Ayuso returns to the charge against firefighters who reported lack of resources: "They should have been risking their lives"

Isabel Díaz Ayuso has chosen one of the municipalities hit by the Sierra Oeste fire to settle scores with part of the forest operation. The Madrid president visited Pelayos de la Presa this Sunday and accused the 60 workers who reported being without vehicles, tools, or orders to go to the fires of lying and "intoxicating".

"They should have been like the rest of their colleagues, risking their lives on the front line of fire and not intoxicating in the most difficult moments," she stated. Ayuso also reproached them for their "lack of kindness and sensitivity" towards those who did participate in the extinction and assured that saying they could have helped resolve the emergency means "lying enormously." The president thus backed the offensive launched by her Government, which is studying possible legal and administrative measures against the group.

The conflict has been dragging on for several weeks and pits two completely different narratives against each other. The Community maintains that the workers abandoned the parks and checkpoints they had been assigned to concentrate at the General Directorate of Emergencies, located in Las Rozas. According to the regional Executive, each operative knew their destination and had to wait there for orders from command, within a mobilization system used for more than two decades.

The forest firefighters assure that they went to their workplace daily and that they requested by phone and by registry their activation to intervene in the Almorox fire. During one of those days, they recorded a video from the Emergency facilities in which they reported that they had been inactive for hours. "We have no vehicles, no trucks, no tools. They have us paralyzed," one of them explained.

The strike committee states that the requests were ignored and that the workers remained during their shifts in a room without receiving means to move. The complaint is especially serious because other parks requested reinforcements during the same days and the public forest firefighters maintained that they were prepared to join. The group even announced that they would go by their own means, a decision that the Community considered incompatible with the coordination and safety of an emergency of these dimensions.

The dispute also does not affect all foresters who have worked in the Sierra Oeste. The approximately 450 professionals from the brigades managed by Tragsa suspended their strike at the end of May and joined the operation. Those now singled out by Ayuso are part of another group of public labor personnel, hired under categories such as driver or maintenance technician despite performing tasks linked to extinction.

Their demands focus on professional recognition, job stability, and the equalization of certain conditions with the rest of the device. The Community defends that it has held meetings with them and has already proposed improvements within the legal framework. The disagreement over positions, destinations, and professional category has ended up being transferred to the worst possible moment, with dozens of municipalities affected and thousands of residents awaiting the advance of the flames.

Ayuso has avoided entering into these differences. She has presented the actions of the 60 workers as a lack of commitment to their colleagues and has recalled that the INFOMA operation mobilizes thousands of professionals and volunteers. She has also highlighted that 80% of the fires registered in Madrid are reduced to outbreaks and that the 2026 budget reaches almost 53 million euros.

The general figures do not resolve the specific conflict denounced by the foresters. Nor do they erase the problems that prevention was dragging. The Community left a total of 2,357 of the 6,524 hectares included in its planning unworked in 2025, about 36%. The regional government attributed that delay to rains and the displacement of personnel to collaborate after the DANA in Valencia. Workers have been warning for months that the lack of personnel and precariousness also reduce preventive capacity.

A phrase to dismiss the Chamberí penthouse

The visit to Pelayos has also been Ayuso's first appearance since the sale of the controversial luxury penthouse by Planifica Madrid, a public company of the Community, became known. The president has dedicated much less attention to this operation than to the forest firefighters and has merely confirmed that the property is already for sale.

"This property is for sale and we have put up four others that are on Gran Vía. With those 22 million we are going to reinforce the reconstruction in the Sierra Oeste," she responded when asked if she plans to appear to offer explanations or show the file.

Planifica Madrid acquired on April 14 a home of about 485 square meters on Paseo del General Martínez Campos, with almost 200 meters of terrace and five bedrooms with bathrooms. The Community has confirmed that it paid 6.3 million euros and that it intended to use it for meetings of Ayuso and her team during the planned works in the Real Casa de Correos.

The operation remained out of public knowledge for more than three months. The purchase did not appear in the company's 2026 budget nor was it listed on its transparency portal when it was discovered. Just one day after the information was published, the regional Executive announced that it would sell the penthouse along with four other properties and allocate the proceeds to repair the damages caused by the fires.

Ayuso still has not explained who proposed that home, what alternatives were studied, why it was considered necessary to buy it, and how a residential property was going to be used as an institutional office. Her Government has also not yet detailed where the president and her team will work during the renovation of Sol. The opposition has registered several requests for information and demands that the complete file reach the Madrid Assembly, in addition to other legal avenues.

Morocco and the warning of a new "invasion"

Ayuso used the last part of her speech to move away from Madrid politics and criticize Morocco for the migratory crisis in Ceuta. The president described the entry of migrants as an "intolerable invasion" and accused the Government of Pedro Sánchez of presenting a false normality while residents and security forces are going through a situation of "total abandonment."

"I fear it is a test by Morocco for the next one," she warned. Ayuso believes that what happened is part of medium and long-term plans to take over the two autonomous cities. "Ceuta and Melilla are in those plans, and we will see in the future what else they will try to take from us," she added.

The Madrid president has also reproached Sánchez for thanking Rabat's collaboration and has assured that Spain is increasingly isolated. Her accusations about a future attempt at occupation have not been accompanied by evidence, although they come amid a debate about Moroccan actions during the first hours of the crisis and the use of the border as an instrument of political pressure.

The regional government, meanwhile, maintains its threat of actions against the 60 forest rangers. The workers continue to demand recognition of their professional category and the means with which they assure they could have joined the operation.