This coming Tuesday, December 12, Carlos Mazón and Isabel Díaz Ayuso will participate in a conference organized by the Conexus Foundation titled: “II Business Summit. Valencian Community and Madrid Axis.” The program announces that the Government Commissioner for the Mediterranean Corridor, Josep Vicent Boira, among others, will also participate; the president of MSC, Francisco Lorente; the president of the Port of Valencia, Mar Chao or the president of Baleària, Adolfo Utor. The event will be closed, in addition to Mazón and Ayuso, by the president of Conexus and prestigious lawyer Manuel Broseta, son of the professor and jurist of the same name murdered by ETA in 1992 on Blasco Ibáñez Avenue in València, in front of the Law Faculty.
The content of the conference, its title and the presence of the Valencian president and his Madrid counterpart, point to the interest of both in establishing a strong political and material (mainly logistical) complicity. In 2004, José María Aznar promoted the so-called “axis of prosperity” between the Valencian Community, Madrid and the Balearic Islands, with Francisco Camps, Esperanza Aguirre and Jaume Matas. On that occasion, Aznar wanted to create a bloc against the government of the socialist José Luís Rodríguez Zapatero and, most importantly, force a new vision of geopolitics in Spain against the Mediterranean arc and, especially, against Catalonia. That axis failed when suspicions of corruption sank his political career.
The current axis is built on different bases. It is not promoted by Alberto Núñez Feijóo, it is the initiative of Carlos Mazón and Isabel Díaz Ayuso: it is an important fact. The priority is to add economic as well as political interests, in line with the work carried out for years by the Conexus Foundation. The entry and exit of international merchandise that arrives in Madrid does so, for the most part, through the Port of Valencia; infrastructure awaiting government authorization for the Northern expansion, where MSC plans a multimillion-dollar investment. That Ayuso joins this initiative is essential for the Valencian logistics node.
Therefore, they seek to put pressure on Pedro Sánchez. That is the priority. Because in other matters there is not enough agreement between Mazón and Ayuso; two politicians who in the past, when Casado and Teodoro García led the Spanish PP, were organic rivals. Time and interests have healed the wounds and now Carlos Mazón is growing as a peripheral piece of the popular group. Let’s return to the issues on which there is no coincidence: financing, investments and debt relief (it seems not in the water either). The Valencian president demands it, defends it and needs it, it is the Valencian agenda; The Madrid president fights it, among other reasons because Madrid has a financial ecosystem far from the problems of those in Valencia, Murcia or Andalusia.
Tuesday’s appointment is important. And it can outline an axis of collaboration that, organically, surpasses the battered “Andalusia/Genoa” axis. In the coming months, and at the expense of what happens in the Galician, Basque and European elections in June, changes may occur in the leadership of the PP. Ayuso has long proposed an alternative, in story and strategy. Carlos Mazón measures time in a different way and his urgencies are, for the moment, different and all of them are material to oppose Pedro Sánchez. Stay tuned for what happens starting Tuesday on the Valencia/Madrid axis.
PS: While this axis is consolidated, the fracture and distance between the governments of Catalonia and the Valencian Community grows. Take note.
