On Tuesday, a phrase is resurrected in the cemetery of the political dead to haunt its addressee. “The question is whether it is understandable that on April 1, when 700 people died in Spain, you can contract with your brother and receive 286,000 euros of profit for selling masks.” These are the words of Pablo Casado. The former leader of the PP spoke on February 18, 2022 regarding the commission charged by the brother of the president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, for helping a company obtain the masks committed to the administration chaired by her sister. The person who revives this accusation, through a tweet, is the Minister of Health, Mónica García, who thus tries to connect the Tomás Díaz Ayuso case with the complaint for alleged tax fraud once morest Alberto González Amador, a political partner, who also achieved huge benefits in the pandemic. It doesn’t matter that on this occasion there is no contract with the Community, nor money from the regional Administration involved. While the PP leadership unequivocally supports the baroness, from Alberto Núñez Feijóo on down, something is stirring in a sector of the party that seems in danger of extinction.
“There is a lot of Casadism left and the truth is that everything we are reading is quite disgusting,” says a PP observer who knows the insides of the party. “It is assumed that Feijóo is not doing anything to avoid repeating mistakes,” he says in memory of the crisis carried out by Casado and Ayuso, which opened the channel for the conservative party, ended with the national leader outside the party, and precisely served as a springboard to the current president. And he concludes: “In the national leadership they are doing the same strategy as Rajoy with Cifuentes [que acabó por dimitir en 2018 por el caso máster]. We support you and see what happens.”
With the national leadership wanting to focus on the demanding cycle of the Basque (April), Catalan (May) and European (June) elections, and on the denunciation of the amnesty law as the cornerstone of its opposition work, this support for Ayuso is, for now, convinced. “Total,” describes a second source who steps into the offices of the main floor of the party headquarters on Génova Street, because, he believes, “this is a hunt and smokescreen to attack Ayuso and not talk regarding the Koldo case”.
A third interlocutor even predicts that the regional president will end up strengthened by the crisis, and that is why it does not even make a dent that it was known that her partner had admitted to two tax crimes just a few hours following Díaz Ayuso denied them in a press conference. , putting his credibility as a public official at stake.
“The Moncloa is making Isabel stronger and stronger, they don’t realize that they are turning her into a giant and consolidating her on her plot, because they are strengthening her fan club,” warns this source following hearing how the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, demanded the resignation of the regional leader. “The boyfriend may be a scoundrel, but what is her fault? Is it fair that you have to pay for your partner’s mistakes? ”She asks herself. “If they have not bought the house together, nor the car, there is no shared profit,” he says regarding the 183 square meter apartment in which the couple lives and the businessman’s high-end car. And he warns: “They are hurting him personally. He is still an anonymous citizen. And that is a mistake from the point of view of La Moncloa, because in the history of Spain, the martyr is the most supported and most loved figure, and they are going to turn him into that.”
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Díaz Ayuso’s advisors share that analysis. For this reason, the regional president has opted for a strategy aimed at converting the case of the alleged tax fraud of 350,951 euros by her partner into a conspiracy by the powers of the State once morest her and her commission agent.
“This is what I have been putting up with for five years,” he said on Tuesday, when the controversy broke out. “First it was my late father, who might not defend himself once morest accusations by a company that went bankrupt [la compañía recibió un aval de un ente semipúblico que nunca devolvió al completo]; later it was my brother [por el caso de las mascarillas], then it was my mother, my cousin (…)”, he continued. A day later, he added: “He is an individual who is being besieged by all the power of a State because he is my partner. Would we talk regarding all this if he weren’t my partner?
A day later, Wednesday, when it was learned that González Amador and Díaz Ayuso enjoy a downtown apartment, or that they can drive a Maserati, politics maneuvered to maintain the story that they live a life without luxuries: “I own a Golf Second-hand 2008 GTI and bare homeownership [de la que ha cedido su uso]this is how I have lived my entire life, and now I have committed the sin of living with a person who is doing better economically than me.”
Finally, the PP mobilized all its speakers in defense of the leader. “It is time to publicly support President Ayuso in the face of the infamous campaign of personal destruction that the Sánchez Government is orchestrating, you are already doing much of it,” reads a message sent to volunteers, members and party officials. “We are going to try to make #YoConAyuso trending topic“, continues the text, which asked to make support for the president one of the main topics of the social network X (formerly Twitter). “(…) We are going to show that although they have and use institutions as political weapons, we have the support of the street.”
Behind part of this communication strategy is Díaz Ayuso’s powerful chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez. The former Secretary of State met with González Amador to learn all the details of the case that affects him, and then outline Ayuso’s strategy together with the president herself and her closest team of collaborators.
In four years, Díaz Ayuso has faced the Avalmadrid casehe Tomás Díaz Ayuso case, and the controversial management of the pandemic, with 7,291 elderly people dying in nursing homes while triage protocols made their access to hospitals difficult. Those close to him refer to the evolution of his electoral results to predict what the effect of this new controversy will be: from the 2019 defeat, the first for the PP in a regional election in Madrid since 1987, to the absolute majority in 2023. One more example of who apply the maxim that the best defense is a good attack, always moving forward without looking back, going on and on to outrun the fire.
“How will this end?” asks a collaborator of the president before launching his bet: “Well, since there is nothing that affects her as president, it will end in nothing.” [para ella]”.
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