Isabel Díaz Ayuso has moved to Puerta de Hierro. The information, reported by El País, has not been explicitly confirmed by the Madrid president, but it has been indirectly confirmed by her chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, who reacted on X to question the publication of where she lives. “What interest is there in publishing where the president lives?” MAR asked. With his protest, Ayuso’s circle ended up accepting a move that takes place at a particularly delicate moment for the real estate policy of the Community of Madrid.
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The president has left the apartment in Chamberí that she shared with her partner, Alberto González Amador, and has settled in a residential area of Puerta de Hierro, one of the most affluent areas of Madrid. Her new home is between 130 and 150 square meters, with a pool and garage, and the rent for a property of these characteristics ranges between 2,500 and 3,000 euros per month.
The move comes just days after the Madrid government put up for sale the other major property that has marked Ayuso’s summer. The 485-square-meter penthouse in Chamberí that the Community bought for 6.3 million euros. And it is precisely the coincidence between both operations that raises again a question that the regional government has not fully answered: if the penthouse was not intended to be the president’s residence, why was it purchased?
The sequence of the operation also does not help to clear up doubts. The Community of Madrid acquired the property through the public company Planifica Madrid and initially justified the purchase by the need to have a temporary workspace during the renovations of the Puerta del Sol headquarters. Later, it denied that the penthouse would have a residential use. And finally, just a few months after acquiring it, it decided to put it up for sale for 6.7 million euros. The operation has also ended up in the courts, with complaints questioning various aspects of the purchase.
Ayuso’s new house alone does not demonstrate what the purpose of the penthouse was, but it does add an element to an operation that already had uncertainties. The president has not settled in the property bought by the Community, but in another apartment, this time rented. If it was never planned for the penthouse to be her residence, it remains to be explained what public need justified paying 6.3 million for a 485-square-meter home. And if the purchase had any relation to Ayuso’s residential needs, as the opposition has claimed, her move to Puerta de Hierro makes it even harder to support that hypothesis.
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It is at this point that Miguel Ángel Rodríguez’s tweet gains relevance. Ayuso’s chief of staff has confirmed the move by questioning the journalistic interest in reporting where the president lives: “What interest is there in publishing where the president lives?” The question shifts the focus to Ayuso’s privacy but leaves intact the issue affecting public management: what interest justified the Community allocating 6.3 million euros to buy a property that it now wants to sell.
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Because the problem is not where the regional president lives. Not even how much she pays for her new rent. The problem is what led the Madrid Administration to buy a luxury penthouse of 485 square meters, what use it intended to give it, and why it has decided to get rid of it so soon afterwards.
The operation, far from closing with the sale, thus accumulates a new unknown. Ayuso already has a new home. The Community, however, still has to explain why it bought the previous one.
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