events starting in autumn. Regarding whether she has given all the explanations about the operation by Planifica Madrid, dependent on the Presidency Department, Ayuso avoided answering and said that “little more can be said, the same questions, the same answers.”
Shortly after, the PP’s deputy secretary for institutional regeneration, Cuca Gamarra, stated that Ayuso has already given all the necessary explanations “actively, passively, and periphrastically” about the purchase. However, the regional government has not clarified even the price of an operation that has not been officially reported.
Planifica Madrid acquired the penthouse on April 14 and the operation is not recorded either on the transparency portal or in the company’s annual accounts. Initially, sources from her government indicated that the apartment, with five bedrooms, six bathrooms, and panoramic views of the Madrid skyline, would be used as an office for works in Sol that had not been reported, although it is speculated that, in reality, the Community of Madrid wanted to convert the penthouse into the official residence of the Presidency. However, regulations allow offices to be installed there, so barely a day after the scandal broke, it was put up for sale. Her boyfriend, Alberto González Amador, also put up for sale the two properties he owns in the same neighborhood, one of which he shares with the president.
After these brief statements about the penthouse, Ayuso again attacked the Government and criticized that, while Pedro Sánchez “continues on vacation with his flip-flops in La Mareta,” Ceuta is “on the brink of collapse” 16 days after an “invasion tolerated” by the Government of Spain, with “compromised security,” a “new risk of epidemics,” as well as “daily assaults and rapes [there are six reports of sexual assault registered, according to police sources].”
“And meanwhile, we still do not know how much the president’s vacation is costing or which politicians and friends are using public facilities, not for a day or two, but for an entire month, while Spain burns, is suffering an invasion, and has enormous problems,” she continued in her attack.
In her opinion, Sánchez is the politician “with the least credibility in all of Europe,” but “has the longest vacations and the biggest crises, while he is on the brink of the bench, disoriented and, yes, on vacation.” In her view, the “legislative and governance disaster is absolute” and the Government, “with 170 laws stalled in Congress,” has left Spain “completely abandoned and paralyzed.”