Meetings, prizes and trips: Díaz Ayuso's permanent campaign in the PP war

Díaz Ayuso, in the center "leading" the rest of the PP barons, last weekend.

Next to him, very close, Feijoo in the Plaza de San Marcos in León. Francisco J de las Heras

Always in the eye of the hurricane. Always in front of the cameras. Always rushing every second of every minute of every hour of the day. This is how Isabel Díaz Ayuso feeds her leap into national politics, and thus disputes the internal war with the leadership of Pablo Casado to control the PP in Madrid: with a suffocating public and private agenda that portrays a politician in permanent campaign. All is fair in the struggle for power. Going to the congress of the PP of Castilla y León, getting a photo that seems to reflect his ascendancy over the rest of the barons, and winking to demand the celebration of the conclave in Madrid (“Dear colleagues, I was going to say compromisers. Let's see if we fuck,” he said Saturday). Meet almost every week with organic and institutional positions in the region to make them aware of your project. Or accept a score of prizes,with their respective photos and speeches, since they prevailed in the 4-M elections.

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“This communication strategy allows you to have a very present leadership that is strengthened to the detriment of (Pablo) Casado, who is neither here nor expected,” argues Verónica Fumanal, president of the Political Communication Association. "The photos from this weekend (during the PP congress in Castilla y León) show that she controls the scene, the rhythms, the headline...", he stresses. "He has a very important leadership capacity, pedaled by the media, because he makes headlines, and it doesn't hurt him to get into a controversy," he adds. And he concludes: “One of the principles of advertising is presence. If we apply this to politics, the politicians who appear in the media are the ones who set the agenda, which is decisive in political communication. And Díaz Ayuso, with his agenda for this start of 2022,she showed even more with her public presence that the PP had no other reference than her”.

January 6th. Díaz Ayuso meets in the United States with the mayor of New York, Eric Adams. It doesn't matter if it's Christmas. That the president of the Community of Madrid is on vacation in one of her favorite cities, which she has visited a dozen times. Or that the region still languishes rushing through the long weekend that follows the arrival of the Three Wise Men. A week has passed since his last public intervention, the recorded New Year's message. Too long, the president and her circle of court advisers must think, which includes Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, former Secretary of State for communication in the first government of José María Aznar; and Sandra Fernández, one of the people who knows the most about television in Spain, according to different interlocutors. So the machinery starts up again.

"With this, Díaz Ayuso manages to set the agenda very clearly, always from a very confrontational perspective," says political scientist Pablo Simón, who doubts that the president of the Community of Madrid has a more active agenda than other presidents, and explains its impact by the “polarizing” nature of his speech, which “generates an echo effect”, since it is of interest, for different reasons, to the left and to the right, and to all the media. “She benefits from her position as president of the Community of Madrid, and from being the mainstay of the opposition to Sánchez and a counterweight to Casado.”

Businessman Pelayo de la Mata places a bowler hat on the acting president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, during the 2021 San Isidro Bombines Awards ceremony. Alejandro Martínez Vélez / Europa Press (Europa Press)

How is Diaz Ayuso's communication strategy organized, which is showered with requests for meetings, interviews and various ceremonies?

How does that mix with your institutional agenda, which includes the weekly obligation of the meeting of the governing council and the plenary session of the Assembly?

“You have to be very strict with the times. They all say make room for them, it's only five minutes. But it's never just five minutes," replies a source trusted by the president of the Community of Madrid, who has frenetic public activity. He also meets with foreign leaders (such as those from Colombia, Ecuador or Lima), who receives an international award (he went to Milan to collect the

), who grants an interview, who celebrates two awards on the same day, like this monday.

"The data proves that our model has worked and that our model of life has conquered those who know it," says Díaz Ayuso after receiving recognition from the association of nightlife entrepreneurs in the Noche Madrid region. "Madrid is the capital of resistance to the pandemic and a benchmark for recovery," he adds, underlining his clash over the management of the pandemic with the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez. "We have become a focus of international investment, and Madrid appears in the top positions as the best tourist destination in the world," he says. “(We live) a complete economic, gastronomic, tourist and cultural renaissance. Let's take advantage of this focus to attract business and to consolidate ourselves as the international capital of culture, entertainment, leisure and freedom”.

