Double or nothing for Ayuso in Madrid

Sánchez, Bildu and Vox.

Oliver Thansan
Oliver Thansan
25 May 2023 Thursday 22:24
23 Reads
Double or nothing for Ayuso in Madrid

Sánchez, Bildu and Vox. The strength of Isabel Díaz Ayuso who coincides in collecting each and every one of the polls has allowed the PP candidate for the Community of Madrid to shoot at will in an electoral campaign in which she only fights against herself.

In this quest to broaden his electorate, he has not hesitated to lead the cultural battle against the central government, cornering the Basque independence formation as a reincarnation of the ETA defeated in 2011, and disdaining Santiago Abascal's party as a useless vote due to its legislative incompetence and changeable verb.

All this, putting the three actors within the same "popular front" that, according to the complaint, tries to curtail the "freedom" that she promises to export to all of Spain from Puerta del Sol. The command bridge from which an administration with some superliberal postulates that boasts of not invading the citizen neither with taxes nor with bureaucratic regulations that set the limits to be met.

The victory of the PP candidate for re-election is taken for granted against the three lefts – Más Madrid, PSOE and Unidas Podemos – whose sum is not enough to block the future investiture of the popular leader. But it is not enough to win. Even if it's loose. Because Ayuso has gambled everything on a single card. Anything that is not an absolute majority will be a setback in the meteoric career of someone who, barely four years ago, was a complete unknown object of ridicule for, among other occurrences, longing for early-morning traffic jams as a "sign of identity of the capital". .

Unlike in 2021, when its electoral advance placed the Madrid elections in the center of the Spanish table, this Sunday there will be ballot boxes in 11 other communities where the respective PP candidates have also appealed, to a greater or lesser extent, to a confrontation of models against that of Pedro Sánchez at the head of the central government. And not standing out above other party mates with chances of victory, as can be the case of Carlos Mazón in the Valencian Community, will weigh down his undisguised desire to mark the step to the national leadership of his party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo.

Something that has become clear again this week with the boldness with which the president's team has published an article in the British newspaper The Times under the title Ayuso is ready for the fight with Sánchez.

Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, meanwhile, will continue the recount comfortably installed in the absolute majority that he garnered in Andalusia less than a year ago.

The importance of the absolute majority is also key for the PP at the regional level. Going from having to agree on everything with his right-wing partners –as happened in 2019 when Ángel Gabilondo's PSOE was the most voted– to doing it alone starting Monday would be a relief for a Popular Party that has been extremely uncomfortable when they have had to share out power and competencies.

The coalition Executive with Citizens blew up in the middle of the legislature with an express advance of the elections executed to get rid of, as it did, his uncomfortable partner in the Governing Council.

But the alliance signed immediately with Vox was no less traumatic. The lack of harmony between Ayuso and the ultranationalist spokesperson, Rocío Monasterio, goes beyond the political and has resulted in a limited legislative baggage.

Up to four economic and urban initiatives of the PP sleep the dream of the just in a drawer of the Assembly. Not to mention the regional budgets that have been extended three times in four years. Including those of this 2023, which had an increase of 2,705 million euros that the regional Executive has been unable to execute.

Worse are the letters of the PP in the capital. Despite forming a solid electoral ticket, the demoscopic studies of José Luis Martínez-Almeida do not fuel at the same speed as those of Ayuso.

The mayor shone during the first half of the legislature with a pandemic management that raised him to stratospheric levels of acceptance. But the use of municipal springs to orchestrate the espionage of the regional president that led to the traumatic internal war of the PP, and the subsequent blow of the masks for which two commission agents pocketed 7 million euros after selling sanitary material at the price of gold Defective to the City Council of the capital, they have weighed down an Almeida with whom Ayuso has turned at this end of the campaign to prevent the PP from losing the country's main City Hall again.

Attentive to all this is Rita Maestre (Más Madrid). Whoever was the municipal spokesperson for Manuela Carmena in the previous legislature continues to grow in the polls. And if Unidas Podemos manages to be the last force with representation in the plenary session of Cibeles at the expense of Ciudadanos, the sum of the left – Más Madrid, PSOE and Unidas Podemos – could surpass that of PP and Vox.

The slightest possibility that the accounts will not come out forces Ayuso to step on the accelerator until the last minute to try to square the circle. That is, steal votes on the left with promises of tax cuts that can seduce the pockets of middle income. Concentrate the vote of the center as a brake on the concessions of the Government to the nationalists. And fish in its old fishing ground more tilted to the right as a guarantee of solvency in the face of Vox's inexperience. The PP of Madrid is not worth a victory by the minimum.