🥊 This Week in Spain: Sánchez vs. Ayuso

Also: The PP finds an unlikely ally and a weekend of chaos after a train derailment.

Oct 24, 2024

By @IanMount and @AdrianBono | October 24, 2024 | Madrid | Issue #75

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🥜 This Week in a Nutshell: If you traveled by train last weekend, there’s a chance you didn’t have a great time. Also, the very personal fight between PM Pedro Sánchez and Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso has gotten worse. A lot worse.

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* beef intensifies *

💥 It’s full-blown war between PM Sánchez and Madrid president Ayuso

It's time to grab the popcorn because this feud is getting really intense. We all know that things between Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, of the center-left PSOE, and Madrid regional president Isabel Díaz Ayuso, of the center-right PP, have been bad. But in the last few days, their relationship has gotten decidedly worse.

👮‍♀️To start, where we are with their respective, ahem, brushes with the law:

Pedro Sánchez. The PM has been dealing with legal troubles since April due to a corruption investigation involving his wife, Begoña Gómez. The allegations suggest that Gómez may have used her influence as the PM’s wife to secure business deals, particularly involving sponsors for a university program she ran. These claims coincided with another corruption investigation that threatens to take down Sánchez’s former public works and transport minister, José Luis Ábalos.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso. Madrid’s regional president is also facing political pressure because of her partner, Alberto González Amador, who was indicted for committing tax fraud (which he admitted to). Apparently he was involved in issuing false invoices through his companies, with fraudulent activity reportedly involving a total of €350,000 linked to his role as an intermediary in the sale of medical equipment during the COVID-19 pandemic.

“Private” info. Now, remember how last week Spain’s Attorney General Alvaro García Ortíz was in hot water for revealing information related to this case?

Ayuso was not happy about that. Speaking before the Madrid Assembly last Thursday, she accused Sánchez’s Cabinet of being “mafioso” and “full of Stalinists”.
Sánchez decided to clap back. During a press conference (in Brussels, no less) he asked when the PP would demand explanations from Ayuso, who is “in a relationship with a confessed criminal, someone who has defrauded the treasury”. (To be fair, since he hasn’t been convicted yet, maybe he’s just a “confessed fraudster”?)

Anyway. You follow? Great. It gets worse.

Ayuso decided that Sánchez’s “criminal” comment was a bridge too far and chose to take her toys and go home. On Monday, she announced that she would not attend a scheduled meeting between the two set for tomorrow and rejected Sánchez’s accusations, saying he was using the power of the national government to wage a “campaign” against her.

So wait…. what were they meeting about? Remember the very controversial fiscal agreement with Catalonia that the PP said was going to “break up Spain” and made everyone really angry just before the summer break? In order to appease all the regional leaders, Sánchez called for one-on-one discussions with them all and while a begrudging Ayuso had originally said she kinda didn’t want to go because she didn’t want to just “meet for coffee” and solve nothing, Pedro’s press conference in Brussels solidified her decision.
“You cannot normalize what is not normal,” read a statement released by the Madrid regional government that also explained that Sánchez had “defamed” Díaz Ayuso with “serious accusations” against her.
The PSOE called her refusal to attend an “irresponsibility” and Socialist leaders in the government called it “childish”, “grave” and “unprecedented”.
Ayuso maintains that she is a victim of political persecution. She will be the only regional president not to meet with Sánchez (all other PP leaders will, despite their differences).

And what’s PP party leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo saying? Glad you asked.

Who’s in charge? While he’s the boss, and Díaz Ayuso should fall in formation, the Madrid regional president is sort of a maverick who likes to go rogue from time to time (those calls from people in the PP saying she should be the leader of the party probably don’t help). El Mundo says Nuñez Feijóo only found out she wasn’t going a few hours before the official statement was released.
Agree to disagree and all that. Núñez Feijóo said Monday that it was a mistake not to go but that he “understands” her motives. The government for its part said her decision weakens him. Though they would say that, being opponents and all.

And just when you thought their spat couldn’t get more pissy. A Madrid judge ruled yesterday that she would accept a petition from the PSOE and Más Madrid (a part of Sumar) to expand the investigation into Amador to delve into whether he’d committed the crimes of administración desleal (basically administrative fraud) and corruption by using a front company to hide payments from Grupo Quirón.

Amador’s original plea deal with the tax man was aborted by a filing from the two left-leaning parties asking to expand the case and, while it was rejected, the revised version is what has been partially accepted.

For the love of god, Ayuso was NOT HAPPY about this. 😡 Luckily (for us), she got very unhappy about this in a public place, because she was speaking at the Premios Influyentes event, put on by El Confidencial and, honey, she let it all hang out.

