Isabel Díaz Ayuso completed seven years at the head of the Community of Madrid on Friday at the peak of her political power. When she was sworn in as president on August 14, 2019, she needed the votes of Ciudadanos to push forward a coalition government that was already expected to be turbulent. Seven years later, she has absorbed the now-defunct orange party, reduced Vox – an indispensable partner in the 2021 elections – to irrelevance, and achieved an absolute majority in 2023 that allows her to govern without negotiating with anyone. The political phenomenon built around her figure seemed to have reached the status of an impregnable regime.
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Precisely for this reason, the way she faces this new term is significant. She has never had so much institutional power and yet has never faced a start of term with so many signs of wear. Not because her absolute majority is in danger nor because the PP has ceased to be hegemonic, but because of something more subtle and perhaps more important for her future: for the first time since she emerged on the national scene, Ayuso seems to encounter limits to a formula that until now had shown an extraordinary capacity for resilience.
The confrontation with Pedro Sánchez as the axis of her leadership
For years, Ayuso has made the confrontation with Pedro Sánchez the axis of her leadership. A permanent political battle that has served to project her as a national reference of the right and to shift the focus from the problems of her own administration. Nursing homes, commissions involving her brother, or controversies over her management were subsumed into a larger discussion about Sánchez’s policies, taxes, freedom, or the territorial model.
The formula worked because almost any controversy ended up becoming a plebiscite on Sánchez. It was not always necessary for the president to be right; it was enough that she seemed willing to say what others did not dare to say. That has been one of the keys to her success and to the so-called cultural battle: the discussion ceased to be about the consistency of a statement and became a demonstration of resistance against the left.
But something changed this summer. Ayuso no longer seems to have the same appeal. Neither in certain sectors of public opinion, nor in some media that have been favorable to her for years, nor, above all, in her own party.
First it was Mexico. An official trip that ended earlier than planned after Ayuso reported feeling fear and being left unprotected, in an episode that caused confusion even within the PP. Then came the fires, which forced her to respond for management that this time could not be attributed to Moncloa. And, above all, the penthouse appeared.
The Community bought a luxury property in Chamberí for more than six million euros. For what? The answer has changed: office, official residence, alternative while the Puerta del Sol headquarters is renovated. None have fully closed the question. At the same time, Ayuso’s partner put his two homes in the same neighborhood up for sale for 3.3 million euros. The PSOE is preparing a complaint to the Prosecutor’s Office against executives of Planifica Madrid, and Más Madrid demands explanations and hearings.
The absolute majority shields her in the Assembly, but not against questions from her party and the courts
But the problem is no longer just the penthouse. It is credibility. Each explanation opens a new question. And when explanations do not close questions, silence also begins to be a political response.
The opposition has found a crack, but the novelty lies elsewhere: in the PP. Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo has expressed doubts about the operation. Criticism has circulated in WhatsApp groups of popular deputies. And Ayuso’s team has had to ask Madrid PP officials to publicly defend the president. Critical voices have also appeared in conservative media. It is not a rupture. But it is a change of climate.
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In the Madrid PP they sum it up with an expression as graphic as it is revealing: “The Hunger Games, that’s where we are.”
The phrase says a lot about the internal moment. Because the tension does not only affect the president. When the pressure over the penthouse increased, much of the political responsibility fell on Miguel Ángel García Martín, vice president and minister of the Presidency. Among popular leaders there is a feeling that Ayuso and her team have left too exposed the person who was supposed to act as the president’s shield.
Ayuso’s response has been to return to her usual formula: Sánchez. In recent weeks she has fired on Twitter against Correos and postal voting, against the management of migrant minors, against the government president’s vacation in a “fortified palace,” or against the central government’s spending on the eclipse, when her own Cabinet’s spending was almost identical. She has also revived her fiscal flag: Madrid, she says, is the region that contributes the most and receives among the least.
But here appears a particularly uncomfortable paradox. Ayuso has made a banner of slimming down the structure, has boasted of low taxes, and has praised efficiency in management. Until the forest fires arrived, which revealed the difficulties in facing extraordinary expenses to the point of resorting to private donations and the sale of assets. Including the controversial penthouse recently purchased.
Ayuso has 70 deputies and does not need anyone. Her absolute majority guarantees her, barring surprises, the stability necessary to complete the legislature. What it does not guarantee is that she can keep intact the political phenomenon that has brought her this far. And much less protect her from the judicial calendar that her partner, Alberto González Amador, will face for the alleged tax fraud of about 350,000 euros and the alleged crime of corruption in business related to his business ties with Quirón.
She had never had so much power, but had never faced a start of term with signs of wear
Because the problem for Ayuso today is not losing Madrid. It is that, for the first time in seven years, the president who turned every limit into a new impulse may have found that some of the problems she faces no longer come from outside, but from her own management.
And that is the real unknown with which Ayuso will begin her eighth political term. Not whether she can continue governing Madrid, but whether she can continue growing as a national reference of the PP beyond Madrid.
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