Who is Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the stranger who stumbled in Madrid

Marina Artusa

05/05/2021 2:31 PM

• Clarín.com

• World

Updated 05/05/2021 2:31 PM

A

Isabel Natividad Díaz Ayuso

liked heard to

say in the campaign for regional elections which just won by a

landslide with nearly 45 percent of the votes among the wonders of life Madrid, is that "you can change partner and never meet her again.

That is also freedom ”.

He said this in allusion to his campaign slogan

- "Freedom" -

with which he fought, from the beginning, the restrictions that the government of Pedro Sánchez imposed due to the pandemic.

"We are all Ayuso,"

says a poster that many Madrid bars and restaurants in the busiest areas of the capital have stuck on their windows like rosettes.

That was his

great merit

.

Without being a race politician or a statesman, Isabel - or "Chicheta", as her childhood friends call her - knew how to tune in with the overwhelm of the people, tired of dealing with the virus and "what cannot be done" .

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, at the headquarters of the PP in Madrid.

Photo: EFE

42 years old, this laureate in Journalism who has been a member of the Popular Party since 2005 and where she was the strategist of the Twitter account of Pecas,

the dog

of the former regional president Esperanza Aguirre, was unknown to the people of Madrid when one day in 2019 , the president of the PP, Pablo Casado, laid out the red carpet for her and presented her as the party's candidate for the elections for the Community of Madrid.

He had to face Angel Gabilondo, a former PSOE minister who was the one who gathered the most votes but stayed outside the Royal Post Office - headquarters of the regional government - because he did not manage to add adhesions to form a government.

The then

"almost" unknown

Díaz Ayuso did succeed: she joined forces with Ciudadanos and put her body into an investiture that she herself beheaded two years later, calling for early elections whose result today is the best music for her ears.

Without great speeches

or promises, this May 2021 he knew how to capitalize on the sentiment of the street and filled the polls with almost a million more votes than those he garnered in 2019.

Paper and luxury

It seems that in the 21 districts of the capital in which no one won remembers

the role

when she said convinced, in one of her first conferences of the covid era, that Covid-19 was an acronym and that the final "d" corresponded to "December ”(December), the month in which the virus began to circulate in China.

The "d" actually stands for

disease

.

She was, incidentally, one of the first civil servants in Spain to be infected and her isolation in

a luxurious apartment

of a businessman for a rent of few coins fattened the pages of political scandals.

The president of the Community of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso, greets from the balcony of the party headquarters.

Photo: Europa Press

He boasted of having set up, near the Barajas airport, a pandemic hospital in three months: the public hospital Nurse Isabel Zendal, which opened its eyes and began to beat without covid patients and with a protest from health workers at the door.

It was built with

double its

initial

budget

, which was around 50 million euros, and surrounded by halos of rumors and suspicions about the awards of the works.

"How many health workers have you hired for the hospital?" A Telemadrid journalist had asked him months before the inauguration.

"The hospital will not lack medical supplies or any type of personnel", was the live response that the president of Madrid gave then.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, accompanied by the president of the party Pablo Casado.

Photo: EFE

At the insistence of the journalist, Díaz Ayuso replied: “I am not responsible for Human Resources at the Ministry of Health.

I think the president of the Community does not have to go into the detail of how they are going to organize shifts, ”she said,

somewhat nervous.

And he added: “These are questions that are not normally asked of a regional president.

My responsibility is that there is a public hospital working. "

In his 2019 asset declaration, he acknowledged having a salary of 58,790 euros per year and a house in Madrid of 140,507 euros, according to its cadastral value.

At that time, he was driving around Madrid with a Golf that he had bought in 2012.

She was married and her last known love is a

former hairdresser turned

marketing

manager

.

"Spain owes me one: that we have removed Pablo Iglesias from La Moncloa," Díaz Ayuso said ironically when the former leader of Podemos announced that he was leaving the vice-presidency of the government to dispute the Community of Madrid with her.

"From Moncloa and politics," Díaz Ayuso thought this morning, when Iglesias announced that he was hanging up his boots after the disappointment in Tuesday's elections, where he barely managed to add three more deputies than Podemos already had in the Assembly from Madrid.

Madrid.

Correspondent

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