The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, responded harshly this Friday to the criticism over the purchase of the controversial penthouse in Chamberí by her Administration. The Madrid leader denounced a campaign of “persecution” and discredit, while distancing herself from the operation, carried out for 6.3 million euros and at the center of the political storm for a month and a half: “I don’t want to know anything about that story.”
“My responsibility is not to manage real estate. You can’t ask me technical questions about what is not my competence,” emphasized Ayuso, who defended the explanations given a day earlier by the Minister of the Presidency, Miguel Ángel García, in the Assembly, and insisted on the transparency of the procedure against accusations from the left.
“I don’t want a house for myself, I have not lied. I will face the music as many times as necessary,” Ayuso declared during a tense media briefing after an event in Alcalá de Henares, where she laid the first stone for the construction of a data center.
From there, she called the penthouse issue “nonsense” and demanded the press the same level of “scrutiny” for the central government as for her: “In Spain, people don’t know the lives of half the ministers. I, who manage the economic engine of this country, am looked at because of my father or my brother,” criticized the regional president.
The Community considers the scandal “closed” after the Minister of the Presidency appeared before the Assembly and a dossier with new documentation about the real estate operation was made public through the Transparency Portal this Thursday. But the lack of answers to crucial questions, such as who gave the order to Planifica Madrid for the purchase of the property, or with what justification the acquisition was made, keeps the regional opposition on high alert.
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An offensive that, in the eyes of the Madrid president, responds to a campaign against her with the aim, as García emphasized a day earlier, of diverting attention from the Ceuta crisis. “There is always a need to find controversy about my personal life,” Ayuso reproached. “I have no accounts with anyone nor properties with anyone. You do nothing but dismantle the life of those who are with me.”
“I swear it and I can prove it in a thousand ways: I don’t need an official residence to live,” Ayuso dismissed, adding that “like anyone else” she has “spent money” on a private rental at another home, where she has recently moved.
Pressure from the left has increased in recent hours, moreover, after it became known that the property, despite having been put up for sale after the outbreak of the crisis—with the aim, according to the official version, of allocating the funds to the recovery of the Sierra Oeste after this summer’s fire—has not found a buyer and the procedure has been declared void.
Regarding this, the regional president downplayed it: “It is bought and it is not lost money. It is part of the heritage and will appreciate,” Ayuso assured.
