Ayuso's Star is Falling

 The future hope of the Partido Popular: once (and when, and if) the current leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo (who is as dull a politician as his name is unpronounceable) is defenestrated, is the attractive Madrid regional ruler Isabel Díaz Ayuso.

Ayuso is a popular and charismatic leader, the lucid spokesperson for the modern conservatives: the ‘pijos’ as they are sometimes known in Spain.

She has a modest tattoo on her forearm to honour Depeche Mode. So one can safely add ‘groovy’ to her manifest allure.

Ayuso’s popularity took a hit following the pandemic and her order to leave those who were in the region’s old people’s homes – or residencias – to stay put and not be transferred to hospitals if they caught the Covid. ‘They would have died anyway’ she said callously the other day. Some 7,921 old people died in their residencias (alone, without receiving medical attention), and maybe 4,000 of them could have been saved.

Last summer, Ayuso and her boyfriend moved into a luxury one million euro apartment in the tony area of Chamberí and – if we can believe elDiario.es – also into the upstairs roof apartment, giving her and her fellow 380sqm to wander around in. The apartment belongs to her boyfriend, who bought it loan-free, and the upstairs apartment belongs to a company controlled by the boyfriend’s lawyer. 

The boyfriend is Alberto González Amador, who earned two million euros in commissions during the pandemic and has since attracted the attention of Hacienda for neglecting to pay his taxes – claimed to stand at some 350,000€. In fact, González Amador had recognised the debt and had offered through his lawyer to pay the outstanding amount ‘plus any fines’ back in February, to avoid any larger punishment.

The original story of the boyfriend’s misdoings and his protection by his chorba (Madrid slang: girlfriend), who also happens to be the regional president, first appeared in elDiario.es a week or two ago. Since then, other news-sources have either fanned the flames, or done their best to put them out – depending on their political stance and the amount of money pledged to them in institutional advertising over the past few months (that’s 27 million euros for the Madrid regional for 2024). An example being Eduardo Inda, the director of OKDiario, who sings for his supper with his headline: ‘What they have done with Ayuso and her boyfriend shows that the Government is a mafia and Sánchez its boss’. With video (for those who can’t read). Hacienda was evidently working to pull down the wrong tax-avoider, indeed.

Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, Ayuso’s chief of staff, quickly responded to the scandal by opening a WhatsApp conversation with a journalist at elDiario.es and threatening to both sue and close them down:

“We are going to crush you. You're going to have to close. Idiots. Fuck you.”

“Is that a threat?” the journalist asked.

“It's a fact,” Rodríguez responded. (Google translation, not mine)

Elsewhere, we read that elDiario.es claims 1.5 million daily readers. They’ll be surprised.

How will this all affect Ayuso? Will she remain as the likely future candidate for the leadership of the PP? Not only Núñez Feijóo but the Vox leader Santiago Abascal must be watching all the goings-on – and trying to keep a straight face.  

11M

 On March 11th 2004, bombs were placed in four trains in the Atocha and two other stations in Madrid. 193 people died and around 2,000 were injured, making it the largest terrorist outrage in Europe in modern times (Wiki). 

This was just three days before the general elections and the ruling PP insisted that the outrage had been caused by ETA, despite evidence that the attack came from Arab terrorists opposed to the Spanish presence in the war in Iraq. 

This week, a full interview made at the time with President George W Bush has surfaced. The tape was doctored by the Spanish TV (in it, Bush had blamed the Arab terrorists). 

Despite the insistence by the government that ETA were the villains, the events brought the PSOE with Rodríguez Zapatero to power.

The Valencia Apartment-block Fire

 Last week’s main story was the tragic fire that burned two connected 14- and 10-storey blocks of flats in Valencia on Thursday February 22nd in just a couple of hours. 138 apartments were gutted. That it happened during the day meant that only ten people were killed. Another 500 or so (the estimate of the total inhabitants in the two blocks) are reported safe.

The fire started on the seventh floor following a spark from a short-circuit inside an electric window-awning.

The façade of the building – which began construction in 2006 – was covered by an innovative material called Alucobond, an aluminium composite that includes synthetic material.

The manufacturer’s website insists on its product: ‘High-quality, resilient and unique in appearance – Alucobond® stands for sustainable construction quality and the highest creative standards. The façade material is distinguished by its outstanding product attributes such as precise flatness, variety of surfaces and colours as well as excellent formability’.

The suggestion is that the inner core was highly flammable. The cladding ‘was made from polyurethane, Says The Local, which is a versatile plastic material, which exists in various forms. It is used in everything from shoe soles to sportswear fabrics and mattresses. It’s also often found in building construction, particularly for cladding and insulation. The material is highly flammable, and "when heated, it catches fire" said a fireman. The fact-checking site Maldita expressed caution over the claim, saying that the cladding was more likely to be a rock-wool composite. 

A friend who lives close-by sent me the photograph he took the next morning. 

We are reminded of the Grenfell tragedy in North Kensington, London, which burnt down in June 2017 with 70 deaths. The fire ‘was accelerated by a dangerously combustible aluminium composite cladding and external insulation, with an air gap between them enabling the stack effect’. 

Back in 2008, when the buildings were completed, similar to the entire real-estate sector in Spain, the developer behind the project and an even larger sister block nearby, a firm called Fbex, went into crisis. Two years later it filed for bankruptcy for 640 million euros and the entity passed into the control of its lending bank Banesto.

Many of the owners (or perhaps mortgage holders) were left with nothing more than the clothes they were wearing. The city hall of Valencia has given shelter to those affected. Mapfre insurance nevertheless has an obligation for 26.5 million euros on the buildings.

There are an untold number of high-rise buildings in Spain using a similar kind of cladding with polyurethane built before the regulations were changed in 2006. How would the owners (or, again, the mortgage-paying tenants) feel to discover that their building is potentially a fire-hazard? The tenants in the second Fbex project, in nearby Mislata (162 apartments) are understandably very concerned.