The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the mayor of the Spanish capital, José Luis Martínez Almeida, among other authorities, met this Saturday with Pope Francis at the Vatican and discussed the political situation in Spain: “He asked us above all to stop talking so much about the past,” said Díaz Ayuso.

“Above all, he asked us to stop talking so much about the past, about wars, and I couldn’t agree more,” the regional president assured journalists from Vatican Square, after her audience with the Pope, organized on the occasion of of the IV centenary of the canonization of San Isidro Labrador.

The meeting with the pontiff was also attended by the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the government delegate in Madrid, Mercedes González, and the cardinal and archbishop of Madrid, Carlos Osoro.

In the audience, in addition to the Holy Year program for the patron, the Spanish political context was also discussed and the Pope, according to Díaz Ayuso, made a recommendation: “That we think especially of the people ahead of ideologies, something with which I totally agree,” he assured.

“I believe that you have to govern based on some principles, some values, a way of seeing life, but never on the basis of ideologies that in the end what they do is make a grid management only based on an ideology, which I think it is something that does nothing more than divide the people”, Díaz Ayuso said, to which he added that he asked for “unity, which is not the same as uniformity, and we will take it into account, of course.”