The PP of Madrid approaches the evangelical churches to capture the immigrant vote

In September, a delegation of Madrid Popular Party leaders, including Isabel Díaz Ayuso's

, Alfonso Serrano, attended an evangelical macro-event for 3,000 people in Fuenlabrada called Invasión Madrid Fest.

There, between musical performances, sermons and miracles (a myopic woman assured that she could suddenly see from afar: "The holy spirit has touched me, I see everything clearly"), the representatives of the PP went up on stage to collect an award for the president Ayuso from Madrid and the mayor José Luis Martínez-Almeida.

It was handed over to him by a pastor whom the PP has won over to its cause, the Colombian Yadira Maestre.

Maestre is an evangelical pastor who gathers around 300 parishioners every weekend at her Cristo Viene church, in a spacious nave under an office building in the southern Usera district of Madrid.

Her audience, coming mainly from Latin America, is part of what the Popular Party calls "the new Madrileños," the immigrant communities that increasingly have more weight in the region's vote.

In the last two years, Maestre has met on several occasions with leaders of the Madrid PP, has ceded his temple for a collection of signatures against the pardons of the Government of Pedro Sánchez to the independentistas and has published on his Instagram photos in PP acts .

@LatinosConAyuso collecting signatures against pardons🔥💪

Many thanks to Pastor Yadira Maestre of the Cristo Viene Church for lending us her space 🙏🙌#libertad #justicia pic.twitter.com/X81XSytHUz

— Hispanics With PP (@HispanosConPP) June 20, 2021

The rapprochement with the evangelical churches has gained strength since Ayuso took over the regional command of the party in May.

On social networks, the secretary of Nuevos Madrileños of the PP, Gustavo Eustache, has published about these visits using the hashtag #nuevosmadrileños, which refers to the PP's strategy to win support among immigrants.

And the Deputy Electoral Secretary, Jorge Rodrigo, participated in a meeting in June with Pastor Maestre at a PP headquarters.

The conservative party also invited several Romanian pastors from the region to its headquarters in Genoa on November 13.

However, and against this evidence, a spokeswoman for the Madrid PP tells this newspaper that the party does not have a strategy to capture the evangelical vote.

“All the acts with the evangelical churches are part of the meetings we do with different sectors of society.

We meet with all religious organizations, especially those that have social work.

They are usually the ones who invite us”.

After his meeting with Pastor Maestre in June, the deputy electoral secretary highlighted in statements for an article on the party's website that the objective of the PP is "to unite relations with these evangelical churches, around the project and the program of the PP of Madrid , and with the utmost respect, publicize the work that is being carried out by the regional government, as well as by the municipalities managed by the PP, especially the Madrid City Council”.

"We want to get closer to what the groups of faithful represent, especially the new Madrid residents with Hispanic roots who make up this church," Rodrigo stressed.

Image of June 15, 2022 in a PP headquarters.

From the left

Carmen Cervantes, president of Latinos for the PP;

Gustavo Eustache, secretary of Nuevos Madrileños;

Jorge Rodrigo, Electoral Secretary;

and Yadira Maestre, pastor of the Cristo Viene church. PP DE MADRID

Since that meeting, Maestre and leaders of the PP in Madrid have met on at least three occasions: the macro-event in September, a Christmas celebration at the PP headquarters in Usera and a visit by Eustache and the president of Latinos for the PP, Carmen Cervantes, at the temple of Christ Comes in Usera during a religious service.

Maestre's church responds in writing that it welcomes all ideologies.

"We do not have any kind of distinction between people, for ideological reasons, sex, reason or condition."

As EL PAÍS has been able to see, during a visit and in the videos on YouTube, their religious services revolve around the spiritual, although sometimes they talk about politics in generic terms (for example about "laws against the family") and Maestre has also encouraged his church to participate in anti-abortion demonstrations.

769 temples

Evangelical voters have been a crucial bloc for conservative parties in other countries.

In the United States or Brazil, presidents Donald Trump and Jair Bolsonaro won thanks to broad support from those bases.

In Spain, the size of this religious community is much smaller, but it is becoming more significant thanks to the growing influx of immigrants from Spanish America.

In the Madrid region, 769 evangelical churches operate, according to the Observatory of Religious Pluralism, which does not give figures on the number of believers.

The Federation of Evangelical Religious Entities of Spain (Ferede) estimates that 1.5 million people are evangelical throughout the country, where there are 4,341 churches.

All in all, Ferede has a clear commitment to neutrality.

In 2019, seeing that political polarization was leading some believers to speak out without the proper spirit, they released some recommendations asking pastors to avoid participating in partisan politics or asking to vote for a certain party.

A spokesman says most respect this advice, but because of the multitude of places of worship, "it's not possible to control them all."

Stefan Albu, another of the pastors who have recently met with PP leaders, stresses that his church is not a place to do politics.

A delegation from the Madrid PP visited his church, Emaus, in the San Blas district (east of the capital) in January.

It is a temple with capacity for 700 people attended by Romanians from all over the region.

In November, Albu had attended, along with a small group of Romanian pastors from the region, the PP headquarters on Genoa street.

"The visit of the team of new Madrid residents was made by virtue of the friendship I have with a member of the team and because two other people on the team share evangelical convictions like us," says Albu.

“At no time was it mentioned that we should vote for the PP or another party.

It was just a courtesy visit.

They participated in the cult, they listened to me preach and in the end they left.

Our church is open to anyone who is interested in meeting us and hearing our message.”

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