The Madrid regional Minister of Presidency, Justice and Local Administration, Miguel Ángel García Martín, once again defended this Tuesday in Patones that the regional Government has already given “ample explanations” about the controversial purchase of the 6.3 million penthouse by the public company he directs, Planifica Madrid, despite the fact that it has never been clarified whether it was intended to be used as Ayuso’s official residence, who gave the order to acquire it, and what other options were considered. “I myself have explained on several occasions that it is a property that was acquired to put it at the service of the needs that the different ministries might have and as support for the institutional headquarters of the Community of Madrid,” said the minister pointed out by Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Alberto Núñez Feijóo to give explanations about the property, which cannot be used as an office nor is it suitable for an official residence.
According to García Martín, it was the fires in the Sierra Oeste that changed the Government’s priorities and it was decided to put this property up for sale along with four others on Gran Vía to allocate the proceeds to reconstruction. However, the sale was announced just one day after EL PAÍS revealed the purchase, which had been made secretly three months earlier, and the money obtained from the future sale cannot be directly or immediately allocated to those affected by the fires because the property does not belong to the Community of Madrid’s coffers but to a public commercial company with its own assets and accounts. The amount will remain within Planifica Madrid itself after the operation and the only legal way to transfer it to the regional Government is to wait for the fiscal year to close and distribute dividends, provided the company has profits. The property has been put on the market for almost 400,000 euros more than what was paid.
The minister added that the sale is published on the contracting portals and Planifica Madrid so that “any interested party can acquire” the properties, and attributed the controversy to “an interest of the left and the far left” to “try to cover up” what, in his opinion, is happening in Spain.
Following Ayuso’s script on the penthouse to the letter, the minister then attacked Pedro Sánchez, whom he accused of being “a traitor to Spain and the Spaniards.” “A Prime Minister who was resting at the royal residence of La Mareta while Ceuta was being invaded,” he stated. He also claimed that “the president had more security in La Mareta than the citizens of Ceuta had the day they were invaded” and reiterated that “that image of a president in flip-flops at the Royal Palace of La Mareta will haunt him for life.”
Never before had the inauguration of a warehouse or an event in Patones had national political relevance. This Tuesday, at eleven in the morning, García Martín arrived surrounded by journalists to this tourist town of barely 617 inhabitants, famous for being an exceptional set of black architecture in the Sierra Norte of Madrid, to inaugurate a machinery and materials storage warehouse financed by the Regional Investment Program and aimed at improving the maintenance of municipal services.
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It was no less: the last time García Martín appeared in public was 19 days ago, on August 6 in Robledo de Chavela due to the fires in the Sierra Oeste at the end of July. There, he also did not provide any relevant data to unravel the mystery surrounding the purchase, since he said the same as today: that the apartment “is acquired to put it at the service of the needs that the Community of Madrid may have.”
“They are looking for a ghost. We have given an explanation from minute one and we have done it clearly and transparently. The left and the far left need to stretch this gum because they are not able to cover up the shame of Mr. Sánchez, the sanchismo and the left of this country,” he said in his last appearance, in line with today’s.
However, the explanations given so far have not convinced Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the leader of the PP, who declared in an interview on Friday that “it will have to be Patrimonio de la Comunidad who will have to explain why it bought a premises that cannot be used as an office.” Núñez Feijóo said he knew since April that “places were being sought” to relocate the office of the regional president and the six or seven positions of her “secretariat and cabinet attention.” Ayuso, instead of responding to Feijóo or giving the requested explanations, dismissed the matter on Monday with a simple “it’s for sale, bye ‘fish’.”
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