Toni Cantó will be number five on Díaz Ayuso's electoral list for the Madrid elections

Toni Cantó, former deputy of UPyD and Cs, will occupy the fifth position of the candidacy of Isabel Díaz Ayuso to the presidency of the Community of Madrid.

This was announced this Friday by the conservative formation, closing 48 hours of wear at the expense of the controversial signing, which has revealed the discrepancies between the team of the president of Madrid and that of its national leader, Pablo Casado.

Cantó's presence on the list is still pending for the provincial electoral board to validate that he meets the requirements (he was not registered in Madrid when the electoral roll was closed), as defended by the PP.

After two days of tension, a meeting called on Thursday at 5:00 p.m. puts an end to the disagreement between Casado's team and Díaz Ayuso's.

With the future of the most important government that the PP keeps at stake, the configuration of the list was left in the hands of only five people.

Casado, Díaz Ayuso, the national secretary general, Teodoro García-Egea, his Madrid counterpart, Ana Camins, and the interim president of the PP of Madrid, Pío García-Escudero, are mentioned.

From number one to 135, the five politicians reach “without any problem” a global agreement, according to two interlocutors with knowledge of what happened.

In a few minutes the fate of more than a hundred politicians is decided.

There are political careers that are born, because they are incorporated for the first time to the lists.

And there are races that end, because there are several historical PP that cause low.

In between, a pulse that neither party is willing to acknowledge in public is left to dispute.

"The arrival of Cantó is not an imposition on Díaz Ayuso," defends a source with stripes in the Madrid and national PP.

“Another thing is for the president to announce that all her advisers would go behind her.

The candidacy is not made by the government, it is made by the party.

And everything has been agreed ”, he adds.

“The problem comes from the fact that it was leaked that they had a meeting with him, and those things are annoying.

But she is very happy with the signing, ”he assures, despite the fact that the president of Madrid has not yet welcomed Cantó, and continues to avoid commenting on his signing.

There are agreements, therefore, that can be read in opposite ways.

Although the national leadership has wanted to banish this Friday the ghost of open tension with Díaz Ayuso, noting that in the composition of the list "there are no winners or losers", and that in all the starting positions are their trusted advisers and politicians , the truth is that the influence of Casado's team in the configuration of the list is evident.

Thus, the incorporation of Cantó as number five has forced the president of the Community of Madrid to alter the commitment that she had made publicly to place her seven directors in the first eight positions on the list.

Ahead of the actor will only be for the president herself;

the Minister of Health, Enrique Ruiz-Escudero;

the general secretary of the party in Madrid, Ana Camins;

and the Minister of Justice, Enrique López.

"It is a pride to have a brilliant and brave politician like Toni Cantó," Casado wrote on his social networks.

Behind the actor are the other five directors of Díaz Ayuso, and some classic names of the PP: Alicia Sánchez-Camacho, who was the leader of the Catalan PP and is seeking her second term in Madrid, and Mari Mar Blanco, who worked as a Housing advisor of the PP in the Madrid City Council after losing his seat in Congress in the last general elections.

The composition of the list not only reflects the traditional balance that the national PP, the Madrid PP, and the regional government must achieve in the elaboration of the lists, which each share one third of the positions.

It also shows that García-Egea, the general secretary of the party, has placed politicians of his trust where he wanted.

Numbers two, three and four on the list are profiles as close to Casado as they are to Díaz Ayuso.

Ruiz Escudero and López (number two and four) are, in addition to regional councilors, “the two strong men” and “trusted” of the national leadership in Madrid, according to sources in Genoa.

López is the secretary of Justice of the national PP and has been gaining ascendancy in the circle of Casado, who has commissioned him to negotiate the frustrated pact for the renewal of the judiciary.

In addition, Ana Camins enters number three on the list, standing out ahead of the Ayuso government advisers: the general secretary of the Madrid PP is also a representative of “the PP pure and simple”, they stand out in the national leadership, and Casado has shuffled his name to preside over the party in Ayuso's place.

Close friends from his time in the youth of the party, for Casado Camins is something more than the secretary general of the party.

She is, the national leader always says, "the general secretary."

The role of Camins has been fundamental in the elaboration of the list, softening the landing of Cantó despite the surprise that the signing of the actor in a sector of the Madrid PP has caused.

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"I expected it, because he is a political pirate, a mercenary, but his arrival screeches," says a politician who has had the highest responsibilities in the PP.

"Not so much surprise, it is in the context of the Cs debacle and the successive incorporation of its leaders and affiliates to the PP, with the horizon of 4-M there," agrees another popular interlocutor.

"He sang for us ... but in politics" things are true, friend Sancho. "

"It seems to me that it is to have our feet on the ground and understand what the voters are asking now: that we be more open and that we understand each other," intercedes a third position from the conservative formation.

This is my list and why my candidates:

2. Health

3. The PP project

4. Emergencies

5. Integration

6. Municipalities

7. Education

8. Digitization

9. The economy

10. Experience

11. The strategy

...

So until 136. pic.twitter.com/gMIpINHT2W

- Isabel Díaz Ayuso (@IdiazAyuso) March 26, 2021

These different points of view reflect the reasons why the signing of the actor opened a period of tension two days ago between the national leadership of the PP and the team of the Madrid president.

Genoa announced on Wednesday the incorporation of the former UPyD and Cs politician to Ayuso's list, while the candidate and her team were reluctant to close the signing.

The operation, therefore, exposed the tensions between the national leadership of the PP and Ayuso's team, especially with his chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, whom in Genoa they have viewed with suspicion for a long time.

At the time, it evidenced the struggle over the design of the popular candidate's campaign, in which the national leadership has also wanted to decide.

"We have different strategies," settled a source close to the president, about what happened.

Now there is only one, and Cantó will be number five without Díaz Ayuso having yet publicly spoken about his incorporation, nor has he celebrated it.

This Friday, for now, he has only left a tweet about his electoral list.

In the photo, she with Ruiz-Escudero, her number two.

And no reference to Cantó.