"At this point, the need for vacations begins to have a decisive weight in shaping the president's agenda."
It is Tuesday, July 25. Barely 36 hours have elapsed since a general election that, after the expectations of an absolute majority generated from the national leadership itself, represent a serious setback for the aspirations of the Popular Party that was already seen in Moncloa.
The press that follows the activity of Isabel Díaz Ayuso insistently demands that the president of the Community of Madrid assess the electoral results since the act in which she is going to sponsor a plane from the SwiftAir company at the Barajas airport is the only one scheduled for that day. But there is no way. The approach to any of the directors present is not prosperous either.
What happened is surprising given the facilities that, on a regular basis, are offered by both the president and her communication team. But it is due to the decision to take a step back that has meant that, except for a single subsequent press conference, Ayuso has emptied his schedule during these two weeks to go to the background where he is not used to being.
“The 23-J elections were national. This is not the time for Ayuso ”, argue sources from the PP in Madrid, ignoring that the role of scourge of Pedro Sánchez that the woman from Madrid has assumed throughout his term has transcended on many occasions the regional sphere that they now wield. And this is also understood by the dozens of people who chanted his name at the foot of the Genoa balcony, interrupting, on several occasions, even the speech of the national leader of the popular, Alberto Núñez Feijóo.
“It was not comfortable for anyone. But even less for the president, no matter how much some want to sell it, ”says a source from her environment. Several of those present in Genoa on election night acknowledge that the "tension" that was experienced inside the national headquarters worsened when they went out onto the balcony when the supporters, present there, did not understand what had happened when the polls on the days Previous statements, together with the declarations of the occasional national leader, had led them to believe that an absolute majority was almost guaranteed.
Despite the fact that Ayuso tried to close ranks in the national board of directors held the following day –first by refusing to compare the regional results with the national ones to also highlight the fact that, thanks to Feijóo, the PP had won a general election again just one year after the great crisis experienced by the popular – the gazes of several of those present repeatedly rested on the president of Madrid.
And they were joined by Esperanza Aguirre. The former Madrid regional president did not bite her tongue and, in a colloquium organized by The Objective, publicly pointed out that the future of the PP must go through Ayuso and harshly criticized the mistakes made by the former president of the Xunta by stating that "he preferred the PSOE before Vox. It is very difficult to sell that to the PP electorate, which is largely the same as Vox ”, she pointed out.
From there, Ayuso's mobile phone began to smoke. "Some message arrives," he acknowledged on the 26th, "but I'm not even opening them," he hastened to qualify to avoid any uncomfortable reading. His eagerness to end the debate led him to lecture Aguirre in public, although his arguments – "It can't be that on Thursday we were giving him our support and applauding him (at a rally) and now throwing him off a bridge" – served the opposite. when remembering what happened in 2022 with the tumultuous replacement of Pablo Casado at the head of the PP.
Since then nothing has been heard from Ayuso. The plan, except for very few acts for the patron saint festivities of Madrid on August 14, is to remain on the sidelines until Alberto Núñez Feijóo confirms if he leads, or declines, the King's command to try to form a government. Without anyone who can point to her as the instigator of a second tumultuous replacement at the head of the party.
“Leading the Popular Party goes far beyond doing it in Madrid. A lot of regional support is needed to win a hypothetical national congress. And the wounds after Casado have not yet fully closed. Opening another fight now would be suicide both for her, no matter how much the previous one was justified by the attacks on Ayuso's neatness after questioning his exemplary nature with the mask contract provided by his brother, and for the PP in general ”, argue middle managers in Madrid.
Hence the disciplined silence that Ayuso is maintaining, no matter how hard it has been for him to bite his tongue so as not to criticize, as other barons have done, the proposal slipped by the PSOE to ERC and Junts for the reform of regional financing, including a hypothetical removes the debt of Catalonia.
Despite the fact that at Puerta del Sol they consider it unfeasible for Feijóo to add the necessary pacts to reach the Presidency of the Government, they are inclined to wait without precipitating events. "Without generating any confrontation either between regional presidents or with the party leadership itself." Knowing that the Community of Madrid is, today, the best trench from which to continue wearing down Pedro Sánchez for whatever may happen. But never in the short term.