Don’t hold back! “A private citizen [Amador] sees his tax return conveniently dissected and published, with ridicule, something that is completely illegal, because he is the boyfriend of a political adversary.”
Police state! "Spain is already a police state" because of "institutional abuse" of the Government, she said. "Spain is experiencing the worst institutional moment in its democratic history. The practices that have devastated democracy in many Latin American countries have reached Europe thanks to Pedro Sánchez, advised by (former Socialist PM José Luis Rodríguez) Zapatero.”
But no, there’s more! "Let us remember that the Constitutional Court and many judicial bodies are already colonized by Sanchismo; let us remember the power of the Minister of the Interior over the Police; let us remember the abuse of institutions," she said. "This is happening in Spain on October 23, 2024. I understand that there are those who do not want to see it, but many of us have already warned you.”

In other words, Sánchez and Díaz Ayuso hate each other on a deeply personal level. This ain’t gonna cool down anytime soon!

More news below. 👇👇

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💬 Five things to discuss at dinner parties this week

1.🤔 Strange bedfellows: Leftist Sumar joins center-right PP for vote in Parliament

Just as Sánchez and Ayuso were waging war this week, two political parties suddenly found common ground ❤️ for the first time on the floor of Parliament. Who? The center-right Partido Popular and leftist Sumar (who, in case you forgot, generally don’t like each other at all).

Huh? 🐈+🐕? Has the world gone mad? Possibly. How can a leftist party that is part of Spain’s current progressive coalition government side with the very party that they are trying to keep out of office? How can a conservative group of MPs who refers to Sumar as a party of “communists” suddenly think alike?

Well… It may have to do with the PP’s sudden — and suspicious 🤔 — quasi-progressive proposals they announced a few weeks ago and that we covered here.

Guns and stuff. This week, the PP pushed a legislative initiative that would require the government to seek parliamentary approval for arms shipments. At the same time, Sumar was introducing measures to “regulate abusive mortgage clauses and help those affected by these ‘scams’ recover their financial situations”.
Surprise! As expected, the PSOE was set to support Sumar’s legislation but reject the one from the conservatives, as the Socialists would have to rely on the PP for issues related to arms shipments. Until Tuesday, that is, when its opinion became irrelevant.

That’s when PP and Sumar reached an agreement ‼️ to support each other’s bills in Parliament. (Sumar abstained during the arms bill vote in exchange for the PP’s support.)

This one’s about Israel/Gaza. As RTVE explains, the arms bill would amend Article 7 of the National Defense Law to ensure that Spain’s military actions abroad become a “matter of state,” giving the legislative branch a more active role. In short, it would require the government to receive authorization from Parliament before sending military equipment to a war zone. This approval would have to be renewed annually.
This one’s about housing costs. Sumar’s bill aims to “compel banks to renegotiate thousands of variable-rate mortgages—granted before 2011—due to mathematical errors, irregularities, and a lack of transparency”.

So why did Sumar ditch PSOE?

As Doc Brown used to say: “You’re not thinking 4th Dimensionally.”

Less work more happy. Sumar is very interested in the PP’s sudden focus on social issues because it is strategizing for the future—specifically, on the debates over cutting working hours to 37.5 hours/week and parental leave, which party leader Yolanda Díaz has been insisting on for years and which the PP has recently decided to start looking into.
Spotlight, please. As El Mundo explains, this move not only helps Sumar take back the spotlight (their poll numbers have plunged into “irrelevant”), but it also opens the door to achieving consensus on certain policies. So while PSOE has been more aggressive towards PP since their “social pivot”, Sumar has chosen to apply pressure but “without overwhelming them”—hopefully to get some long-sought social progress.

PSOE and Vox are not happy. Because why would they be? Deputy Prime Minister María Jesús Montero said Sumar’s decision to make a deal with PP was “incomprehensible”, adding that “there was no reason to do this”. And the secretary general of the Vox parliamentary caucus, José María Figaredo, said his party thinks it’s “surreal” that the PP has supported the Sumar housing bill because “it will have a terrible impact on access to housing financing for Spaniards.”

Don’t read too much into this! While Sumar spokesperson Íñigo Errejón said passing the bills was overall “good news” (see video above), he quickly added that ideologically speaking, his party “has not moved one inch closer to the PP.” Just to be clear.

2. 🚆 Railroad near-tragedy averted in tunnel under Madrid

Let us praise those who derail trains. Oh, not all the time—just when it’s absolutely necessary. But before we go there, we should probably tell you a story.

It all started Saturday afternoon. A disabled train was being hauled uphill in the 7km tunnel that bifurcates Madrid between its two major train stations—Atocha and Charmatín—and once it reached the second of those, it was meant to be taken to be repaired in the workshops in the nearby neighborhood of Fuencarral.

