Isabel Díaz Ayuso, this Friday in Tres Cantos.Alberto Ortega / Europa Press
Isabel Díaz Ayuso's PP reacted yesterday with concern to the possibility that Rocío Monasterio's clash with Pablo Iglesias in the Cadena SER debate causes a turning point in a campaign that it comfortably dominated until now.
"This feeds the extremes, and both are delighted," said a conservative leader just as the parties face the final stretch of the campaign.
"Clearly they seek the confrontation with the intention of mobilizing their own," added another politician with stripes in the formation.
Díaz Ayuso against Vox: criticism of white glove
Ayuso: "It cannot be that those who provoke violence later become the offended"
The PP would need Vox to retain power, according to all the polls. At the same time, Díaz Ayuso wants to govern alone, chastened as he is by the daily conflicts that he experienced in the coalition Executive that he formed with Cs between August 2019 and March 2021. That places the strategists of the conservative formation in a situation delicate, because they aspire for the Monastery to obtain enough deputies so that it can invest its candidate as president, but not so many that it can claim its entry into the Executive. That is why the PP lives with concern the consequences of the debate on the SER network, which put the focus on Monastery and Churches and may unleash a change of script for the remainder of the campaign. The reason? When one is leading the polls, as it happens to Díaz Ayuso, all change is for the worse.
"This feeds the extremes, and both are delighted," said a leader about the clash between Monastery and Churches who stressed that his opinion was personal.
"We are focused on our campaign and the President's institutional agenda," he continued.
And he compared: "Ayuso, meanwhile, [in an institutional act] with the Kings."
"It seems to me that [at Vox] they are very nervous," explained a second interlocutor.
"We condemn all violence and threats come from where they come and are suffered by us or others," he continued.
"I see that they clearly seek the confrontation with the intention of mobilizing their own."
The PP saw yesterday as a triple victory that Díaz Ayuso was not present in the candidate debate. First, because that way he did not have to improvise a reaction, and decide whether to continue in the radio face-to-face or get up to leave. Second, because that way it was not identified with the extreme right in that situation, as it did to the PP in Madrid, which published a tweet that it later had to delete ("Iglesias. Close when leaving. May 4"). And third, because everything happened while Díaz Ayuso was in Alcalá de Henares in an act with the Kings, which reinforced it as an institutional reference in Madrid, in the opinion of the conservative formation.
"We cannot be constantly with that level of aggressiveness," said Díaz Ayuso in conversation with this newspaper, warning that he did not know the incident first-hand, because he had not heard or seen it live.
"We have to reflect," he added generically, equating Monastery and Churches.
Nobody in the PP in Madrid criticized that Monasterio had questioned the death threats received by Iglesias, and that he also compared receiving an envelope with bullets to throwing stones at a far-right rally in Vallecas.
It was an example of the white collar campaign that Díaz Ayuso is orchestrating with respect to Vox.
In the candidate debate on Wednesday, held on Telemadrid, the PP leader did not mention Monasterio even once.
A thousand times the far-right leader cited the conservative one, and a thousand times Díaz Ayuso turned a deaf ear.
The two parties seek to seduce the same pool of voters.
The president of Madrid attracts 8.8% of voters who supported Vox in 2019, according to the latest CIS poll.
And in that situation it is not convenient for him to enter the clash proposed by Monastery to highlight supposed differences between PP and Vox, but to maintain the status quo.
It's about avoiding direct criticism and confrontation.
Thus, Díaz Ayuso has come to criticize Vox targeting unaccompanied foreign minors served by the Community of Madrid ... without mentioning Vox.
“Madrid is not xenophobia, it is integration.
Madrid is not unsafe, crimes are going down, it is a welcoming and inclusive city, especially of immigration, ”he said on Thursday.
And when she is associated with the extreme right, which made her president in 2019, she stands out.
"I aspire not to have partners," he assured this week.
But something changed yesterday.
The debate clearly illuminated some of the darkest parts of the Vox project.
And as the PP will need him to govern, the problem will haunt Díaz Ayuso for the remainder of the campaign.
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