The purchase for 6.3 million euros of a penthouse in Chamberí through the public company Planifica Madrid has been accompanied in recent weeks by various public explanations from Isabel Díaz Ayuso. The president of the Community of Madrid has always maintained that the property was not intended to become her personal residence, but her statements about her knowledge of the operation and about who made the decision have incorporated new elements.
The first explanation came last August 5. Faced with questions about the acquisition, Ayuso referred the explanations to the Ministry of the Presidency and maintained that this department had the information about the operation. “I have to refer them to the Ministry because, among other things, it is the one that has not only the detailed information, but also the communication channels for that purpose,” she said then.
The Madrid president went further when referring to the functioning of Planifica Madrid, the public company that formalized the purchase. “Planifica Madrid buys and sells properties throughout the year, and I have no idea about that. It is not my competence. What is my competence is that the councilors of each organization are on top of it,” she affirmed.
That same day, Ayuso also denied that the penthouse was related to her personal housing needs. “If I had wanted to have a home for myself, it would have taken me a little while, seven years (the time she has been governing). The logical thing would have been for me to arrive on the first day and decide, like so many ministers, about whom we know nothing. Neither where they live nor how much the properties cost,” she stated.
The challenge to the opposition: “If I have lied, I resign”
A month later, the penthouse once again occupied a large part of the political debate in the Madrid Assembly. On September 11, during the Debate on the State of the Region, Ayuso again denied having lived in the property and rejected that the purchase had been made for her personal use.
“I have never lived in a penthouse, I have never lived in a penthouse, liars,” she affirmed from the rostrum. The president also assured that she had documented that she was looking for her own home and even challenged the opposition groups: “If I have lied, I resign. If not, you resign.”
Ayuso insisted in that same intervention that the home she was looking for was independent of the operation carried out by Planifica Madrid. “And no one resigns for it, and what’s more, I can challenge you that if I have lied, I resign. And if you have lied, you resign once and for all with the penthouse issue. Liars. Because I have shown with my papers that I am looking for my house. I looked for it myself. I looked for it on a portal, in a real estate agency, and I am paying for it, as I have done for 22 years. I have never been paid for any of this”, she maintained.
At that time, the Madrid president thus maintained that the property acquired by the regional Administration was not for her and defended that she was looking for and paying for her personal home on her own.
From “I have no idea” to “it was from my team”
On September 24, Ayuso again referred to the operation during an interview on the program 'En boca de todos'. On this occasion, the president explained who, according to her version, proposed the acquisition of the property.
“Well, it was from my team. My team saw that... Let's see, from my team, but I didn't think it was bad. So, we all saw it here.”, she affirmed.
Ayuso explained that her team proposed temporarily using the property as an office while works are carried out at the headquarters of the Presidency of the Community of Madrid. “They proposed that, taking into account that we have to carry out some renovation works (...) we could temporarily allocate the office there”, she pointed out.
The explanation thus incorporates the intervention of her own team in the decision to acquire the property and Ayuso's knowledge of the proposal. In August, however, the president had assured that she had “not the slightest idea” about Planifica Madrid's purchase and sale operations and that they were not her responsibility.
Ayuso herself has continued to defend that the penthouse was not going to become her personal residence. In the interview on September 24, she explained that, during the planned works in Puerta del Sol, she could temporarily move to another ministry and that the Chamberí property could function as a residence with an office for the Administration.
In this way, the statements of the Madrid president about the penthouse have gone through several public explanations: in August she stated that she was unaware of Planifica Madrid's real estate operations; in September she defended that she had never lived in a penthouse and challenged the opposition to prove that she had lied; and on September 24 she indicated that the idea of buying the property came from her team and that, although she was not the one who proposed the operation, "I didn't think it was a bad idea."
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