The regional president of Madrid has accused the leadership of her own conservative People’s party (PP) of waging a “cruel and unfair” campaign to destroy her with false corruption allegations amid reports the party tried to hire private detectives to investigate her family.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who is often touted as a future PP leader, spoke out after media reports suggested that, during the first wave of the Covid pandemic, her administration gave a €1.5m contract for face masks to a company linked to her brother – for which he received a commission.
The reports also alleged that an official in Madrid city hall – which is also run by the PP – contacted a firm of private detectives with a view to getting them to investigate Ayuso and her family.
Relations between Ayuso and the PP’s leader, Pablo Casado, have been fraught over recent months. While Ayuso has bolstered her national and international profile since winning an emphatic victory in last year’s Madrid regional election, Casado has faced questions over his leadership strategies – not least the party’s recent, pyrrhic victory in last week’s Castilla y León regional election.
On Thursday morning, the PP mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, said he had looked into the reports that his administration had sought to hire a detective firm to spy on Ayuso and her family, and said he had found no evidence of such an arrangement.
A little later, Ayuso went on the offensive.
“Even though political life is full of heartaches, I could never have imagined that the national leadership of my party would act against me in such a cruel and unfair way,” she said in a televised address.
“There is nothing more serious than accusing someone in your own house, and who has a responsibility to govern, of corruption.”
Ayuso said that PP leaders had spent months putting together a dossier on her and her family in an attempt to associate them with corruption when all the party had to do was look at publicly available documents relating to the contract.
“The fact that they were preparing a file means that they weren’t searching for any truth; they were trying to smear me personally and politically,” she said.
Ayuso did not deny that the face mask contract had been awarded to a company linked to her brother, but she insisted the process had been completely legal.
“I asked my brother and he confirmed that he had had a business relationship with the company and that it was all completely legal, and that everything had been declared to the tax authorities,” she said.
She also challenged Casado and his circle to provide any proof whatsoever of wrongdoing, and pointed to her own electoral success.
“I’d like to know how many votes those who have spent months attacking me have won for the PP,” she said. “It’s very hurtful that the leaders of your party are not the ones who support you, but the ones who want to destroy you.”
The PP’s general secretary, Teodoro García Egea, hit back at Ayuso later on Thursday, saying that it had only sought her cooperation in examining the allegations, and adding that an investigation had been launched.
“Since we received information about these alleged irregularities over the summer and asked Isabel Díaz Ayuso about their veracity, all we’ve got from that direction – instead of a clear answer – is a massive campaign of attacks, packs of lies and slanders like the ones we’ve had today,” he said.
The furious scale of the PP infighting has not gone unremarked. The satirical news site El Mundo Today tweeted: “Joe Biden to send troops to Génova [the PP headquarters] following the escalation of violence within the party.”
