The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, lamented this Thursday that Madrid students have lost 270,000 hours of class due to what she considers “crooked strikes” encouraged by the left, protests that she placed at the center of her speech during the control session in the Plenary of the Madrid Assembly.
Ayuso criticized the left for promoting “political strikes all the time” and maintained that these mobilizations had not had a continuous presence in education in other years, but that now they are happening “all in a row”. In that context, she defended that, while Madrid obtains “the best PISA results”, the protests are concentrated in the region.
The regional leader also focused on the agreement on higher education and recalled that her Government has promoted “a historic pact for universities”, which she has quantified at 14.8 billion euros, while criticizing that, now, strikes are promoted by “activists who do not represent anyone”.
Criticism of the PSOE, Pedro Sánchez and public universities
During her speech, Isabel Díaz Ayuso also alluded to the left's reproaches about the so-called “chiringuitos” (slang for dubious organizations), and contrasted her own academic career with that of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. At that point, she stated that she studies at a public university, while Sánchez “uses” it to give “a professorship to his wife”.
“You have to have little shame,” said the Madrid president, before accusing her political adversaries of “kidnapping the will of the people of Madrid in the streets,” of not respecting anything, and of harming both parents' right to go to work and the use of taxpayer money to build barricades.
Ayuso also assured that those most affected by the protests are students facing the University Access Exam (PAU) and those who want to access public universities, to whom, she said, the left is “denying” opportunities and leaving them at a “disadvantage compared to the rest of Spaniards”.
Reproaches to the socialists and defense of her management
The president of the Community of Madrid asked the socialists if they had promoted any reform in favor of public universities and, she said, the answer is negative. Instead, she accused them of trying to “buy off their friends” and of resorting to “the union mafia,” an expression with which she summarized her criticism of the organizers of the mobilizations.
In the final part of her speech, Isabel Díaz Ayuso lashed out at the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, to whom she attributed a chain of political and judicial decisions marked, in her opinion, by wear and tear, assuring that everything he touches ends up “condemned, indicted, dismissed, resigned or sunk at the polls”.
