The image is from last Thursday. It happened in the corridors of the Congress of Deputies during the investiture of Pedro Sánchez. Ione Belarra and Irene Montero, two of the outgoing Podemos ministers, approached Juan Lobato, leader of the PSOE-M and senator, to congratulate him for being the one who gained the most from the formation and subsequent composition of the government.
The sequence made the socialist uncomfortable, as some cameras captured, but it illustrates the new scenario that is opening up in Madrid politics after the departure of Mónica García to the Ministry of Health. More Madrid must face the risk of beheading its leadership to give it to an unknown such as Manuela Bergerot, while the PSOE-M is already considering stepping on the accelerator to try to be recognized as the true alternative to the PP of Isabel Díaz Ayuso despite having obtained fewer votes than Más Madrid in the May elections. But what do those involved think?
The circle of trust of the next Minister of Health does not hide the risk that the movement entails. “Leaders like García are not built from nothing, but at best polished; and García is a born leader.” One of those who saw it most clearly is Manuela Bergerot. She is precisely the one who will replace García as spokesperson for the parliamentary group in charge of overseeing the management of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the regional parliament of Madrid.
However, Más Madrid has not doubted that the opportunity to have a Ministry five years after its founding is a train that they must get on, no matter how fast it travels. “We lose leadership on one hand, but we gain it on the other. And we could not waste the opportunity. Furthermore, we already know what it is like to have to cover unexpected casualties. Something similar happened with Íñigo Errejón when he was elected national deputy after the 2019 electoral repetition And it was shown that we did well,” a prominent regional deputy told La Vanguardia this Monday.
They have fewer doubts, of any kind, in the PSOE-M. The socialist parliamentary group denies being concerned about the possibility that the Health portfolio could place Mónica García in a showcase from which she can multiply her projection as a leader of the left in Madrid.
“I am very clear about my work of forceful oversight of the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso,” said Lobato this afternoon. “But the spaces are going to be reconfigured, it is clear. None of us are stupid. After eight years of Mónica in the Assembly, this step represents a change in Madrid politics.” Reasoning that a collaborator of the former mayor of Soto del Real supports, recognizing, of course, that “of course it allows us to have more focus. At least in the coming months.”
In the PSOE-M they use as a double the advantage that Mónica García’s jump gives them. The first is because of the void left by “the leader of a personalist party.” And the second is because Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who has maintained a very angry relationship with the next minister in recent years, “is going to have to lower her tone and give more explanations for her disastrous management, which is what Lobato has been asking her for since months ago and where the president knows she could lose.
The PP’s position has been to give itself a medal by defending that García makes the leap to national politics because “he has not resisted the hand-to-hand fight with President Ayuso.” “He joins that long list of left-wing leaders who They leave Madrid after being defeated by Isabel Díaz Ayuso,” said Carlos Díaz-Pache.
