Isabel Díaz Ayuso said this Wednesday that the Ministry of the Presidency, which is led by a person of her utmost trust, Miguel Ángel García Martín, is the one who must answer all the questions that have arisen regarding the strange purchase of a luxury penthouse that was supposedly going to function as a temporary office for the president of Madrid, despite the fact that it is not even used as an office. The acquisition was made through the public company Planifica Madrid, which indeed depends on García Martín. “I have to refer them to the Ministry because, among other things, it is the one that has not only the detailed information but also the communication channels for this purpose,” the president declared in Villa del Prado, one of the municipalities affected by the fires this summer in the region.
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The purchase has generated a huge uproar that has led to an internal government crisis. The Madrid PP has asked its officials and deputies to publicly defend the president. “Planifica Madrid buys and sells properties throughout the year, and I have no idea about that. It is not my responsibility. The directors of each organization should be on top of it,” Ayuso added, who again insisted that this property, for which her government paid 6.3 million euros without informing anyone, in an opaque move that even surprised those within Planifica Madrid, was not going to be her official residence. “If I had wanted to have a home for myself, I have taken a little time, seven years (the time she has been governing). The logical thing would have been to arrive on the first day and decide, like so many ministers, about whom we know nothing. Neither where they live nor how much the properties cost,” she continued. The president considers that it would have been “not very smart” to make that penthouse her home.
The personal and real estate interests of the president intersected tragically last week. The day after EL PAÍS revealed the purchase, which the Community of Madrid had carried out with absolute secrecy, it became known that Alberto González Amador, Ayuso’s boyfriend, was putting his two properties in Chamberí, two apartments in the same building, up for sale for 3.3 million euros. In one, on the sixth floor, he lives with the president, and the other, a penthouse, is unrenovated. The coincidence with the purchase with public money of the famous penthouse led many to think that Amador was getting rid of these properties because his partner was going to have an official residence, as the presidents of other communities do. “I understand that points are connected because two circumstances have occurred at the same time and they sound very good to cause harm. That the stories match looks very good and we are turning it over and stretching it as much as necessary,” she lamented, ending with an expression of resignation: “It is what it is.”
The president was also asked about the message the PP sent to its deputies in the Madrid Assembly, which this newspaper revealed yesterday. “We ask for your collaboration to share and post positive comments. Many people read us and it would be good to set an example and pull the cart of messages supporting the President’s management,” they told them. Ayuso thinks that this type of orders are common within a political party. “This is older than the black thread in politics: that the parliamentary group of the moment supports the government it sustains with its votes. We have this government thanks to this parliamentary group. That they send messages of support among themselves, all governments in the whole world do that,” she said.
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