The President of the Madrid Community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, intervened on March 26th in an act of the PP in Valencia. Ana Escobar (EFE)
The President of the PP in Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is drafting an electoral list full of changes for the May 28 elections, which has shown the nerves of the group of parliamentarians who ended the legislature in the regional assembly. Having attained leadership of the autonomous organization in May 2022, the President, also autonomous, with all the power in her hands and without interference from Alberto Núñez Feijóo’s national leadership, is preparing for her next team of deputies. This has put remaining MPs in parliament close to former national leader Pablo Casado on alert, who fear for his future after seeing they failed to repeat mayoral candidates linked to the ousted leader. The same is happening with the city councillors, who did not support Díaz Ayuso in his war with the former president of the PP.
As a source of highest trust, the regional leader said: “We are committed to renewal. Mayoral candidates will not repeat themselves.”
If this guideline is followed to the letter, it would mean that in 2023 a dozen prominent names from the 2021 list who eventually became MPs would not be repeated in the now-concluding legislature. However, caution prevails in the PP, because what applies today can change tomorrow, as emphasized by an interlocutor who, with Díaz Ayuso, sends daily messages to the mayors with Díaz Ayuso regarding the continuity in the assembly of those potentially affected by the decision to exclude: Almudena Negro ( candidate for mayor of Torrelodones); Pigeon Tejero (Pozuelo); Noelia Nunez (Fuenlabrada); Alberto Escribano (Arganda del Rey); Manuel Bautista (Mostoles); Alejandra Serrano (San Fernando de Henares); Judit Piquet (Alcala de Henares); Janette Novo (Rivas Vaciamadrid); Lucía Fernández (San Sebastián de los Reyes) or Carla Greciano (Galapagar).
In addition, the continuity of a story by the Conservative Party, former Speaker of Parliament Paloma Adrados, who is also a Senator by regional designation and has just recovered from a stroke, is on the air. The decision will depend on her, who, according to a popular source, is fundamentally prone to not going ahead.
Manuel Bautista, Popular Party candidate for Mayor of Móstoles, and Health Minister Enrique Ruiz Escudero PP MÓSTOLES (PP MÓSTOLES)
The PP is certain that there will also be a renewal of the five Madrid Conservative regional representatives in the Senate, as Enrique Ruiz Escudero will have to make way as a Senator (he will no longer be Minister of Health), and he is it is foreseeable that he will lose this appetizing seat to Ana Camin, former general secretary of the PP of Madrid, with Casado, whose chief of staff Diego Sanjuanbenito also enrolled in the assembly during the last legislature.
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For the same reason, his closeness to the former President, the future of three councilors who were on the 2021 electoral list and who did not openly position themselves for Díaz Ayuso in the PP civil war is in the stars: Enrique López (Presidency , Justice and Home Affairs) , Carlos Izquierdo (local administration and digitization) and David Pérez (transport and infrastructure).
This is how the PP deputies live in the assembly at the moment. “The truth is that there are a lot of nervous people,” admits one Conservative representative. “There’s dead silence on the subject,” a photo of the secrecy with which the Ayuso team has been handling the situation, trying to keep the entire faction at peak performance until the last day of the legislature. “The national leadership asks if anything is known about the Escabechina.”
And this is how a source close to the creation of the PP lists in Madrid describes the situation: “The assembly is being cleaned up properly.”
Tension is also reaching government, where current councilors know that being listed does not mean repeating government office and that renewed executive responsibility would mean relinquishing their seat in the assembly. That’s what Ayuso wants, who shapes the Madrid PP in his own image. In the event that he retains power and advocates the appointment of deputies as advisers, the list will be executed and applicants who did not receive it in the first instance will be granted access to the seat.
“To be in government, the majority [de consejeros] You must leave the record,” the regional president said in March this year. “I would like the directors not to be deputies in most cases.”
Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Toni Cantó in 2021.Samuel Sánchez
The last time Ayuso was confronted with the preparation of his electoral lists, a great storm broke out in the PP. Tradition dictates that the team going to the meeting is determined equally between the national leadership, regional government and regional government (which has been Conservative-held without interruption since 1995). But Díaz Ayuso noted that Casado forced him to recruit Toni Cantó, a politician who came from UPyD and Cs, and Agustín Conde, former foreign minister linked to María Dolores de Cospedal. Without contradicting the substance of the matter, the President’s team did not like the forms and that they were publicly broadcast as Genoa commitments. Tension ran throughout the PP, as a prelude to the civil war that would begin months later and end Casado’s leadership.
“I have a duty to reform my house, to make room for new generations, to renew the organization,” the regional president now warns.
What the PP still does not clarify is whether it will repeat the two MPs who left Ciudadanos in 2021 to support Díaz Ayuso after he broke the coalition government he formed with Ignacio Aguado’s party : Sergio Brabezo and Marta Marban. Nor what will happen to the electoral list of the capital, where the candidate José Luis Martínez-Almeida, weakened after the departure of Casado, has only one thing for sure: he will have to do what Díaz Ayuso orders, which foreseeably dilutes a part becomes the City Council’s team trustee to place like-minded politicians on the City Council.
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