The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, defends tooth and nail the economic model of her Executive. In fact, the economic formula is the banner with which the PP wants to win the race to Moncloa. She also believes that the scenario proposed by the leader of her party, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in order to form a government after the general elections is not going to happen.
– Does the PP get the mask tangled in Madrid? You have denounced contracts of the PSOEbut Adriana Lastra says it’s just a smokescreen.
–In the most difficult moments of the pandemic, the Government of Spain was unable to obtain medical supplies for almost no one; or for health professionals. The regional and municipal administrations did what we could to obtain this material and we obtained it of great quality. In Madrid, thanks to our efforts, we brought almost 2,000 tons of medical supplies in 22 planes, which helped us take care of our citizens and our health workers. Seen over time, the left has decided to put on a continuous show with this story. They believe that the rest of us have had cases, when the Sánchez government has not been able to justify more than 300 million euros in purchases. They have not hesitated to try to harm us personally and politically, especially politicians like the Mayor (José Luis Martínez Almeida) or like me. That is why we have thought that many of these contracts should be taken to court and by the same criteria. In fact, the Anticorruption Prosecutor is investigating. Here there is no more curtain than the dirty game that they are doing from the first moment. If you want it to be investigated… I have trusted the administrations from the first moment. The socialist governments of the Autonomous Communities should give, at least, the same explanations as me.
–The management of the Government of Madrid in the pandemic has been in the pillory.
–In my opinion, on some occasions, during the pandemic, there has been an abuse of the public administration against the private, against the citizen, with the pretext of “it is for your good & rdquor ;. Closures and impositions must be the last resort. Everything must be tried first. We have opened two public hospitals, one of them the best for pandemics in the world; We have established basic health zones so as not to carry out massive closures, we have analyzed the waters of the Canal, we have bought sanitary material and we were the first to apply antigen tests. Many of the closures have been shown to have caused tremendous economic damage and have not improved the pandemic situation. On the other hand, the economic figures that Madrid now has have allowed us to be in a better position, for example, to help the people of Ukraine.
“If lowering taxes is good, it is better to lower them in Asturias than to raise them in Madrid”
-There is already a date for the Andalusian elections. Is it the litmus test for Feijóo’s new PP?
-It is a test to know if the citizens want more socialism or more freedom. After 30 years with headlines about unemployment, corruption or school dropout lists, Andalusia is today one of the regions that is growing the most, creating the most jobs or in which the most self-employed are registered. What citizens want is to be free and prosper. That feeling of freedom is what is going to be consulted at the polls. I am convinced that President Moreno is going to have an excellent result.
–feijoo proposes to establish that the most voted list is the one that governs. If so, you would not have been president in 2019.
-It is a scenario that is not going to happen. I can’t imagine the PSOE agreeing with the ETA environment, with the communists and the pro-independence supporters –who by the way have committed serious crimes–, giving up a government being able to add up all of them, just because the PP has had a better result. And more considering that this is a government that came with a motion of censure.
Come on, you see it unlikely.
Yes, totally unlikely.
”PP and Vox are not the same, but they have common interests”
–The regional financing is still pending. Feijóo signed with the communities of the Northwest, which defend criteria different from those of Madrid for the distribution.
I have to take several factors into account. First, that we are a region with a high population density, with a high cost of living, poorly subsidized and in which citizens continue to pay a lot of taxes for that high cost of living. Therefore, what they need is encouragement. Being the ones that pay the most, we are the community that contributes the most to the rest, in solidarity and because it is a commitment that we have with the rest of the country. In return, we see that we are the last to receive.
–Yes, but how does that combine with the interests of the rest?
– Well, we will have to look for a scenario in which the needs of each community are taken into account; It is true that each one has its own and they are very different. But in Madrid it happens that there are almost a million inhabitants who do not exist in the current model.
–You demanded a date for the congress of the PP from Madrid and you already have it. Other communities are still waiting.
-These are different situations. In Madrid there has been no congress since 2017 and a vacuum since then. We are 7 million inhabitants and we have ten municipalities with more than 150,000 inhabitants, whose candidates need to be appointed soon. We had elections in May, the results of which would already have to be transferred to the local groups.
– Do you think that the rest of the regional congresses will not be delayed much?
-That’s what I’ve heard, like the others. It does not concern me, but it does seem that it will be soon.
“The management of the pandemic? Whoever closes the most and imposes the most cannot take advantage of anything; what he achieves he does with the sacrifice of others”
–The new PP will give more voice to regional leaders. Is Madrid too small for you?
-I have always said that Madrid is my political career and I have shown it; especially in these moments of crisis in the party. I have a commitment to the people of Madrid and I have no other objective than to continue leading the Community of Madrid. But you have to understand what the Community of Madrid is. It is a territory of all Spaniards, with a national discourse. It goes from its 179 municipalities to international politics. We are a region elected capital five centuries ago because it is everyone’s home. One cannot speak of Madrid as a terroir; That is why my speech must sometimes also be national. But that does not mean that my political space is this.
-He has been in Asturias explaining his economic model.
–I go to many territories to speak with the citizens; we regional presidents have to seek alliances with society and we have to get involved with what is happening in other territories. At the end of the day, we are one country.
– And what is that model?
–Within our autonomy, contained in the Constitution, just as other communities do what they consider, we act on our own taxation. We have decided to eliminate our own taxes and stop weighing down the economy with invented taxes, as other regions do. We are governed by the same rules as the other fifteen autonomous communities with which we share the same common system. It is not about competing in a global market between regions, in a bad way; free competition is good and healthy. But it is that the company that leaves the community of Madrid because taxes are raised by imposition of the socialists will go to Lisbon or the United Kingdom. We have to attract companies and businesses from all over the world because that is going to be beneficial for the rest of Spain. What the others have to do is copy the model if they see that it is working. I remind you that Madrid was the fourth community in the 80s. If lowering taxes helps the Asturian businessman, it will be better to lower them in Asturias than to raise them in Madrid.
“Madrid belongs to all Spaniards; that is why sometimes my speech is national, but my political career is in my community and I have shown it”
–The problem for the PP continues to be called vox. What is the strategy to follow?
–I have been defending the same thing for years and there is nothing new in my speech. The PP and Vox are not the same, but on many occasions they have common interests. A large part of the Vox electorate was from the Popular Party, and that has to lead us to think about why we lost it and what must be done to return to being that common home of so many citizens: from liberals to conservatives. That concern has to unite us more, but above all the idea of change and alternative in Spain.
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-In what sense?
-It is that people from the political environment of ETA, or those who were born into communism and dictatorships such as the Chavista dictatorship and who are a burden on the image of Spain and the interests of our companies, govern in Spain today. We also have the separatists, who are treated in a different way than the rest of the Spaniards because they give the seats that the Government needs. But Spain has a serious problem as a country: they have erased their legacy, they have sunk the purchasing power of families. Spain has such big problems that what the left does is move Vox as a decoy. But not to lead citizens to vote with enthusiasm at the polls, but to create hatred and say: “I am the antidote to hatred & rdquor ;.