Isabel Diaz Ayuso (43 years old) visited on Friday an incubator of composers, producers and managers who Warner Music opened this year in the old North Station in Madrid. The facilities, with large windows, long tables, rehearsal and recording studios and even a set, are for the president a symbol of how she sees her autonomous community: with vitality in all areas, including culture. Before touring the building, she grants the interview in one of the meeting rooms, complete with a piano.
The government announced on Thursday a “solidarity tax” which is similar to that of heritage that you and Juanma Moreno, in Andalusia, have eliminated. What did you think of the decision?
The plan has been concocted in an authoritarian manner to cover up other headlines and, as it has neither consensus nor criteria, it contributes little. Rather, it expels assets, which we do not have to spare, and does not even touch average incomes. And then, on top of that, the benefited section, which should always have been, will not see this benefit for another two years. They are headlines to cover the pressure of their socialist barons, who see how citizens in the street demand that they lower taxes once and for all.
“The Government is eroding the image of all institutions, justice is one more”
But now the taxes on these great fortunes will go to the coffers of the State and not to those of its two autonomies…
You have to see how it is written. If competences are invaded, we will appeal it. They can do it right now.
Is tax competition between autonomies patriotic?
This competition is necessary, because it is the only way to corroborate who is doing things right or wrong. And it is absolutely false that lowering taxes harms health or education.
Organizations such as the European Central Bank (ECB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) warn against lowering taxes so as not to damage the welfare state.
Well, what other communities have to do, to avoid competition, is to lower their taxes as well, and in this way we will all be equal. But in this escalation of the supposed equality we do not have to go against the citizens and their interests. Catalonia has between 12 and 15 own taxes invented as fiscal engineering to reach into the taxpayer’s pocket and the fact that we are learning today is that it has a debt that doubles that of the Community of Madrid: a 35% debt on its GDP compared to 14% of Madrid. Maybe what you are doing is something else, which is raising money. And to govern is not to collect, it is to manage.
“Andalusia is the prelude to what awaits Spain when the PSOE leaves the communities it is ruining”
These days what has permeated is that the Government was responding to the announcement of his partner Moreno, which will reduce the wealth tax in Andalusia. How could it be that I stole the flag of lowering taxes?
No one here has stolen anything. What has happened here is an example that taxes could be lowered in other regions, not just in Madrid. The economic engine that Andalusia is becoming is the prelude to what awaits the rest of Spain when the socialists leave the communities that they are ruining today.
More than two years have passed since the arrival of covid. Do you regret any decision?
Not having done everything before, for example the closure of schools. We were the first to do it but, if we had advanced it further, we would have forced the rest of the autonomies and the Government to act. Everything would have been much less painful.
Would you pass a protocol like the one applied to nursing homes in the first wave?
No protocol approved by anyone was applied. The elderly died at home, in residences and especially in hospitals, where most of them were referred. But there was no signed protocol. There was a leak of a proposal that has maliciously created a totally false account of reality, not to mention that most of the elderly in residences died in the first days of the wave in Madrid and in the rest of Spain, long before whether we talk about referrals or not.
Do you plan to receive the associations of relatives of the victims after two years?
The Ministry of Health meets with numerous associations of all kinds.
I say you as president.
Well, depending… I do not let myself be carried away by pressure or by the political narrative. In this case what I do is attend to many citizens who do not have to go via association and I respond to 100% of them, by the way. What is always done with health and the pandemic in Madrid, in my opinion, is somewhat unfair, because it does not contextualize what happened and the data from the other regions is not looked at with the same magnifying glass. Everything that could be done was done and that is why the people of Madrid have given us their support at the polls.
How is the relationship with Feijóo? They have been a few days that do not coincide. You didn’t go to Moreno’s conference, you didn’t…
We have had a very good relationship and therefore we do not have to show anything else. We live normally together… The relationship is the same as always, come on, very good.
What I wanted to say is that you did not go to Moreno’s conference in Madrid, nor to the national executive committee and you have missed several already, Feijóo did not attend his colloquium in ‘El Mundo’…
Man, that I am giving him homework or setting the agenda for the leader of the opposition or he for me, as president of the community, when in Madrid we have 10 or 15 events every day…
Does the PP have to sit down with the Government and renew the CGPJ once and for all?
What the Government has to do once and for all is to stop eroding the image of justice as it is doing with the rest of the institutions. They have already managed to question the judicial decisions with the pardons of the independentists and now with the possible pardon of those responsible for the largest corruption plot in the history of Spain by number of defendants, who are the ERE of Andalusia. The Government is eroding the image of all the institutions under the woodworm strategy, from the Crown to the National Institute of Statistics (INE). And justice is one more.
How does Pedro Sánchez erode the Crown?
Well, delegitimizing it and making it disappear.
How are you making it disappear?
The Crown is being more invisible than ever right now and it is doing it with all the institutions and with everything that gives meaning to the nation as a unit: the Constitution, the transition, the symbols of the State and Madrid, which belong to everyone. They always end up singled out, never defended at all costs.
This Monday he gives a conference in Barcelona. I guess he is following the clash between the members of the Govern. How does he see it?
I’m not following him, no. There comes a time when the only thing that transpires is that they, who have everything, the power, control of Parliament and twist the laws in their own way, are unable to agree. What they show is that this is a daydream and it is simply a machine of power-counterpower where those responsible for the evolution of Catalonia stick together.
Elías Bendodo, number three in his party, stated the other day on these pages that the PP made mistakes in Catalonia and has to go back to being a moderate party. Do you share those two statements?
I think that a problem that we have had in all the games in Catalonia is that we have abandoned it on many occasions. We have generated expectations among Catalans who wanted the rules to be complied with, for there to be legal certainty and normality. And when the independentistas have caused so much damage and have believed themselves to be owners of their history, there has been no presence of the State, which is their thing, to respond with the Constitution, with the law and with normality.
Do you think Alejandro Fernández has to continue?
It’s not my decision. I have a very good opinion of Alejandro, he seems to me to be a very good parliamentarian. But nobody better than the national leadership, and it is also done that way, they know which profiles are better, in the same way that I know better which candidates are better in Madrid…
Are you afraid that the European prosecution will end up finding some irregularity in the award of the mask contract to your brother?
Nope.
When do you think it will close?
Once the prosecutors in Spain have been heard, it is already a matter of stretching it as much as they want. I respect it and that each one decides what is convenient.
Do you think the european public prosecutor Are you going to artificially stretch it?
I have no idea.
You have said on occasion that you regained your faith during the pandemic. Have you had to do any exercises of contrition after your clash with Pablo Casado?
(Silence) I have had no information about him, I don’t know… Each one has followed a path.
Related news
Do you regret how everything was handled?
For my part, no.