The PSOE’s strategy to end Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s supremacy in Madrid involves several points that her team has been working on in the shadows for months. Contrary to what a priori one might assume, the roadmap of minister Óscar López, the socialist who will face the right’s biggest asset in Spain at the polls, involves reclaiming Pedro Sánchez. The president has been in power for eight years and has accumulated the wear and tear typical of La Moncloa, but López’s advisors believe that Sánchez, in such a polarized context, mobilizes his electorate, especially now that he has strengthened himself by becoming a moral counterpoint to Donald Trump. Symbolic issues that move progressivism.
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Dislodging Ayuso from Sol is equivalent to climbing Everest. The socialists, however, see it as possible. “The Community of Madrid is growing economically, but many Madrileños feel they haven’t been invited to this party,” they say from López’s engine room. A few months ago, the main concern was that the minister was not very well known, but according to them, that perception has changed. López regularly appears on prime-time TVE programs. He does not have a seat in the Madrid Assembly; Mar Espinar takes care of that, but daily he moves content on social media to criticize Ayuso’s policies.
They want to leave Juan Lobato, the socialist candidate in 2023, in oblivion. “He wasn’t even the second force; Más Madrid surpassed him,” the minister’s inner circle often comments with disdain. There is a possibility that Lobato might embark on a quixotic adventure and run in primaries against López, in the style of Sánchez in 2017, who traveled across Spain in a diesel Peugeot 407. Lobato and his people have been relegated and are looking for spaces to get some oxygen. In any case, his adventure to regain party leadership in Madrid seems impossible without the support of Sánchez or the party apparatus. For López’s team, it’s not even a topic for discussion.
The Madrid socialists’ current endeavor is to portray Ayuso as the defender of the rich, of large fortunes. They will address the middle and working classes. “Shared prosperity, not exclusive,” they explain. There will be messages aimed at young people who do not have access to housing, without forgetting that there are more than a million Madrileños over 65 years old. They want to move between these two tensions. The migratory discourse will be one of openness and defense of the massive regularization decreed by the Government. There, Ayuso moves on swampy ground. She shows herself very much in favor of Latin immigration, but at the same time criticizes regularization, even though most of those who will benefit from this extraordinary measure will be Americans. The Supreme Court has admitted an appeal from her Government with which it wants to paralyze it.
They will by no means go hand in hand with Más Madrid, the party to the left of the socialists. They know that there are no options for the PSOE to win an absolute majority on its own, but that doesn’t mean they will mix their brand. In due course, it would be time to form a government between both parties or reach some kind of agreement. There’s a long way to go for that. López’s command is sure that the PP will not get a sufficient majority this time because they expect to gain votes, but also due to the rise of Vox. What happened in other autonomous communities could be replicated in Madrid. If that goes wrong, it would mean significant wear and tear for Ayuso. The president believes that her alliance with Ciudadanos, during her first legislature, was traumatic and prefers not to repeat it. The polls will tell.
The plan also involves reclaiming public services against the PP’s mixed management model. Socialists believe that citizens question Ayuso because of her partner’s relationship with Grupo Quirón, the main hospital group that manages hospitals in Madrid. Or that she may falter due to her housing policies, which they believe do not defend citizens with fewer resources. Sánchez’s Government has launched a housing plan to prevent official protected housing from ceasing to be so over time. In Healthcare, with a new law, they intend to limit private management in hospitals. Ayuso is convinced that these are measures against her and that they invade her competencies. The PSOE also emphasizes the issue of the penthouse where she lives with her partner, Alberto González Amador. That issue will not be buried so easily. The political dispute will rise even further in decibels, as Ayuso also constantly mentions Begoña Gómez, Sánchez’s wife, indicted for alleged corruption.
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The president has focused a good part of his criticism on Ayuso, whom he considers his archenemy. No cultural war better summarizes the clash between left and right. López now enters that equation, and he will not detach himself from Sánchez nor deny him three times. “Left-wing people like Sánchez. Continuous campaigns are another matter,” they assure. Impossible? “No, difficult, yes. But people can be mobilized in defense of their social interests,” they respond. They do not forget that Ángel Gabilondo, that politician-philosopher of a kind that no longer exists, defeated Ayuso in 2019, although he could not govern due to the right-wing coalition.
López and his team have been crunching numbers for over a year. Their thesis is that cities where PP voters predominate mobilize much more than the old PSOE strongholds, like the red belt. That doesn’t mean they will completely forget about these areas. They surgically want to run personalized campaigns in municipalities in the Henares Corridor or municipalities like Villalba, where they believe they can increase their votes.
There is also a tremendous gap in the young electorate. According to the CIS revealed earlier this year, Vox is the favorite party for first-time voters, ahead of the PSOE. López wants to reach that 20% who appear as undecided in the same survey. These are not Madrid data, but they serve as a guide. This is where TikTok campaigns come in, like those the president is now carrying out, recommending books or playing with his dogs, the latter with a double message that few miss.
This is the way, the socialists tell themselves. In any case, there’s a world ahead. In politics, that time span multiplies by ten. Who knows. Even more so if López is in charge, but behind him is Sánchez, a master of close combat. Objective: defeat Ayuso.
