‘He’s giving the grade. Feijoo said we had to go’

Ayuso once again generates division within the PP. The refusal of the president of the Community of Madrid to go to Moncloa to meet with Pedro Sánchez has provoked very opposite reactions within the party, although From behind closed doors, an attempt is made to send the message that Genoa supports this controversial decision.

Early this Monday, Ayuso sent a statement supporting his decision not to meet with the head of the Executive with two reasons. The first is because it understands that these meetings with the regional presidents seek to talk about financing in unequal terms after learning of the pact signed between PSC and ERC on the taxation of Catalonia.

The second reason is because, according to Díaz Ayuso’s cabinet, “less than 24 hours before the call of La Moncloa, the President of the Government defamed the President on an official trip to Brussels, with some very serious accusations.” It refers, specifically, to the statements that Sánchez made after participating in the European Council in which he defended the Attorney General of the State, of whom he said that his job has been to “persecute the criminal” and added that the president was “the partner of a confessed criminal.”

Ayuso’s refusal to participate in Sánchez’s bilateral meetings contradicts the indications that the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, gave in this regard a few weeks ago. “If a regional president does not go to the Moncloa Palace, I think he makes a mistake (…) President Ayuso knows very well that her responsibility is to defend the interests of the people of Madrid and practice State policy, and that is what she has always done,” said the national leader in an interview in The World.

But Feijóo has once again been disavowed by the Madrid leader, who will be the only one of all the PP barons who will not attend the Moncloa meeting. Just as you have known El HuffPost and Genoa has subsequently made public, Ayuso called its president yesterday to explain the reasons why he was going to decline the meeting. “Feijóo stands by everything he said, but is understanding of Isabel’s motivations”assure the sources consulted.

This argument is the same one that the PP spokesperson, Borja Sémper, put forward this Monday during a television interview. The Basque leader has expressed “respect” for this decision, but has also assured that ‘Génova’ prefers to “preserve the institutions” and tell Sánchez things “to his face.” “I would have gone to that meeting,” added Sémper. Feijóo, for his part, has preferred to remain silent in response and has avoided responding to the media during his speech at the National Congress of Family Business, held in Santander.

Within the PP, there are leaders and prominent members of the party who criticize that Ayuso is once again going on her own and deciding to go against the Genoa guidelines. “He is trying to give the grade. Feijoo told us that we had to go. But they are his skills and it is his battle”points out a territorial baron to El HuffPost.

Even some of these territorial leaders remember that Ayuso already tried to dissuade them from attending their respective appointments in Moncloa because Sánchez was going to “cheat” them. A position that was met with the refusal of Genoa and the rest of the barons, who They consider that out of institutional sense and respect we must always respond to Moncloa’s call.

Since Ayuso assumed her position as president of the Community of Madrid in June 2019, she and Sánchez have only met twice. The first was in September 2020 in Sol, in the middle of the war between the central and regional Administrations over the management of the coronavirus pandemic.

Months later they would meet again, this time in Moncloa, after Ayuso won the May 2021 elections. On that occasion, as usual, Sánchez waited for him on the steps and They both greeted each other by bumping fists.a preventive gesture against the threat of covid. Since then, they have only seen each other again in events such as the military parade on October 12 and immersed in a “horrible” climate, as Sol defines the relationship between both governments.