Then something went wrong. The driver of the tow train evidently asked to back up to a flat part to gain momentum to get past a steep grade ahead. Suddenly—no one has determined why yet—the trains came unhooked, and the disabled train started rolling downhill. Faster. And faster. And faster.
200 km/h? No one’s quite sure what speed the train reached—some audios in the control center suggest it hit 200km/h, but a UGT union train workshop coordinator doubts just rolling downhill could get it going that fast. And no one knows why the two engineers in the runaway train didn’t hit the emergency brake. But hey, that’s what happened.
Fly, meet ointment. This is where the tricky bit pops up. A passenger-filled Iryo train from Murcia to Chamartín that’s been told to wait while the train is towed away is waiting on the same track in the tunnel, back near Atocha. You can imagine the Hollywood version of this, right? A cut of the Iryo conductor drinking a coffee, chatting and waiting; a cut to the runaway train; faster and faster cuts back and forth until OH MY GOD, NOOO! And then 🧨🔥☠️.
Enter the hero. A worker back at the Adif control center (Adif runs Spain’s train infrastructure) put 2+2 together and said “Cuatro!” Actually, something more like “Oh, shit!” and using his fast-twitch brain bits flipped a track switch so that the runaway train would not crash head-on into the Iryo train. (Memories of the 2013 derailment caused by excess speed near Santiago de Compostela, which killed 80, no doubt came to everyone’s mind.)
- CGT union weighs in on Adif workers. "It was a heroic act by our colleagues at Adif because they saved many lives. An accident in a tunnel is like a mousetrap because if there is a fire or an explosion as a result of the collision, no one comes out alive."
Well, mostly. Now, because it was going so fast (100km/h? The limit was 50km/h in that stretch) it derailed and flopped on its side. If you’ve seen pictures of a train on its side looking silly and embarrassed (check out the video above), that’s the one! But at least tragedy averted! 👏

Ever try to move a stuck train? Having a train stuck in a tunnel with only one track in each direction really gums things up, especially considering it’s basically the GI tract that connects northern and southern Spain via train. Dozens of trains were canceled and many others delayed. And there are questions. Like, again, why the engineers didn’t hit the break. Or why there wasn’t a tow behind the train pushing it too (the CGT expert told 20minutos this was the norm).

‘Splaining to do. Transportation Minister Óscar Puente (PSOE) said the problem wasn’t a lack of investment (we don’t need to say it but we will—the PP disagrees) and the train could be pulled out this weekend. There will be an investigation.

3. 🧑‍⚖️ PP’s ‘Bags of cash’ sideshow lawsuit tossed by a judge

Remember last week’s scandal du jour? The one where the PP sued the PSOE for supposedly receiving €90,000 in literal bags of cash 💰 at its headquarters—perhaps as a payoff for a hydrocarbons license? Well, don’t get too attached to it. It’s over. At least for now.

Why so fast? Judge Santiago Pedraz of the Audiencia Nacional (a high court) decided not to accept the case Monday for the not-so-shocking reason that…the PP had provided no evidence.
Like, for reals? Yup. Judge Pedraz noted that it was totally cool to base a filing on an anonymous complaint—as the PP had done, using in its case an anonymous interview with someone involved in the supposed incident in the online outlet The Objective—but you had to either a) provide your own corroborating evidence or b) have an anonymous complaint that was so damning that it could prove the wrongdoing without unmasking the anonymous complainer. The PP had neither.
The judge wrote: "In general, a news item alone does not legitimize any private plaintiff to convert the journalistic report into a report of punishable acts that trigger the criminal process” because, you see, “something more is required." Like, duh.

But is that really it? Far from it. The PP had filed its (flimsy) complaint upon learning that the court had opened a (real) investigation and detention of Víctor de Aldama—one of the middlemen in the Caso Koldo corruption case that has stained Pedro Sánchez’s former Public Works Minister José Luis Ábalos—for his role in a group that supposedly defrauded gasoline sales tax to the tune of €182m (not that we want to be criminals, but how exactly do you do that?).

Bit of pantomime. In fact, the PP assumed that there was a “big possibility” that it would not be accepted. But they did it anyway, the social media commentariat speculated, because it knew it would get the words “PSOE” “corruption” and “bags of money” into headlines for a week. And guess what? It did!
With pantomime in response. The PSOE said it would sue the PP for “slander and libel” for the incident. Which had a good chance of getting the same judicial answer the PP did— “Thanks, but no thanks.”

Sideshow to the main event. While frivolous lawsuits are all fun and games (and they are!), the much more serious and growing problem for the PSOE is the investigations and detentions (like, of Koldo García and Víctor de Aldama) in the Caso Koldo that started with presumed corruption in the purchase of COVID masks and is now all over the place. That will take time to come out, though. For now…

Scandal #735 of the year, we hardly got to know ya… 😢

4. 📺 We will control all that you see and hear

Bear with us because this one is complicated. But it’s important because it affects what you see—that is, who makes the news—on Spain’s national broadcaster, RTVE.

