The Community of Madrid has spent 69.3 million euros since 2014 to pay the rent for eight buildings that the Government of Ignacio González sold, and in which the Administration has continued to operate as the buyer's tenant.
It is a ruinous real estate operation.
First, because it affected emblematic properties.
Second, because the exit of the autonomic patrimony supposed a decapitalization of the public system.
And third, because the commitment to sell buildings and then operate from them in exchange for rent has caused the Administration to have spent 54% of what it entered in less than 10 years.
The regional government received 128,469,346 euros with the purchases and will have paid 69,344,550.05 in rents by the end of 2022, according to information obtained by EL PAÍS in application of the transparency law.
San Jerónimo race.
Chamberi.
Gran Vía. Zurbano.
When public buildings come up for auction in 2013 and 2014, they immediately whet the appetite of investors.
They are in some of the most sought after streets in the capital, and the entire real estate market knows that the Community needs to sell as it can.
"We don't have a single fucking penny," the regional president, Esperanza Aguirre, had already said in 2011, in a slip that portrays a time of budgetary anguish derived from the crisis caused by the bursting of the real estate bubble.
However, her successor at the head of the regional government, Ignacio González, is clear about how to get out of the hole.
Sell, for example, a development of 2,935 public housing for 201 million.
It brings to market multiple public properties scattered throughout the region.
And, finally, he does a double somersault with several of them, which the Community wants to continue using after selling them.
In real estate jargon it is said
sale and lease back
, although it is usual to include a repurchase option
.
That is, the regional government will collect from the buyer with one hand, and with the other it will return the money year after year in the form of rent.
For investors, a candy.
For the Administration, a ruinous business.
For example, the Community of Madrid has already spent 17,472,163.81 million euros renting the building at Vía Lusitana 21 that it sold in May 2014 to the Madrid Chamber of Commerce and Industry for 16,697,836 euros.
In other words: the Administration has already spent 774,000 euros more on renting a building that was its own than what it received from selling it.
It does not seem that it will be a unique case.
Four more buildings of the eight sold and then rented follow the same path: in three the Community has already spent nearly 60% of what it earned less than a decade ago on leases, and in one it has reached 50%.
The Executive does not clarify how long it will continue to rent under these conditions, but documentation accessed by EL PAÍS shows that it is contractually committed to remaining in one of them until 2027. Plenty of time for
the buyers to
hit .
In addition, a ninth building was sold in 2014 for 17.9 million and under the same sales and rental formula.
The Administration has not detailed how much has been spent on its lease, arguing that the rental of the facilities at calle Embajadores 181 is not paid by the Community directly, but by a dependent entity (the Agency for the digital administration of the Community from Madrid).
The landlord's accounts, consulted by this newspaper, reflect rental income on that property of around one and a half million euros per year, which would raise Madrid's total bill for using buildings that were his, and sold, up to almost 86 million , about 60% of what you entered.
—Why does the Community prefer to pay these rents in buildings that used to be theirs instead of moving those dependencies to other unused publicly owned buildings for which they would not have to pay anything?
—What advantages does it have for the Administration to pay the rent of buildings that were theirs, which is allowing their buyer to recover their investment?
—How many more years do you plan to continue paying these rents?
—What assessment is made of the patrimonial loss that losing these buildings has meant to all Madrid residents?
—Does the current government consider that the sale and rental decision made by the Executive of Ignacio González responds to the principles of efficiency and effectiveness?
This is the Administration's response to these five questions: "Currently, the Community of Madrid does not have publicly owned buildings that meet the appropriate characteristics to house the headquarters of official bodies such as a ministry", justifies a government spokesman.
“In the case of leases, the Community of Madrid always carries out an intense search for the most suitable spaces due to their location and price”.
Since Madrid sold the buildings and then stayed inside, many things have changed.
There have been four new regional presidents, all from the same party, the PP: Cristina Cifuentes, Ángel Garrido, the interim Pedro Rollán, and Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
The region has experienced its first coalition Executive, the one formed by the PP and Cs between 2019 and 2021. And it has given time for the crisis that caused those sales to give way to a period of relative prosperity that now again gives way to a new crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
However, in the midst of all these changes, the policy of allowing the buyer to recover his investment thanks to the rent payments has remained unchanged except in three cases.
Thus, for the properties on the first floor of Zurbano 56, only three annuities were paid, which were four in the case of Gran Vía 18, and six in Gran Vía 20. In the rest of the buildings, the Community continues to pay individuals for using what used to be theirs, and as theirs, of all the people of Madrid.
Methodology.
The buildings studied are those in which the Community of Madrid was listed as the lessee in a lease agreement with a public company at the time of the sale, and the purchasing company became the new lessor by subrogation.
The information on the purchase price and the amount paid by the Community of Madrid in rentals has been provided by the Directorate General for Heritage.
The amounts paid for rent have been reduced proportionally in those years in which the sale took place in the middle of the year.
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