The mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, has confirmed that he will not meet with the president of Argentina, Javier Milei, during his visit to the capital, although he has indicated that he “thinks it is very good” that the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, receives the Argentine president.
After attending the ABC Forum, the mayor stressed that he does not have a meeting scheduled with Javier Milei and defended that “what needs to be done is to have due institutional respect and courtesy, which is what the president of the Community of Madrid is going to do.” In that sense, he compared the visit of the Argentine head of state with the possibility that he wanted to see the mayor of Madrid, insisting that he “thinks it is very good that the president of the Community of Madrid receives a head of state who comes to Spain and wants to see the president of the Community of Madrid, as if he wanted to see the mayor of Madrid.”
Almeida's criticisms of Pedro Sánchez
Martínez-Almeida has also directed his criticisms at the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, considering that he talks more about Javier Milei than about the problems of Spaniards. “He prefers to talk about Javier Milei so as not to talk about the problems that Spaniards have, so as not to talk about housing, so as not to talk about how to make ends meet, so as not to talk about the shopping basket,” he stated.
The mayor of Madrid thus summarized his political diagnosis: “Pedro Sánchez feels more comfortable talking with and about Milei than talking with and about Spaniards.” In addition, he maintained that the President of the Government will be “very happy about the propaganda that Javier Milei has given him today,” although he recommended that he be “more attentive to the problems of Spaniards than to what” the Argentine leader says.
Ayuso, Milei and the political debate in Madrid
In his speech, José Luis Martínez-Almeida also alluded to the role of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and placed Pedro Sánchez at the center of a political strategy, assuring that “he has an uncontrollable impulse thinking that Milei's visit could refloat him in the polls, because he is not refloating.”
The Madrid mayor insisted that “the left is not refloating nor is the left mobilizing in the polls” and added that, in his opinion, the President of the Government takes advantage of this visit “not in terms of Spain and Spaniards, but in personal terms.” In that context, he predicted that “Spaniards will not forget that Sánchez talks more about Begoña Gómez and Javier Milei than about the problems of Spaniards.”
