From “I like fruit” to “corrupt and violent”: the cataract of disqualifications of Ayuso amid Sánchez’s accusations | Madrid News

November 2023. Pedro Sánchez stars in the debate for his investiture as president in Congress. The president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, listens to him from the guest gallery. The long months of confrontations that separate the two since the arrival of the Baroness to power, in August 2019, are about to explode as a result of the controversy that surrounded Tomás Díaz Ayuso, brother of the Madrid president, when it became known that received a commission from a company which in turn had signed a contract with Madrid to bring masks from China during the worst of the pandemic. “A possible case of corruption related to the president of the Community of Madrid,” says the president of the government about a matter dismissed without accusations in the judicial field. “Son of a bitch,” Ayuso reacts, as confirmed by her team after initially stating that she had said “I like fruit.” Almost a year later, the disagreement between the two leaders reaches its climax this Monday: The Baroness refuses to go to La Moncloa this Friday to meet with Sánchez within the president’s round of bilateral meetings with regional leaders, considering that he has defamed her.

Díaz Ayuso refers to two interventions by Sánchez. The first was last Wednesday, when the head of the executive included her in the PP’s alphabet of corruption, despite never having been charged or convicted: “Cover yourselves a little, because from the A of Ayuso to the Z of Zaplana they have a case of corruption for each letter of the alphabet,” he said in Congress. And the second was on Thursday, when Sánchez asked for his resignation due to the case that affects his partner, Alberto González Amador, investigated for the alleged commission of two crimes of tax fraud, arguing that “presumably” Ayuso would have “indirectly benefited” from the enrichment of the entrepreneur. However, so far in the national legislature, and starting with that “I like fruit” in November, the president of Madrid, who says she is the victim of “an unacceptable campaign” of defamation, has dedicated a profuse cascade of disqualifications. to the president of Spain.

“Son of a bitch”, “the most corrupt and violent ruler in Europe”, aspiring “ultra-left tyrant”, “meme of a president of a banana republic”, “authoritarian”, “violent“…, for a start. To continue, Ayuso has accused Sánchez of being responsible for the “normalization of crime in Spain”, as he said during a trip to Chile in reference to the PSOE agreements with Bildu and the pardons for Catalan independentists. She has also boasted of not being a “crybaby, like Sánchez does”, in an interview with OkDiariowhere he stated that the leader of the socialists was a partner of the terrorist group ETA: “They are all the same project.” In June, the regional president called the national president “a ruler seduced by the policies of a Bolivarian leader,” in addition to being the one who embodies “the most authoritarian and corrupt project.” That month he also said that “Sanchismo is Chavismo” and “everything they do is violent”, disqualifying the president as a “swindler” who should leave La Moncloa and accusing him of exercising “democratic thuggery” in the context of the negotiations to renew the General Council of the Judiciary.

Before the summer holidays, a critical moment came: Díaz Ayuso gave institutional coverage to a trip to Madrid by the president of Argentina, Javier Mileia foreign leader who, among other things, had called Sánchez a “totalitarian,” had branded “corrupt” to his wife, and that he had also accused the Spanish Government of “put the safety of Spanish women at risk” by “allowing illegal immigration.”

The passing of summer, with its corresponding pause in the partisan struggle, did not make the storm of the clash abate. Quite the opposite. On the same September 4, after Sánchez announced the round of meetings with regional presidents in which Ayuso has now decided not to participate, the conservative leader accused him of wanting to “justify the theft he plans for Madrid and the rupture of the custom-made territorial model.” of their secessionist partners.” His statement, launched on the social network taxes sponsored by the Madrid Executive.

Just one day later, Ayuso encouraged the PP barons not to attend the bilateral meetings called by Sánchez to discuss regional financing. “This Government is going to try to bribe us one by one in La Moncloa,” he predicted.

The Madrid baroness’s proposal shook the PP internally, where her counterparts were willing to attend the meeting, as they later demonstrated by doing so. The waters did not return to normal even when the conservatives adopted the common position of not debating with the president on regional financing except in a joint conclave, such as the conference of presidents.

