From Seville
from one side, the national president of the Popular Party (PP), Pablo Casadoleader of the opposition, who dreams of removing Pedro Sánchez from the Palacio de La Moncloa; on the other, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the policy with the most popular support from the Spanish right. One of the two will have to leave.
The latent internal war that has been waged for months by the two main representatives of the new generation of leaders who inherited the party of José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy broke out publicly this Thursday with an unprecedented virulence that makes any possibility of reconciliation impossible. It is the biggest internal crisis of a party that remembers the recent history of Spanish democracy.
PP scandals
The PP is not a party that can be considered oblivious to scandals. Its former president, Mariano Rajoy, he had to leave the Moncloa palace in 2018. On that occasion, the entire opposition joined in a motion of censure after a ruling by the National Court that considered that the party had provided itself with an illegal financing structure by charging of commissions for the adjudication of public works. In that procedure, known as ‘Gürtel case’ it became known that the leadership of the Ministry of the Interior had organized an espionage network against the ex-treasurer of the party, Luis Bárcenasthe main defendant who, when abandoned, became an inexhaustible source of information for the investigators.
After the catharsis that followed the loss of power, the new generation that assumed the leadership of the party, headed by Pablo Casado, made purpose of amendment. There was even talk of moving headquarters and abandoning a building that had been renovated with black money. But a new scandal that combines the same elements of the previous one -espionage and collection of commissions- broke out again this Thursday with a big difference in relation to the previous one: this time it has been in full view of the whole world, broadcast live by all the televisions and with mutual accusations so risque that they make any reconciliation scenario impossible. The internal closing of rows of the previous cases turned this time into the opposite: an open confrontation that has split the main opposition party in two and the one with the largest number of affiliates in all of Spain. The mutual accusations of treason, corruption and internal dirty war were made in press conferences broadcast during prime time. An unprecedented scenario in a country in which parties of all stripes tend to maintain internal discipline to the limit.
Diaz Ayuso’s brother
The origin of the conflict seems to be in the alleged collection of commissions by Tomás Díaz Ayuso, brother of the president of the Community of Madridin an operation of purchase of chinstraps during the initial stage of the pandemic for an amount of one and a half million euros. The president’s brother would have taken 280,000 euros.
This operation, apparently, was known by the national leadership of the PP, which, fearful that the matter would become public, six months ago demanded clarifications from the Madrid president. According to Teodoro García Egea, general secretary of the PP and Casado’s right-hand man, assured this Thursday, Ayuso never gave satisfactory explanations.
The scandal jumped this Thursday when two newspapers –The world and The confidential– revealed that Ayuso was being investigated by her own party in search of evidence that would incriminate her. The matter came to light because a detective who was commissioned rejected it because he was required to obtain bank and tax information from the president’s brother, which meant incurring an illegal action. The investigator revealed to Ayuso what happened.
The leadership of the Popular Party denied any involvement in these frustrated investigations and assured that only an internal investigation had been undertaken, but hours after the scandal broke, a resignation in the Madrid City Council gave an irrefutable indication that there was an attempt to spy on Ayuso. Ángel Carromero, the main operator of the mayor of the capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida, tendered his resignation after being singled out as the person who had commissioned the investigation.
What does Martínez Almeida have to do with the matter? The Popular Party of the Community of Madrid – the region governed by Ayuso that includes the capital and the surrounding municipalities – has yet to hold its congress and Pablo Casado wants to place the mayor of Madrid as regional president. Díaz Ayuso understands that she is the one who has to hold that position.
This issue has been facing Casado and Ayuso for months. The national president of the party, who came to office in a congress in which he had to resort to a second vote and who had the support of the Madrid president on that occasion, is being highly questioned for an erratic strategy that fails to contain the growth at its expense of the extreme right of Vox.
Conversely, From a liberal populist profile that exalts the supremacism of Madrid, Ayuso has become the greatest reference of the Spanish right, capable of sweeping the left in the elections and cornering Vox at the same time. Married, far from considering her one of the main assets of her party, he sees her as a threat to her leadership. The war has been unleashed with such crudeness that a compromise solution without political corpses is impossible. Another question is how the PP will emerge from this internal confrontation at a time when much of its electoral space is being gobbled up by the extreme right.