The busy schedule of Rita Maestre (Madrid, 1988) forces her to set the interview first thing in the morning. With almost no time to clarify a voice that is beginning to accuse the burden of pre-campaign events, the municipal leader of Más Madrid breaks down the keys to a project with which she intends to carry out a “comprehensive transformation” of a city that governed from 2015 to 2019 under the leadership of Manuela Carmena, and from whose mayor’s office she was displaced in 2019 by the pact of the three rights, despite winning the elections by more than 100,000 votes difference with the PP.
The capital was in 2015 one of the municipalities of the change, but it barely lasted 4 years. Is Madrid on the right?
Madrid is a very open, very modern, very progressive city. And, of course, it is a city that the left can recover with a great mobilization of the progressive sectors as has happened before. It will be decided by very few thousand votes between the PP and Más Madrid.
After two legislatures, he now heads his own project. What is the seal of Master?
It is a seal of a guarantee of knowledge of everything that can be done, of the deadlines in which it must be done and of the tools and mechanisms that must be touched. I will not come back to the City Hall. I know him from the Government and I know him from the opposition when, in 2019, I took a municipal force that left the Mayor’s Office and that was, let’s say, discouraged.
And what does the support that Carmena suppose?
I am very grateful for the very explicit support for me to be the next mayor. Manuela is a benchmark for an effective, empathetic mayor’s office that launched many initiatives, unlike these last four years in which, with the current mayor -José Luis MartÃnez-Almeida- there has been a lack of government. I want to pick up that witness and take it much further after a legislature with a lazy City Council.
Madrid unanimously signed the Villa Pacts for post-pandemic recovery. Why did that spirit only last a few months?
It lasted as long as it took Almeida to follow his ambition and go out into national politics. The enormous political capital that we all generously put on the table -Cs, Vox, Más Madrid and PSOE-, and that was not seen in other governments and cities, was quickly squandered because the mayor tried to turn it into public capital for himself. There he ended.
You used to repeat that “elections are won with projects”, what model of the city do you propose for Madrid?
Our model is ambitious, but realistic. And it happens because, eight years from now, all the residents of Madrid will have fundamental basic services within a 15-minute walk and the city can be covered from end to end on public transport in 45 minutes. It has to do with the fact that it takes us less time to go to work, that work is more distributed in the neighborhoods, that in the new neighborhoods there are public services and leisure activities.
And what are the most urgent challenges?
The House. Not being able to access a rent or a mortgage hampers the vital projects of young people, families and companies. In these last two years Madrid has lost 54,000 inhabitants. It is not capable of attracting or retaining talent and it expels people and they have to be reactivated.
But the housing problem already existed when you governed
Of course it is not new, and whoever promises miraculous solutions will be lying. But each and every one of the 1,500 public homes that Almeida will have finished before 28-M was launched by Ahora Madrid in 2015.
Is capping prices a solution while it builds?
Of course. The housing law now offers an incomparable framework that did not exist in 2015. It is difficult, but we will have to fight with the Community of Madrid to declare Madrid as a zone of tension.
Are you talking about the entire capital?
Yes, it is a measure that, apart from the ideological dispute between parties, has a very broad consensus among the citizens.
Small businesses also suffer as collateral damage. Is this touristification reversible?
More Madrid has recorded 10,000 empty commercial premises in the neighborhoods. Shops, haberdashery, bakeries or hairdressers that accumulate dust. I propose to do as in Paris and create a public company to buy these premises, rehabilitate them and put them on the market with affordable prices to move towards that 15-minute city.
Does the Madrid City Council have sufficient autonomy to implement all these plans?
Madrid has very few competitions in comparison, for example, with Barcelona. The Community and the City Council, despite having been governed by the PP for a long time, have been a terrain of internal fights since the times of Esperanza Aguirre and Alberto Ruiz-Gallardón, who marketed with some of them.
For example…
Transport. As the city was bankrupt, Gallardón sold the shares of the metro to the Community of Madrid. So the capital has eight metro lines passing through its territory, but the City Council has nothing to say about it. Those powers need to be regained.
The latest polls coincide in drawing a tie between the blocks, wouldn’t it have been more profitable for the left to compete in a coalition?
This tie has been given thanks to the fact that we have been focused on talking about Madrid. What keeps people away from politics and generates discouragement are party fights and discussions about whether you put it or me.
But, precisely Madrid, has been left out of that unity of the left that was demanded in the great act of Sumar in which you participated supporting Yolanda DÃaz
What I demanded in that act with my presence was to support a candidacy and a person who does precisely what I am saying that must be done, which is to put ideas, projects and public policies ahead and talk about things of eating. That’s what gets people excited about politics.
Seeing that tune, can you expect Yolanda DÃaz to participate in a campaign event for Más Madrid?
Well, I am delighted with Yolanda’s support, as well as Manuela’s. But Más Madrid has turned this political force into an alternative to the PP with work capacity, leadership and a capillary presence in each neighborhood that gives us total autonomy.
