The president and the penthouse: how Madrid’s government spent €6.3m on a temporary ‘office’ | Spain

The outspoken rightwing leader of the Madrid region is under growing pressure to explain why her government spent €6.3m (£5.4m) on a residential penthouse purportedly to serve as a temporary workspace while her offices were being renovated.

Isabel Díaz Ayuso, a prominent member of Spain’s opposition conservative People’s party (PP), has been the president of the Madrid region since 2019.

In that time, she has forged a reputation as a politician who prides herself on speaking her mind – and on being a thorn in the side of the country’s socialist prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, whose family and government have been mired in graft allegations for the past two years.

Although Ayuso has frequently accused Sánchez and his Spanish Socialist Workers’ party (PSOE) of being corrupt, she and her administration now face growing calls to provide a transparent explanation for the purchase of the penthouse.

El País reported at the end of July that the Madrid regional government had bought the penthouse in the well-heeled Chamberí neighbourhood of the Spanish capital in April. A spokesperson told the paper the property had been acquired for Ayuso to use while her offices in the Real Casa de Correos – the seat of the regional government – were being renovated. The spokesperson did not respond to questions about the price of the flat, nor whether Ayuso intended to live in it.

It later emerged that the flat cost €6.3m and planning laws meant it could only be used for residential purposes, not as an office. El País reported this week that Ayuso’s government had stipulated that the property it wanted should be “between 250 and 400 square metres and have a large terrace” – the latter being an odd requirement for an office.

The Madrid president lives with her partner, Alberto González Amador, a businessman who recently put two of the flats they have shared up for sale. González Amador is awaiting trial on charges of tax fraud and falsifying documents. He denies the charges.

Ayuso initially dismissed the revelations as a “smear campaign”, insisting the penthouse was not bought for her to live in but as a venue for “institutional meetings”. She also said she hadn’t had “the faintest idea” about the purchase.

The regional government has subsequently announced that the flat will be sold and the proceeds donated to the victims of this summer’s wildfires near Madrid.

Ayuso recently told reporters she considered the matter closed, saying in her trademark colourful language: “Está en venta, chao pescao”, which roughly translates as: “It’s up for sale, so see you later, alligator”.

The soundbite has elicited comparisons with the time she was caught in congress describing Sánchez as a “hijo de puta” (“son of a bitch”), only to claim she had been misheard and had actually said: “Me gusta la fruta” (“I like fruit”). It has become one of her most well-known pronouncements, along with her electoral slogan of “communism or freedom”.

However, the row over the flat refuses to die down. A judge in Madrid is investigating five separate complaints relating to its purchase and Ayuso’s own boss has said there were still questions to answer. In an interview last week, the PP leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said that while he was satisfied with her explanations, the relevant department in the regional government “ought to explain why a property that can’t be used as an office was bought”.

Feijóo said Ayuso’s team had told him in April that they were looking for temporary offices. That acknowledgment appears to be at odds with Ayuso’s insistence she was ignorant of the purchase.

Her opponents have seized on the row, with the central government dismissing her explanations as “patently insufficient and patently worrying”, and calling for her to resign.

“So they were looking for ‘temporary offices’ and they got in touch with an estate agent who specialises in luxury properties (not offices) and they requested something that was between 250 square metres and 400 square metres and which had that vital feature any administrative office requires – a big terrace,” said one PSOE councillor in the Madrid town of Móstoles. “See you later, alligator … but with a terrace.”

Pablo Simón, a political scientist at the Carlos III University of Madrid, said the “lack of clear explanations” over the purchase, combined with the judge’s investigation, had left Ayuso in a difficult predicament.

“From a political perspective, I think this has hurt her, because ultimately it’s a very cross-cutting issue that has generated criticism from both the left and the right,” he said.

Simón said while the current “wear and tear” was unlikely to prevent Ayuso winning another term at next year’s regional election, it could result in the loss of her absolute majority and force her to strike a deal with the far-right Vox party to remain in government.