Like so many things that no longer work in this country (the system that elects judges, for one), the system to elect the board and president of RTVE was based on consensus between the PSOE and the PP.

Smoke-filled backroom stuff. There were 10 board members and a president, so the bigger party at the time might have six and the president and the other party have four. But now there are a lot of parties in parliament, and the PP is not offering the PSOE anything like a simple deal on a new board.

So now the PSOE has blown that up. The government of PM Sánchez has issued an emergency decree (which has to be approved by Congress within 30 days) that increases the board size to 15 and says it only has to be ratified by a simple majority on a second vote, not two-thirds as before.
Why? According to Minister of Digital Transformation Óscar López, the aims are to overcome the RTVE board’s institutional paralysis and to make it “the most plural in history” by adding members of smaller parties like the separatists/nationalists of ERC, Junts and Bildu.

But really? Of course, there’s more. By expanding the number elected in parliament (where the PSOE controls a bare-bones majority) from six to 10, while keeping the PP-majority senate representatives at four, Sánchez’s government can almost ensure that the PSOE and its coalition partner Sumar would have a majority, other smaller parties (either left-leaning on separatist/nationalist) could have several more, and the PP (which has the largest number of seats in parliament) would likely have four at most.

And so the headline. While Spanish national TV is not nearly as propagandistic as “official” TV in places like Hungary (or Russia, at the extreme), RTVE does exhibit a tilt that is most noticeable when governments change. Under Mariano Rajoy of the PP, it leaned right and pro-PP; today it leans socialist and pro-PSOE. By electing a board with a six-year term, the PSOE/Sánchez could expect fairly friendly coverage until 2030. Hence, important.

The right says. The PP has asked the government to “keep its hands off RTVE” and has presented a complaint in Brussels to the European Commission. Where the PSOE sees “the most plural board in history”, the PP sees court-packing.

Ulterior motive? Carlos Alsina (video above), a right-leaning announcer on Onda Cero, sees a longer game. His theory? That by giving separatist and nationalist parties seats on the board—and some power over budget and content—Sánchez/PSOE can get their votes for a new budget, which could make it easier to hold off national elections until they must be held in 2027.

5.🐗 That wild boar raising hell in Vallecas

A T-Rex is let loose in downtown San Diego in Jurassic Park: The Lost World, a really old movie from 1997, and leaves behind a path of terror and destruction. Remember?

Similar scenes took place this weekend in the Vallecas neighborhood after a wild boar decided to go on a rampage and declare war on the citizens of southern Madrid.

The decidedly evil animal, which according to local media weighed over 100 kilos, appeared out of nowhere in the early hours of Saturday morning, which led residents to call emergency services because they were, like, scared by the crazy beast that was running through the streets “out of control”.

The police showed up and shot the boar with several tranquilizer darts but (just like in Jurassic Park: The Lost World!) it didn’t work. In fact, they “barely affected” it.
More chaos! The boar even managed to enter the El Pozo commuter train station after being chased by the police for more than 3 km. And it managed to bite one of the police officers who was chasing it! And we all saw it live thanks to a drone that was on top of it at all times (welcome to the future of entertainment).
In the end, the ~~poor guy~~ bloodthirsty monster was chased into a vacant area, where it was shot (by actual bullets this time) and killed by police officers.

How does a wild boar get to the bustling streets of Madrid? Great question, but it has a simple answer: Turns out that the Community of Madrid has seen its wild boar population grow significantly in the last couple of decades.

One 🐗, two 🐗🐗, three… The official estimation is that there are around 20,000 wild boars in the region with higher concentrations in rural and forest areas, like the Sierra de Guadarrama and the Regional Park of the Middle Course of the Guadarrama River.
Colonists! This expansion into the cities is probably taking place because of a lack of natural predators, and the fact that we leave tons of “food” (as in, garbage) on the streets.

While this one may have been eliminated, here’s a fact that will keep you up at night: wild boars are everywhere (as in 95% of the national territory). At least that’s what a member of the Institute for Research on Game Resources says.

The man says there may be around two million wild boars in Spain, as they can easily reproduce thanks to their ability to adapt and survive in almost any environment.
In fact, the Costa del Sol has already declared war on them.

So now you know. If your air conditioner goes on the fritz or your washing machine blows up or your video recorder conks out; before you call the repairman, turn on all the lights, check all the closets and cupboards, look under all the beds, 'cause you never can tell — there just might be a wild boar in your house*.

* (If this line rings a bell, it’s from here. And congratulations, you’re old).

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