The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has once again taken the political confrontation to a personal level this Thursday. During the control session in the Assembly, she warned the spokesperson for Más Madrid, Manuela Bergerot, that they would meet in court if she repeated her corruption accusations outside the regional Parliament.
The clash began when Bergerot once again attacked Ayuso over the purchase of the luxury penthouse in Chamberí and the relationship of the Madrid Executive with the Quirón health group. "She can try to convince us that she deserves an official residence, but I still believe that what she deserves is a trial for corruption," she stated.
The Más Madrid spokesperson accused the president of "selling the budget of Madrid's healthcare to Quirón" and of buying "a huge penthouse with the money of all Madrid residents". Her words provoked an immediate response from Ayuso from the rostrum.
The judicial challenge against Bergerot
"Now she only has to take one more step to be consistent, and that is to say exactly what she has said here into a microphone, in a media outlet, and in court we will talk," replied the Madrid president.
Ayuso thus challenged Bergerot to repeat her accusations outside the Assembly, where they would no longer be protected by parliamentary inviolability. The Statute of Autonomy establishes that Madrid deputies are inviolable for opinions expressed during the exercise of their functions, a guarantee intended to preserve the freedom of political debate.
The president accompanied the judicial warning with a barrage of disqualifications against Más Madrid. She accused its deputies of "having no idea about taxation," "not knowing how to add," and bringing "misery" wherever the left governs. She also assured that they need "many poor and few rich to blame" and that their proposal to raise taxation on large fortunes and inheritances aims to "rob" those who have assets.
The tone extended to the rest of the opposition. Ayuso described the socialist spokesperson, Mar Espinar, as a leader who "shouts desperately" and accused the left of continually going to court with false issues. Espinar had reviewed the controversies of the Chamberí penthouse and healthcare management before warning the president that she was "foolishly prolonging her agony."
The controversy over surgical waiting lists has also appeared during the session. Ayuso has defended the regional government's actions, attributed the reported irregularities to a doctor, and dismissed the matter as "the hoax of the ass of the week," another expression that ended up diverting the debate towards the language used by the president.
"No matter how Romanian he may be"
The second most controversial moment came during the confrontation with the far-right Vox. Its spokesperson in the Assembly, Isabel Pérez Moñino, accused the Madrid government of causing a "pull effect" by defending that everyone fits in the region.
Ayuso responded by differentiating between migrants who work and those who break the law. "I prefer to attend to and treat as one of our own a Romanian, no matter how Romanian he may be, because he has been working for years, contributing and being one of us in Madrid, than a Spanish delinquent, squatter and who does not respect others," she stated.
The expression caused murmurs in the Chamber and a quick reaction on social media. The argument intended to defend that the attention received should depend on each person's behavior and not on their nationality, but the caveat used by Ayuso presented Romanian origin as a circumstance that had to be overcome.
The president later tried to correct this effect by assuring that "we are all equal in this region, whether you come from Romania, whether you come from Boadilla del Monte." The explanation came after having placed the "no matter how Romanian he may be" with a marked racist tone at the center of her response from the rostrum.
