Casado prepares for the rising wave of Ayuso

Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado in an image "from about 15 years ago", according to the Madrid president, uploaded to their social networks last October.

“We were all 20 years old, it was 2000, Aznar ruled and we continued to live with ETA. They had recently assassinated Miguel Ángel Blanco, and the campaigns we carried out in the Basque Country united us a lot ”. Antonio González Terol, territorial deputy secretary of the PP, was then the president of New Generations in the Madrid district of Moncloa-Aravaca, where Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado arrived as PP militants. "Pablo and Isabel were very ideological and active," he recalls. “At that time, we affiliated a lot of people, to entire colleges. There a personal and political relationship was forged that continues to this day ”. The current leader of the PP and the president of Madrid took their first steps in politics together and became friends. Two decades later, those cubs of the PP are now its most important leaders.The victory of her friend Isabel in the Madrid 4-M elections has given Casado a decisive boost, but it also represents a personal and political challenge. The leader of the PP tries to surf the Ayuso wave without it passing over him.

"No one but me wanted Isabel's victory, and no one wants my victory more than she," Casado said this week. Since the 4th, the popular president has insisted on linking Ayuso's overwhelming victory in the regional elections with the initials of the PP - ”Isabel is pure PP; It's PP on all four sides, ”he said — and with himself. He recalled that she was his personal bet, when he decided to name her a candidate in Madrid in 2019 against the criteria of many. And he has vindicated his strategy as a necessary condition for the candidate's result at the polls. Some party sources have seen the leader overreact unnecessarily. "The auctoritas is to hold power without having to exhibit it," says a popular leader.

The sought-after image on the balcony of the Genoa headquarters on the night of the 4th was an example of this for some. The smiles and hugs that Casado and Ayuso shared while celebrating victory on the balcony of the PP headquarters were preceded by tense moments. "There were its pluses and minuses," acknowledges a popular source about the previous negotiations between both teams about how the victory should be celebrated, and who should star in it. Ayuso's advisers, led by Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, his chief of staff, were suspicious of the image because they understood that it brought back the old PP of Francisco Álvarez Cascos: “If it was up to them, there would have been no balcony. It had to be discussed until the last minute ”.

"We doubted everything: the situation, whether it was too ostentatious ...", admits a source from the Ayuso government.

“But as soon as the two of them [Casado and Ayuso] spoke on the phone, everything was solved.

They understand each other with their eyes ”, he adds.

"The noise is between the teams, the environments, who want to protect their bosses."

Nothing better reflects the underground currents that mark the relationship between the two leaders than that chapter.

There are PP politicians who are amused to see that the national leader increasingly delays the date on which he says he met the current president of Madrid in office, trying to strengthen their ties - "More and more years are coming out," they ironically.

And others point out that the two strive to maintain a good relationship, sharing almost daily confidences and periodic breakfasts, in the face of the obvious disagreements of their advisers.

Ayuso is not characterized by docile leadership either. Fly free, claim its autonomy and work its projection beyond Madrid. This week he has been dedicated to the foreign press, responding to a score of requests from the news media in Europe and America: he has given interviews to

The Times

or Radio Caracol from Colombia. “I have my own profile and I aspire to continue having it; I have always been independent and free, ”he said on the campaign trail. The

Times

he baptizes her as “the iron lady of Madrid”, and “the rising conservative star in Spain”, and warns that he “sets his sights on Pedro Sánchez”.

Another no-minor detail: the date of her next inauguration as president, June 19, has been carefully chosen to coincide with the seventh anniversary of the proclamation of Felipe VI as King of Spain.

The leader of the PP, Pablo Casado, talks with the acting president of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, at the ceremony on San Isidro Day, this Saturday.Juan Carlos Hidalgo / EFE

The tide of Ayuso has the next stop in the leadership of the PP of Madrid. In the environment of the president it has been surprising that both Casado and his

number two

, Teodoro García Egea, have avoided confirming her as the next regional leader to end the manager after her triumph on May 4. "The militants will decide," they both replied. An answer that sources from Ayuso's circle consider "atypical", given his overwhelming victory and since "what the party is going to choose is not the leadership of the PP; he is the candidate in 2023 ”. But Madrid has two sources of power, and the City Council also weighs in. With the 4-M data, the mayor, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, would have achieved an absolute majority, and in Genoa it is emphasized that the councilor “has a lot to say” and the leadership of the party has not been decided.

Ayuso meditates running to preside over the party in Madrid.

Although his relationship with the mayor is good, if that announcement occurs the main irate will be Almeida, who has clearly bet on a third figure to take control of the party.

"If Ayuso shows up, he will devastate," says a national leader.

Casado also assumes that he will no longer be able to impose profiles on Ayuso in the formation of his new Government - in 2019, Genoa sponsored the arrival of the councilors Enrique López and Javier Fernández Lasquetty.

Another sign of how much the power of the conservative leader has grown.

The president of the PP has taken note of the victory of the Madrid baroness.

Casado has read that a policy "of principles", "without complexes" and very close to the street, has worked for Ayuso, and he will put it into practice, but in a balance game.

He knows that he also has to like outside the borders of Madrid, where the right has other nuances and is less harsh than that of the capital, and he does not want to lose a centered position.

"The Madrid elections have validated Pablo Casado's strategy," explains an important member of the team of the president of the formation.

“We have to occupy a border area with the PSOE.

That a voter from the center asks himself if he wants to vote for the PSOE or the PP ”, he adds.

For now, Casado is content with surfing the wave.

"They are both still friends, but this is politics."

The disagreements between the circles of Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Pablo Casado have been repeated more or less underground during the Madrid campaign. "Díaz Ayuso's team leaked the first 20 on the electoral list to the press when they had not yet passed through the mandatory committee." And it felt very bad ”, says a popular leader. “Even though they get along great and talk constantly and decide the important things together, there are things that are difficult to manage. She is great, but then there is the other one, who has a lot of character ”, he adds. The "other" is Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ayuso's chief of staff, whom he is suspicious of in Genoa. “Everything seems wrong to him. He is always protesting ”, describe party members the attitude of the person who controlled all the details of the electoral campaign.

The question is how long the relationship of both can escape the friction of their respective teams. “This is not like the conflict between Alberto Ruiz Gallardón and Esperanza Aguirre, who came from different places and backgrounds. They come from the same place; that makes their relationship indestructible ”, reasons a leader of the same generation.

In addition to their first steps as militants, Casado and Ayuso worked side by side in the beginning in the party structure: when he was elected president of New Generations in Madrid in 2005, she was part of his communication team. And both worked at the same time for Alfredo Prada, Minister of Justice with Esperanza Aguirre as president: Married as adviser and Ayuso in the communication department. "They are friends and the result of Madrid has not changed that," says an adviser to the president, "but this is politics."