The only debate with the five candidates for the presidency of the Community of Madrid has concluded this Tuesday as a dialogue of the deaf in which Isabel Díaz Ayuso (PP) has avoided the melee with her rivals. The current president, launched towards victory in the 28-M, according to the polls, has ignored all the questions that have been asked about the great problems of the region – health, inequality, homeless families because of the Metro in San Fernando de Henares – and the most controversial aspects of her management – tax cuts, only a few Budgets in four years, and a housing plan with no floor built.

"I do not take myself for granted," Ayuso has come to say, as if instead of a debate he wanted to star in a monologue. A defensive strategy that each aspirant has tried to fight in his own way. Alejandra Jacinto, of Podemos, has given Ayuso a copy of Morirán de forma indigna, the book by former counselor Alberto Reyero about the death of 7,000 elderly people in nursing homes during the pandemic, which the conservative leader has rejected. Mónica García, from Más Madrid, has asked him to look her in the face. And they've all thrown a torrent of questions at him.

"Mrs. Ayuso, I want to ask you if you know how many Madrilenians are in social exclusion," Garcia, the leader of Más Madrid, has started the face to face to which the first minute of the debate corresponded by lot.

"How much does a person save who in the Community of Madrid charges 1,500 euros a month, 23,000 a year, and one who charges 100,000, like you? He knows? Can you tell me?", has followed the same tactic Jacinto, of Podemos, and then detail, before the silence of Ayuso, that the answer is 167 euros, and 1,343, respectively.

"Are you willing to stay so calm knowing that Madrid is the 32nd region of the European Union?" he asked regional president Juan Lobato, the leader of the PSOE.

To these questions, and any other, Díaz Ayuso has answered with calculated silence. Pure strategy. Launched in the polls, the PP candidate has tried to prevent any of her rivals from becoming her electoral nemesis, and has focused on the issues that have allowed her to go from being the first PP candidate to lose a Madrid regional elections since 1987 (she fell in 2019, when she governed thanks to Ciudadanos), to win in 2021 and opt for an absolute majority in 2023.

Like a musician before a concert as inevitable as it is undesirable, the conservative leader has stuck to her old hits, interpreted with professionalism. You mentioned ETA in your first speech. Then, to the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez ("governs against the Community of Madrid (...) hates Madrid"). He has promised further tax cuts if he governs again. And from there he has focused on criticizing the left ("they have put all kinds of obstacles in my way"), and blaming it, along with Vox, for the ills of the region ("We do not have budgets because everyone has voted against," he said, to minutes later contradict himself by saying that he would never negotiate them with the PSOE). As if nothing bad in Madrid had anything to do with its president.

Twice, García has had to remind him of the same thing: "It is the PP that has been governing the Community of Madrid for 28 years!"

Public health

And yes, the PP has governed the region consecutively since 1995. And yes, that's why Ayuso is showered with criticism when it comes time to talk about health, and they remind him of the hundreds of thousands of Madrilenians who mobilized to demonstrate in defense of public health; or the nursing homes and the 7,000 elderly people who died without being transferred to hospitals in the worst moments of the pandemic; or housing, when the president boasts, to everyone's surprise, of an area in which she promised to build 25,000 public rental homes... and then do none.

"Isabel Díaz Ayuso has lied," complained Jacinto, very incisive throughout a debate in which he has defended the residents of San Fernando de Henares homeless because of the Metro, or taxi drivers against the platforms of car rental with driver, like García. "A plan that has meant delivering zero homes to the people of Madrid can not be an example," he added. "They have zero shame."

Besieged by the left, Díaz Ayuso, who has come to propose a plant on every balcony in Madrid to combat climate change, has not had the help of Rocío Monasterio either. The Vox candidate has avoided clashing head-on with her, because they share the same electorate, but she has also slipped criticism ("Madrid is not the hell that the left paints us, nor the paradise they tell us every day"). In addition, the leader of the extreme right has starred in one of the most tense moments of the debate, when she has dedicated herself to gradually breaking a Vox propaganda of the 2021 elections while the next dialogue took place.

- I have to tell you that I was wrong, Monasterio has started. I was wrong when I told them that each unaccompanied migrant child costs us 4,700 euros per month. It wasn't true. It turns out that they cost us 6,400 euros per month.

"They are people and they deserve our respect, Mrs. Monasterio," Lobato replied.

"They are children, what a despicable thing," Garcia said.

Those phrases, pronounced one over the other while all the candidates spoke at once, have been among the few that have provoked a reaction from Ayuso. "Linking immigration with crime is a big lie," he said, recovering the helm of his speech after losing the thread when Jacinto wanted to give him the book about deaths in residences written by the former counselor of Citizens Alberto Reyero ("Do not invade my space," said the president, nervous). The candidate of Podemos, who at the end of the debate has shown a blouse with the face of the president's brother – who charged more than 55,000 euros for providing the masks with which a friend's company fulfilled the contract to provide masks to the Community in exchange for 1.5 million – has left the rejected copy clearly visible on its lectern. The cover of Reyero's book, in black and white, imitates an obituary. This is how he remembers thousands of deaths alone, confined by the virus, without a helping hand to ease the farewell. In the context of the debate, however, it has resonated as a cry of protest against the silence of the regional president.

The truth is that Alejandra Jacinto's blouse is cool in the debate ... pic.twitter.com/lAN8oPcX0M

— Pablo Iglesias 🔻 (R) (@PabloIglesias) May 16, 2023

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