The Madrid left is torn between depression and anxiety after 30 years of hegemony of the Popular Party of the Community of Madrid. He not only found the master key to open the Royal Post Office from Joaquín … Leguina lost power in 1995, although he used all kinds of formulas. The last will be the one that will be tested in the next regional elections, with two ministers of the Sánchez government self-proclaimed candidates of the PSOE and Más Madrid to double the pulse of Isabel Díaz Ayuso. These are Óscar López and Mónica García, members of an executive in difficult times, cornered by corruption and sexual scandals, who nevertheless strictly fulfill their objective of directing all their artillery against the Madrid president.
In Más Madrid, the main opposition party in the Community of Madrid after having surpassed the PSOE by six thousand votes, although the two are tied in number of seats, no one is now hiding that its candidate in the 2027 elections will not be the current spokesperson in the Assembly, Manuela Bergerot, but the Minister of Health. Mónica García has already been soundly defeated twice against Ayuso in the Madrid elections. But in politics, sometimes a complete defeat in an election isn’t interpreted as a clear message that citizens simply don’t support you. This would be the third time García attempted to beat Ayuso.
Precisely, Mónica García was “rewarded” with a ministry in the Sánchez government in November 2023, after losing resoundingly to Ayuso in May of the same year. The Ministry of Health, as Más Madrid sources recognize, has served to strengthen its political profile and to be able to stand up to the Madrid President of the Government of the Nation, in an area which is also one of the most delicate in this Community, that of Health. From the ministry, García has tried to trip up Ayuso as much as possible, with issues like deaths in nursing homes during the pandemic, cancer screening or, more recently, with the controversy at the Torrejón hospital, due to the management of Ribera Salud.
In Más Madrid, Mónica García is considered the party’s most important political asset. “The roles were perfectly distributed when it came to opposing Ayuso, Mónica from the Government and Manuela (Bergerot) from the Assembly,” say sources from this party. The possibility that someone like Emilio Delgado could remove this “position” of future candidate from Mónica García is something that does not occur to the main leaders of the party. But the MP, when this possibility was raised, did not exclude it at all and took positions favored by his popularity on social networks and in certain television talk shows. Delgado could put Bergerot in a bind, but he would have a tougher time with Mónica García.
The We Can Factor
In addition, Madrid turns to his side because he knows that alone he will never be able to beat Ayuso’s PP. On the left, he sees Podemos, but his concern is minimal. Sources from Mónica García’s party admit that they do not care about the role that this party could play in the next elections and are convinced that they would remain below 5 percent, which is the minimum threshold of votes necessary to enter the Assembly. Staying at 4.76%, as happened in 2023, is actually the worst thing that could happen to the left, because there were 161,000 votes that did not translate into a single seat. García’s party believes it has an advantage over Podemos that can make the difference: its “army” of advisors. He got 65 (he just lost two in Coslada), compared to 15 for Podemos in the entire region. It is in municipal politics that Más Madrid wants to act in a particular way and will rely on this “army” and the implementation that it has carried out in recent years.
Más Madrid seems much stronger than the Madrid PSOE, with Óscar López at its head. He believes that Madrid’s socialists lack “blood” in their veins when it comes to opposing and defending an alternative to Madrid, and they recognize that they consider López to be very far from Madrid politics and focused exclusively on the fight against Ayuso. This idea is not exclusive to Más Madrid, since in the socialist ranks there are those who have the same vision and believe that they are limited to carrying out the order of Sánchez and Ferraz to exhaust Ayuso as much as possible.
The PSOE of Madrid assumes that Óscar López will be the candidate in the regional elections. “There is no doubt: it will be him,” underline sources close to the party leadership. Everyone considers that it is unlikely that he will have a rival in a possible primary, since he would face not only Óscar López, but also Pedro Sánchez and everything that means at the moment in the party: “It would be an assured defeat.”
The key word for the Madrid socialists to obtain a majority against Ayuso’s PP is “mobilization”
Minister López’s team wants to be optimistic and assures that the party has muscle, even if PSOE parliamentary sources continue to admit that there is more discouragement than anything else, in the middle of a tsunami of corruption and scandals, and with a project that has not yet come to fruition in Madrid. López is clear on the formula for the left to defeat Ayuso in the elections: mobilization. He believes that the key to so many years of PP governments is that the right has managed to neutralize many left-wing Madridistas, something that does not happen in general elections.
In any case, the PSOE will not hesitate to support a candidate from Más Madrid to preside over the Community if they both obtain the majority, in order to overthrow the PP. But Madrid’s popular population views left-wing movements with total skepticism. Their bet is radically different: they are convinced that Sánchez appointed López to maintain the party in Madrid, because the Socialists’ candidate will be, as they claim, Mónica García.
About The Author
