Isabel Díaz Ayuso has moved this week to a residential complex in Puerta de Hierro, according to two sources confirmed to EL PAÍS. The president has left the apartment in Chamberí that she shared until now with Alberto González Amador, a businessman who became known for an alleged tax fraud for which he will be tried in the coming months.
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Ayuso’s new home is an apartment between 130 and 150 square meters located within a complex of four buildings with a pool and garage. The rent for an apartment of these characteristics in this affluent area in the northwest of Madrid ranges between 2,500 and 3,000 euros. Ayuso visited it two weeks ago and, after signing a lease, moved in this Monday. The president earns 103,090.32 euros gross per year, according to the regional government’s transparency portal.
The apartment where the president lived until now with her partner, on the sixth floor, is for sale along with another owned by the businessman in the same building, a penthouse. The joint sale of the properties is priced at 3.4 million euros. The news that Amador had put his properties up for sale came after this newspaper exclusively revealed that the government headed by Ayuso bought a penthouse in April for 6.3 million euros.
The Community of Madrid justified the operation, which had not been reported at any time, with the argument that the penthouse was going to be the president’s temporary office while renovations were carried out at the current headquarters in Sol. However, the residence, located right opposite where her mother lives, cannot be used either as an office or as a presidential residence, which increases the mystery of what it was really going to be used for.
The purchase and the subsequent erratic explanations have generated a political uproar that has complicated the summer for the president with a totally unexpected crisis. Ayuso has tried to close the controversy by putting the penthouse up for sale for 6.7 million euros, which is located in the exclusive Chamberí neighborhood. The regional government assures that the money obtained will be allocated to the open fund for the recovery of areas of Madrid affected by the fires.
The biggest controversies around Ayuso, who has governed with an absolute majority since 2023, have to do with real estate operations. When she was the PP candidate in 2019, it came to light that in 2011 her father inherited an apartment, who was still alive and had contracted a debt with the Community of Madrid for which he risked a possible foreclosure. Years later, in 2022, Amador acquired an apartment on the sixth floor in the Chamberí neighborhood, where the president moved in. The controversy arose because the businessman bought it while being investigated by the tax authorities for the commission of a possible tax crime. (Amador has earned 4.4 million in three years, according to a report from the tax agency, from Quirónsalud, owned by Quirón, one of the main contractors of the Madrid government).
A year later, Amador acquired an apartment on the floor above, which he initially rented with an option to buy. That these two properties have been put up for sale at the same time that the Community bought the controversial penthouse has generated many suspicions. Ayuso herself has referred to it. She says it is a coincidence, that the two operations have no connection. The president assures that she had no intention of living in that house.
The doubts could be cleared up if the government made public the file that the public company should have prepared to execute a purchase of this amount. However, for now it refuses to show it. It says they will show it “according to the administration’s timing.” Meanwhile, speculation continues about why a property of that price was bought if it could not be used for anything related to the administration, who authorized the purchase, and why that one was chosen and not another. The mystery surrounding the Chamberí penthouse continues.