Thus, during the debate on the state of the region, Díaz Ayuso intoned his most regionalist speech to confront the Government of Spain. “A dictatorship is being built before our eyes“, he said on September 12 and in reference to Sánchez, whom he accused of launching “lies” against “the most important region in Spain.”

Just four days later, on September 16, the president of Madrid insisted on that thesis by disgracing Sánchez for the supposed design of a “ad hoc system to harm Madrid with the bear hug”.

And at the end of that month, on the 30th, at the meeting of the executive committee of the PP in Madrid, Ayuso accused the PSOE of having created “a machinery to buy wills, elections and seats” with public money. He did not provide evidence or explanations. But he insisted on the idea, like other spokespersons for his Executive, in order to attack the PSOE pacts with Junts and ERC in the Congress and Parliament of Catalonia.

That intervention, like the others, was the fruit of a coordinated plan that experienced a slow in crescendo in the criticism of Sánchez, culminating, for now, in the refusal to meet with him in La Moncloa. Thus, in recent weeks the entire Madrid government has attacked Sánchez’s policies; The party has organized an investigative commission in the Assembly focused on the alleged “favorable treatment” received by his wife, Begoña Gómez, at the Complutense University; He has conveyed that he does not rule out summoning the president to that body; and the leader’s powerful chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, has assumed a leading role in the attrition strategy.

At the end of the day on October 7, the former Secretary of State in the government of José María Aznar stated that the next day, Tuesday, the State Attorney General, Álvaro García Ortiz, would be charged with alleged revelation of secrets by promoting the denial. of a hoax about Ayuso’s partner spread precisely by the Madrid Executive. “The State Attorney General is going ahead,” he wrote on the social network or the former minister José Luis Ábalos.

In parallel, Ayuso has used the fall to ensure that “ETA is stronger than ever and is achieving its goals,” in reference to the legal reform (supported “by mistake” by the PP and Vox) that will benefit ETA prisoners. He has also justified the investigation of Gómez in the Assembly: “What cannot become in the end (the Complutense) is a lobby which is born at the table of the President of the Government and ends up becoming a center of logrolling between companies, because we are going to colonize everything.” He has even accused the PSOE of being “Stalinist” for en masse defending Sánchez’s wife.

This is how it ended until October 11. That day, Ayuso demanded that Sánchez resign “immediately,” after learning of the Civil Guard report that leaves former minister Ábalos on the brink of indictment. “Let citizens say at the polls if they want to cover up corruption or want a country that recovers normality,” he added, demanding early elections. “No commitment to regeneration, as he says, nor transparency: the president is trying to cover up a huge mountain of corruption that will lead to his resignation,” stated Díaz Ayuso.

“Only one letter of the alphabet is needed to point out the true corruption that surrounds Sánchez: the B for Begoña,” he launched on October 16 to respond to Sánchez including him in the alphabet of the PP’s alleged corruption cases.

Ayuso’s complaints

The next day, Díaz Ayuso spoke in the Assembly about the Supreme Court investigation that affects the attorney general. “The citizen is defenseless against a Government that uses mafia practices“, he said, before Sánchez asked for his resignation due to the case that affects his partner.

This Monday, Ayuso has maintained that Sánchez defamed her with that intervention and the one the previous day in Congress, and has thus justified her refusal to go to La Moncloa.

“Today it has been ten years since my father died, I have been defending his name for five years, enduring all kinds of insidiousness, slander,” he said in reference to the Avalmadrid case. “They did it to try to destroy me emotionally,” he continued. “They have to go personal, because they can’t at the polls, and because I have nothing,” he added. “They have called me a murderer, a genocidal, a crazy person, a corrupt person… and not just anyone does it, the president of the government, 22 ministers and all the socialist officials do it, it doesn’t matter which corner of Spain they are in.” ”, he closed in reference to the criticism he receives from ministers such as Óscar Puente, Pilar Alegría and Óscar López, who this Monday, as a result of his refusal to go to La Moncloa, said that “(Ayuso) has converted the Community of “Madrid is the epicenter of mud and corruption and always doubles the bet.”