“It is a very clear lack of institutional respect”, they denounced in Moncloa before the veto that they attribute to the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso against the Minister of the Presidency, Félix Bolaños, who was prevented from going up to the authorities’ rostrum during the parade of the Day of the Community of Madrid, on May 2. All this, in the run-up to regional elections in which Ayuso opts for re-election as president for which she now seeks a large absolute majority in the Assembly. “It is one more step in a campaign to delegitimize this government,” criticized the spokesperson for the central executive, the socialist Isabel Rodríguez.

“It is a campaign of the Popular Party, and I say this with regret, because this type of campaign, to attack legitimate governments, is taking place in other parts of the world. But in other parts of the world they are led by anti-establishment or extremist parties. The unfortunate thing is that in Spain this campaign is being carried out by the PP, which was a government party”, highlighted the minister spokesperson. She has thus alluded to the behavior of Donald Trump or Jair Bolsonaro when they lost the elections in the United States and in Brazil. In Moncloa, they thus equate Ayuso with “anti-system populism and Trumpism”.

“This campaign to attack the legitimate government began with Casado, continues with Feijóo, and Ayuso always in the middle,” Isabel Rodríguez stressed. “When a legitimate government is attacked, democracy is being attacked,” she warned.

The minister spokesperson has assured that the royal decree of protocol of 1983, which establishes the prevalence between the positions of the different administrations, has not caused “any problem” throughout the democratic stage. Until now when, in the opinion of Moncloa, Ayuso has chosen to twist it to prevent Bolaños from accessing the authorities’ rostrum during the commemoration of May 2 in Madrid. Isabel Rodríguez has also rejected the interpretation of the Madrid president, according to which the intention of the Minister of the Presidency was to “provoke”, by trying to occupy a place of honor in the celebration for which, as he insists, he was not invited. “It does not provoke who wants, but who can,” Rodríguez replied to Ayuso. And she has affirmed that “it is always the Government that decides which minister represents it.”

The spokesperson for the central Executive has counterattacked Ayuso, in any case, by questioning his management of public policies in the Community of Madrid. That is “the concern and occupation” of the Government of Pedro Sánchez, she has assured her. “The concerns and occupations of the Community of Madrid should also be there, as are the problems in primary care and in Madrid’s public health,” she warned. “As is the housing problem for so many families in the Community of Madrid, where it is prohibitive to access a home for rent or ownership”, she added. “Or as it is in the field of professional training, because it turns out that in the Community of Madrid there are more than 30,000 young people who wanted to access a FP position and their government does not provide them with those public positions”, she has settled.

“Ayuso wanted to make a mess and that’s it”, they allege in Moncloa, given the political consequences of a controversy that, in any case, they assure that it does not benefit the PP at all. For this reason, they highlight that some popular leaders are distancing themselves from this controversy with its epicenter in Madrid. “They are not very happy in the PP,” they suggest. And, above all, they point out, Alberto Núñez Feijóo is not.