Madrid’s Isabel Díaz Ayuso boosted as leader-in-waiting by right’s election setback

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Spain’s shock general election has humbled opposition leader Alberto Núñez Feijóo and enhanced the status of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the combative head of the Madrid region, who is now seen as the best hope of the conservatives.

When a stony-faced Feijóo appeared at the People’s party headquarters after it became clear the PP had won the most parliamentary seats but failed to achieve a majority on Sunday, his address to supporters was interrupted by chants of “Ayuso!” from the crowd below.

Standing awkwardly on the same balcony, Ayuso, 44, responded by breaking into applause with colleagues. Since then, her professions of support for Feijóo appear to have ruled out the prospect of an imminent internal coup. But they have not dispelled a sense that if Feijóo falters Ayuso will be ready to step in.

In less than a week Feijóo, 61, has already gone from preparing for office to a political stalemate in which neither he nor acting prime minister Pedro Sánchez’s Socialists have a clear path to the parliamentary majority needed to take office.

He has made improbable pleas to Sánchez for a governing pact with the Socialists. But Sánchez has rejected the idea and is instead trying to cobble together a new majority that could involve a fugitive Catalan separatist leader.

One criticism of Feijóo general election campaign was that it was overwhelmingly negative, centred on attacks against Sánchez that were not complemented by a positive vision for the country. Ayuso, by contrast, has made “freedom” her great mantra, most memorably championing it as she reopened Madrid’s bars and restaurants towards the end of the pandemic.

“Alberto is a social democrat ‘lite’ and Ayuso is a mini-Thatcher,” said Lorenzo Bernaldo de Quirós, president of Freemarket, a Madrid-based consultancy. “She has a much more punchy discourse and is more committed ideologically.”

Asked by an interviewer this week if the future of the party lay with Ayuso, Esperanza Aguirre, a former PP head of the Madrid region, said: “I won’t be the one to contradict you.”

Responding to the comment, Ayuso said: “I am very grateful for her confidence, really, but I don’t think it works like that. It can’t be that on Thursday we were at a rally with president Feijóo, applauding him and giving him our support, and then on Tuesday we’re throwing him off the bridge.”

Ayuso once worked for Aguirre, managing her online communications and coming up with the idea of opening a Twitter account for her dog Pecas. She is renowned now for her aggressive style and Trumpian put-downs, which have won her a fervent following in Madrid, a region ruled by the PP for nearly 30 years.

Two months ago Ayuso was reelected as president of the Madrid region. Unlike Feijóo on Sunday, she won an absolute majority for the PP in the local legislature and grabbed votes from the hard-right Vox, ending the awkward need to ask the hard-right for its support for her plans.

Feijóo’s disappointing showing scuppered his self-styled reputation as a winner who had secured four consecutive absolute majorities for the PP in his native Galicia, where he was regional president for 13 years.

But Bernaldo de Quirós said there was no chance of the PP changing its leader imminently. “In these circumstances the PP cannot permit an internal crisis. That’s not going to happen. Nobody is going to try to move Alberto out of his chair.”

It is possible, however, that Feijóo will not contest another election. Although a repeat vote in December or January cannot be ruled out, it will not happen if Sánchez manages to find a majority in congress.

The PP is already calling the prospect of a new government “Frankenstein 2.0”, an updated version of the unwieldy alliance of radical leftists and Basque and Catalan separatists that has sustained the prime minister since 2018.

“We alert all Spaniards that Pedro Sánchez already has everything agreed,” Ayuso said. “In the next two weeks, with Spain on holiday, he is going to ensure via the back door that he stays in power at all costs by literally selling our nation to its enemies.”

If the next election is four years away it is doubtful that Feijóo would want to fight it. But Ayuso’s status as his successor is not guaranteed. She has rivals, notably Juan Manuel Moreno Bonilla, president of Andalusia. And some conservatives question whether she is too rightwing and abrasive for many PP voters outside the Spanish capital.

Signs of her ambition, however, are abundant. Some even saw her decision to wear red on election night, while her colleagues on the PP balcony wore white or pastel shades, as an attempt to grab the limelight. But an Ayuso aide said she regularly wears the colour because she thinks it suits her pale complexion.

Ayuso would help Feijóo, the aide said, by making Madrid a success. “She can be the scourge of Sánchez, demonstrating what you can achieve with freedom, low taxes and by attracting investment.”