In the apartment hotel where Isabel Díaz Ayuso has lived since March 16, when she tested positive for coronavirus, there is a piece of furniture in the middle of nowhere with a photo of her with Felipe VI. That allows the portrait to be seen in his interviews, along with the flags of Spain and Madrid. It is a staging of its power. Here is the president of the region that contributes the most to the national GDP. The PP leader with the most influence. And yet, to get to that position, and manage an unprecedented health crisis from controversy to controversy, Díaz Ayuso lives a succession of starfruits. Candidate by surprise, she is the first PP candidate to lose an election in Madrid since 1987, and forges an unprecedented pact to three that leads to the first coalition government in the history of the region (PP and Cs, in the minority and with support external Vox). Three circumstances that lead him to exercise power to attack.
– “I think the time has come for him to assume it, even if it hurts,” spat out the socialist Ángel Gabilondo, winner of the elections, the day she managed to become president.
– “The most traitorous character in Spanish politics speaks to me,” he launched at Íñigo Errejón, then spokesman for Más Madrid.
– “While I make agreements with banks, you burn ATMs, and for this reason I am going to continue working sitting at Puerta del Sol, and you are going to sit on the bench of the accused,” he released to Isabel Serra, leader de Podemos, prosecuted (and later convicted) for attacking the authority after an eviction.
– “God did not make me perfect, and that is why I am not from Vox,” he told Rocío Monasterio, despite the fact that the entire legislature depends on the decisions of the spokesperson for the far-right party.
Nothing is accidental. Díaz Ayuso (Madrid, 41 years old) is a journalist by training: he tried on Radio Marca (with football); also in Ireland (in the production of a musical program); and even in Ecuador. She is also an expert in political communication: she came to direct a course at the Rey Juan Carlos University, which Cristina Cifuentes was the big star. And his chief of staff is Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, former Secretary of State for Communication with José María Aznar: both controversial and criticized.
President of a minority government that has not been able to pass a single law, Díaz Ayuso’s team knows that what is seen and what is heard can exceed what is done. As one of his collaborators said: “Let’s make a mess!”
The phrase, spoken in the late summer of 2019, framed the president’s first institutional trip. Destination, Barcelona. Date: a few days before the Diada. Reason: charge against the independentistas and propose a business platform for the two regions to compete in large markets.
That day of September 2019 begins the transformation of a policy unknown to the general public into one that aspires to transcend the borders of its region to weigh on major national issues. The basis on which he undertakes this change, underpinned by his clashes with the central government, is a curriculum that leaves its mark.
She joined the PP in 2005. In 2006 she was already collecting a public salary as an advisor to a government department of Esperanza Aguirre. Between August 2007 and March 2008, she joined the direct team of the President. Between 2008 and 2011, he received a juicy payroll from Madrid Network, a public-private entity. Deputy since 2011. Vice-minister between 2017 and 2018 and vice-secretary of training in Madrid since then.
Díaz Ayuso is pure PP essence. But not from any PP. His DNA is the same as that of Pablo Casado and Aguirre, whom he remembers so much, according to his political rivals. The hardest: just as it encourages the Community to persist as a popular action in cases of terrorism, exaltation and humiliation of the victims, it ensures that it defends an alternative feminism and fills its speeches with alleged problems of citizen security, such as occupation.
“(His management has been) excellent,” says Aguirre through a phone message. “She has known how to be where the people of Madrid wanted to see her. When she was sick and in quarantine, she knew how to communicate in the media, and the success of the Ifema hospital has already given her 41% in the surveys, ”she continues. And he believes: “That the extreme left that carries the singing voice in the Government attacks it is the demonstration that it is on the right track.”
“The way the president works reminds me of that phrase attributed to Thomas Edison:‘ when you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this: you have not done it, “says Alfonso Serrano, the PP spokesman. “It perfectly defines their ability to work and their nonconformity.”
“The media will be very surprised when it jumps into the national sphere and turns out to be a normal policy,” says political scientist Roger Senserrich. “They tend to systematically overvalue the presidents of the Community.”
How has the president reacted to a pandemic linked to the death of more than 15,000 people in the region? And the embarrassment that has led the central government to reject Madrid’s request to go to phase 1 of the confinement de-escalation? Or the resignation of its general director of public health for refusing to request it?
“He has become more temperamental,” say Cs, his government partner.
“It is painful that only the Ifema field hospital boasts public hospitals that have tripled ICU beds invading operating rooms and gyms,” regrets Pablo Gómez Perpinyà, from Más Madrid. “No one has gone to take pictures there.”
Again, the importance of photos. Díaz Ayuso has starred in all kinds during the pandemic, and not always of their own free will. It breaks down in tears during a mass tribute to the deceased in the Cathedral of La Almudena. Delivering squid sandwiches at the closing party of the Ifema hospital, which has led to an investigation by the government delegation, before the crowds. Or alone on the balcony of his office at the Royal Post Office, applauding the toilets.
After the noise of the flashes, the legislative balance: no law passed in nine months, budgets carried over, and a partner, Cs, increasingly distanced by his decisions in the thankless and difficult management of the coronavirus crisis.
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