The PP mobilizes officials and deputies to support Ayuso in the midst of the penthouse crisis: "We ask for your collaboration to post positive comments"

The Madrid PP has mobilized its officials, workers, and regional deputies to publicly defend Isabel Díaz Ayuso amidst the crisis over the purchase of the luxury penthouse in Chamberí. The regional leadership has asked them to share the president's content and publish positive comments about her management, according to an internal message revealed this Tuesday by 'El País'.

"We ask for your collaboration to share and post positive comments," states the communication sent from the party. From now on, recipients will receive links to interventions and publications that the leadership deems most important to reinforce their dissemination on social media.

The request organizes a response from the regional apparatus that until now depended on the initiative of each leader. It will also allow verifying who joins Ayuso's public defense during a crisis that has begun to generate discomfort within the PP. Support for the president thus becomes a collective task for the Madrid organization.

The operation that has caused this deployment became known on July 29. Planifica Madrid acquired a 485-square-meter penthouse in Chamberí in April for an amount close to six million euros. The purchase was outside the public company's annual budget, remained unpublished for more than three months, and still does not have an accessible file that allows knowing all its details.

The regional government initially explained that the property would serve as a temporary office for Ayuso during future works at the Real Casa de Correos. Urban planning regulations reserve that floor for residential use, and the City Council had not received a request to modify it. The Community later spoke of institutional meetings and, just one day later, announced that it would sell the penthouse and allocate the proceeds to municipalities affected by the fires.

The PP tries to close the penthouse issue

The deputy secretary of Sectoral Coordination of the PP, Alma Ezcurra, defended this Tuesday that Ayuso had already offered the "appropriate explanations". "For the PP, the explanations have been given," she assured before reproaching government ministers for their "extraordinary coordination" in denouncing the purchase.

Her response contrasts with the words of Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo. Asked in an interview in 'El País' if she had understood the operation, the national PP deputy responded with a brief "no, not yet". She has been one of the few relevant voices in the party who has publicly expressed her doubts.

The discomfort goes further within Génova 13. Sources from the national leadership consulted by 'ElConstitucional.es' consider that the decision to sell the property represents "the first time Ayuso has backed down" in the face of a controversy. These same sources assure that the photograph of the penthouse has generated "shame and indignation" and describe the president as "truly affected."

The crisis also originated within the Madrid structures. 'ElConstitucional.es' published last Friday that the leak of the purchase came from the environment of the Vice-Ministry of the Presidency and was related to an internal war around Planifica Madrid. The operation aimed at now reinforcing Ayuso comes, therefore, after the initial blow came from a person within her own Government.

A leader with power and increasingly more fronts against her

Ayuso maintains an enormous capacity for control over the PP of Madrid. She governs with an absolute majority, leads the party's main territorial organization, and maintains a national projection that conditions Génova's decisions. Her confrontation with Pablo Casado in 2022 ended with the fall of the then popular president, a precedent that still weighs when someone considers questioning her from within.

That power explains the speed with which the Madrid party has organized its defense. It also makes it more significant that criticisms have begun to appear. In recent weeks, Ayuso has strung together the failure of her institutional trip to Mexico, a crisis in her Ministry of Education, the confrontation with forest firefighters, the management of fires, and the penthouse controversy.

National PP sources consulted by this newspaper maintain that the Madrid leader "goes from blunder to blunder". Génova is even beginning to contemplate scenarios that until now seemed unthinkable, including the possibility that she will arrive weakened to the next regional elections or find difficulties in repeating as a candidate.

The PP of Madrid has responded by activating its entire digital structure in favor of the president. The complete purchase file continues to remain unpublished. While the Community decides when to deliver it, the party's first visible measure has been to send links to its officials to support Ayuso on social media.