They were not angry leftists, but part of the people of the right, armed with their Spanish flags and in open rebellion against the party that has represented them for decades.
There were few adjectives spared to vilify Pablo Casado: coward, traitor, bandit, wimp, failure, mobster, brat, Sánchez's accomplice... All of this has been heard in the chants and read on the banners of the 3,000 people who, according to the Government Delegation, have brought to the street, at the very gates of the national headquarters of the PP, the schism in the great party of the Spanish right.
A crowd enraged with Casado and enthusiastically delivered to Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
"Oa, oa, oa, Ayuso a La Moncloa!" They shouted in honor of the Madrid president, absent and silent while her followers covered the party leader with insults.
PHOTO GALLERY
The demonstration in favor of Ayuso in front of the PP headquarters, in images
The already aged building at number 13 Calle Génova has witnessed triumphant nights and protests by its political opponents.
Of the latter, none like that of that crowd that surrounded it on March 13, 2004, spurred on by the
fake news
- then they were not yet called that - from the Aznar government about the authorship of the Atocha massacre.
What that building for sale, a symbol of the best and the worst in the history of the PP, had never seen was another indignant crowd and this time emerged from their own ranks, a crowd that cut off traffic and also surrounded the headquarters of the party, closed tight and tight and protected by a large police contingent.
There were no known political leaders there, only ordinary militants and sympathizers of all ages.
The demonstration had been called through social networks by Ayuso's supporters, who did not make any public statement, neither to expressly encourage it nor to dissuade its fans.
The calls to gather in front of the PP headquarters in other Spanish cities have hardly had an impact, unlike in Madrid, where the shouts and homemade banners, with remnants of photos and written in marker, offered the stamp of a spontaneous protest.
Other groups seemed more organized, such as those brandishing printed posters with an image of Ayuso and the slogan “Moncloa 2023″.
The Madrid president took over almost everything in the shouts, the written slogans and the conversations, with some room for other leaders opposed to the leadership such as Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo.
One of the banners closest to the headquarters also featured the photo of the Galician Alberto Núñez Feijóo, the most active territorial baron in the crisis, which did not arouse so much unanimity.
"But if it's that one, he's a nationalist!" one protested.
“Let him go with the drug dealers!” shouted another.
Nearby, a group carried a Galician flag while chanting "Galicia with Ayuso!".
Among the Galicians, two from Vigo met by chance, a lady who identified herself as being from a well-known family of canners in the city and a man who also said he was a businessman.
The man revealed:
-I live here, but I'm waiting for Ayuso to force Feijóo to lower the wealth tax and return there.
Protesters in front of the PP headquarters, this Sunday.
Victor Sainz
Apart from Casado, the other great target was his general secretary, Teodoro García Egea, lambasted even in worse terms than his boss.
“Egea to prison!” Shouted a woman in the first row next to the building, before addressing those around her: “And what they have said about Vox!
If that is our right, the one defended by Spain!”
A few meters inside, in the heart of the crowd, a man in his sixties, wearing a red visor, explained to his interlocutors: “I have been a member of the PP for 30 years, now I am not, now I am from Santiago Abascal Conde.
But I have come here because there is no right to this.”
A thesis ran from mouth to mouth and from poster to poster: that behind the accusations against Ayuso a maneuver by La Moncloa is hidden.
"I think this has been a thing of Bolaños [Félix, Minister of the Presidency]", commented a woman in her thirties who only identified herself as Paloma and who, like everyone else, subtracted iron from the case of Ayuso's brother who benefited from the sale of masks to his government in the worst of the pandemic: “It was a time of urgency, masks were needed, everyone did the same.
Also Bolaños and Ábalos.
And the million that Ximo Puig's brother has taken?
And Ada Colau?
And Óscar López [Sánchez's chief of staff] when he was at Paradores?
Only another banner displayed in the first rows in front of the headquarters door contained a conciliatory message: “PPaz”.
At one point, the crowd remembered Ayuso's great proclamation and began to chant "freedom! freedom!".
The ayusismo can already coin a new dilemma: Married or freedom.