The Government of the Community of Madrid, chaired by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, sent a letter to the central executive on Monday, through its advisor to the Presidency, Miguel Ángel García Martín, in which it proposed discussing four issues at the next Conference of Presidents, initially scheduled for December in Cantabria: regional financing, the arrival of migrants, the problem of access to housing and the lack of toilets. That same day, the conservative baroness refused to meet with the President of the GovernmentPedro Sánchez, this Friday at La Moncloa, thus renouncing to discuss these issues and any other specific to Madrid. The leader of the PP had previously demanded that her conservative counterparts not discuss with the president of the government the issues that she wants to discuss in the Conference of Presidents, judging that they are national in nature and, therefore, should not be debated in an appointment. bilateral.
However, no conservative spokesperson has revealed what agenda the Madrid PP would have considered appropriate for the meeting with the President of the Government.
“As for the topics to be included (we have asked for) the regional financing system,” said this Wednesday the government spokesperson, García Martín, who next Monday will represent Madrid in the preparatory committee for the conference. “Secondly, we ask that the control of illegal immigration be addressed, and that the immigration chaos that is being experienced in our country be stopped,” he continued. “We also want access to housing and legal security to be incorporated into the Conference, we would like the housing law to be repealed and a law against squatting to be developed,” he added. “And finally, there would be a fourth issue related to the deficit of health personnel in the national health system.”
Ayuso already complained to the PP barons in September that all these issues were not discussed in their bilateral meetings in La Moncloa with Sánchezbut in the multilateral forum of the Conference of Presidents. This conclave has also been a cause of confrontation between the two leaders.
First, because Ayuso announced in 2021 that she would not attend the call any more times if it was not held with sufficient notice: the regulations establish that the agenda must be known 20 days before the appointment. And second, because this summer he took Sánchez to the Supreme Court to force the meeting to take place, as the rest of the PP’s autonomous governments did, in an action coordinated by the national leadership of Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
He regulation that regulates the conferences of presidents says the following in its article five. First: “The agenda of the Conference of Presidents will be set by the Preparatory Committee with the agreement of its President and ten autonomous communities or cities with Statute of Autonomy.” And then: “The acceptance of the inclusion of the new issues on the agenda will require the affirmative vote of the President of the Government and ten autonomous communities or cities with Statute of Autonomy.”
However, the key to the clash between PP and PSOE continues to be regional financing, in two aspects. On the one hand, the project to recognize the uniqueness of Catalonia, as the socialists agreed with ERC to obtain the investiture of Salvador Illa as president of the Catalan Generalitat. And on the other hand, it removes the debt that the executive has proposed for that region and the rest.
The Ayuso Government wants the Conference of Presidents to lay the foundations to discuss the details of the new system in the fiscal and financial policy council, and will defend the maintenance of the autonomy of each region to continue deciding their policies, with the objective, ha his spokesperson recalled this Wednesday, to continue making tax cuts.