Nothing is accidental.

Since he came to power for the first time, in August 2019, Díaz Ayuso has received dozens of awards, almost twenty just since he won the last elections, in May 2021. Hoteliers.

Merchants.

Bullfighting fans.

Audiovisual entrepreneurs.

Chefs.

Almost all the sectors that have recognized the work of Díaz Ayuso have done so for the same reason: his management of the pandemic, where Madrid has distinguished itself by betting on keeping businesses open while trying to stop the spread of a disease which has caused more than a million infected and 26,000 deaths in the region.

The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, after receiving the award from the Spanish Association of Women Entrepreneurs (ASEME). Jesús Hellín (Europa Press)

These figures, however, have also caused a negative award: in early January, she received the heart of stone from the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services "for her infamous management of nursing homes in the Community during the pandemic that It meant the death of more than 6,000 users.

The criticism of the professionals, however, has hardly had a public tour.

Its impact pales compared to the rest of the awards received by the president.

For the opposition, made up of Más Madrid, PSOE and United We Can, it is an example that Díaz Ayuso's interventions seek to set the agenda so that his statements are discussed and his management is not controlled.

“The contrast between the hyperactivity of President Ayuso to promote her public image and her sudden evaporation when it comes to talking about the issues that concern the people of Madrid is striking,” says Mónica García, the leader of the opposition. “He has time for award ceremonies but not to answer the letter in which we request a meeting to address the problem of minors in care. He has time for institutional trips but not to visit a health center and see first-hand the impact of the sixth wave. He has time for interviews in which to talk about his party's congress but not to talk about the price of housing or the ratios of teachers in schools”, he exemplifies. “In short, the usual modus operandi since she is president:two cups of personal propaganda and none of what really matters.

Díaz Ayuso is for the fine and for the thick. The

same goes to

, a program with maximum audience, as to an awards ceremony in Colmenar Viejo. To a Christmas drink in a central district of the capital, than to that of a town. To an international trip (United States), than to a national one (Catalonia) or regional (the entire Community is being covered). Always active: she gives dozens of interviews a month, on radio, television and in the written press. It is never still: it is the most demanded by the PP comrades who have elections.

"It's a show agenda, not a work agenda," adds Juan Lobato, the regional leader of the PSOE. "The vast majority are to say the nonsense of the day, and that it occupies the media space instead of the management and the challenges without facing", he continues. “So much agenda for awards, and so little to work in Madrid with the mayors and the rest of the parliamentary groups”, he adds. "I don't know how many letters I have written to him in a month and a half, four or five, about going back to school, for a pact for public health... and there is not a minimum of dialogue, nor a call to exchange opinions."

But everything is measured in detail to neutralize criticism. Díaz Ayuso periodically summons the opposition spokesmen for meetings in Sol that leave a photo and little else —in the last one, held in September, the PSOE was represented by Hana Jalloul, Lobato's predecessor as parliamentary spokesman—. From the regional mayors, complaining to see that she meets with the councilor of New York, but not with them, the councilors take care of it. It is a dynamic that a former collaborator of Díaz Ayuso already described: she stays with the great issues of national relevance, and leaves the regional day-to-day in the hands of the members of her government, who are the ones who go down to the mud of everyday life .

"The president has her own personal agenda with the sole objective of continuing to grow as a profile in the face of the internal struggles of the PP, and meanwhile the Community of Madrid has no one at the wheel," laments Carolina Alonso, from United We Can. "We have the president from gala to gala, from interview to interview, but in the meantime she has the Madrid assembly closed to the ground," he adds. And he exemplifies: “Instead of convening an extraordinary plenary session to be able to render accounts to the citizens about the network of sexual exploitation with minors protected by the community, as we have requested, here things continue as if nothing had happened. Exactly the same thing has happened with the return to school, not a single meeting with the educational community that asked for coordination to do it safely.

With Vox becoming the best supporter of the PP government's policies, the opposition's complaints compete to keep up with Díaz Ayuso.

Not an easy task.

This Tuesday, again, the president will star in a media sprint.

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