While firefighting resources remain focused on controlling the largest fire in Spain’s history, which has already left more than 83,000 hectares burned and 75,000 evacuated in Toledo, Ávila, and Madrid, the political skirmish over management continues. The PSOE has implicitly backed the ministers who have criticized the Madrid president, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. “She can feel very hurt when perhaps she, according to her, is insulted, but she is the first to shoot,” summarized the spokesperson for the Ferraz leadership, Montse Mínguez.
Read more Sánchez calls for ‘once and for all’ a state pact against climate change from the Vall d’Uixó fire
In statements to the media after the meeting of the party’s Federal Executive – which Pedro Sánchez did not attend because he traveled to the municipality of Vall d’Uixó (Castellón), where there is another active fire – Mínguez argued that only “last week” Ayuso called the President of the Government “son of a bitch, infamous, deranged, and shameless”.
“Evidently, we are in a situation where all administrations need to work together and neither spread hoaxes nor make requests via Twitter,” insisted the socialist spokesperson in another implicit reproach to the Madrid leader. “So what we ask for is maximum collaboration between administrations, people are waiting, people are suffering and, therefore, we tell Mrs. Ayuso and the PP to lead by example,” she added.
Last week, the Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, called the president of the Community of Madrid “mamarracha” in an X message. In turn, the head of the Digital Transformation portfolio, Óscar López, who will also compete with her in next year’s regional elections in May as the PSOE candidate, has said of her that she is “pure hatred” and “poison for coexistence” in an interview in eldiario.es published this Sunday.
In Ferraz, these statements have not been explicitly supported, but it has been generically justified that public reproaches are made to the PP leader. Likewise, in a general criticism of the communities governed by the party of Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the socialist leadership reproaches them that “in an expansive era in terms of resources, everyone must be consistent with their competencies” and that, “instead of crying, what they need to know how to do is administer”.
Exchange of reproaches
Ayuso defended her decision on Friday to request a national emergency declaration for the fire affecting her region, arguing that it is a “mechanism stipulated by law,” issuing a warning to which she gave no name or surname: “The first buffoon who gets in the way to stir up the atmosphere, that’s on him. That’s on his conscience”.
Puente automatically took the hint and replied to the Madrid president via his official X account with the same word. “You know a lot about stirring up the atmosphere. It’s what you live for. Now you ask for help from that government you spend your life insulting and discrediting. If there’s a buffoon in Spain, it’s you,” the minister wrote on the aforementioned social network.
Furthermore, the PSOE has criticized the PP spokesperson in Congress, Ester Muñoz, for saying in an interview on EsRadio that Sánchez’s Executive uses climate change as a “mantra” to “not assume” its “responsibilities” in forest fires and to again reject the state pact proposal put forward by the president, considering that it responds to “ideological” criteria and not to effective prevention measures.
“Climate change is not a mantra: it is an emergency, it is evidence, and either we all get to rebuilding and we all get to fighting, or we will not overcome this,” Mínguez argued after the meeting of the socialist Federal Executive, which was headed by its deputy general secretary, María Jesús Montero. “Enough with the denialist speeches,” she remarked.
