Ayuso rectifies and rejects Vox's anti-immigration speech: “Everything they say comes with a stigma”

It has been a delayed rectification. Two weeks after traveling to Alcalá de Henares to link the 1,200 migrants housed in the town by the Government with cases of sexual violence and an outbreak of scabies, both denied by the central Executive, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso rejected Vox's anti-immigration speech this Thursday. “They always stop lying about emigration,” said the conservative leader during the control session in the regional Parliament, despite the fact that it was precisely her statements in the Cervantes city that caused Rocío Monasterio, Madrid spokesperson for Vox, to went to the reception center to request its closure, demand the expulsion of the migrants and affirm that their presence posed a security problem. A coincidence of interests and strategies between PP and Vox that has exploded this Thursday.

―Come with me to take the 1,500 with buses [emigrantes] at the door of La Moncloa, Monasterio snapped at Díaz Ayuso.

“In terms of immigration, I'm not going anywhere with you,” the regional president replied.

The president's intervention is reminiscent of one of the strangest plenary sessions in recent years. It happened in February 2022. And Ayuso ended up applauded by the left for attacking Monasterio's speech: “Those from the Latin bands are as Spanish as [Santiago] “Abascal.”

But this Thursday there is no applause from the left bench. Nobody alters the gesture, because the president's words ring hollow two weeks after igniting the controversy in Alcalá de Henares, where Díaz Ayuso marches in mid-January in the company of the town's mayor, Judith Piquet, and with the aim of using migrants in his strategy of continuous clashes with the president of the government, Pedro Sánchez.

“Several serious brawls have already occurred in the reception center, including some involving people who have already been detained by the National Police; sexual assaults on women in the municipality are being investigated, as reported; fights break out inside and outside the center; there has been an outbreak of scabies [que ha afectado a ocho migrantes]…”, says Ayuso during an intervention focused exclusively on that matter. “We are facing a situation that is beginning to be unsustainable,” he states emphatically about the 1,200 emigrants transferred to the town. “We have to denounce what is happening in Alcalá, which is also reproduced in other municipalities,” he adds. “We are living in real chaos.”

The fuse lights until it creates a fire that attracts the Vox spokesperson to the municipality, as she feels that her anti-immigration speech has been validated by the president, and ends up mobilizing the national government to refute the conservative baroness.

First, the Executive delegate in the region, Fran Martín, intervenes, denying that there is a single indication that links the migrants with complaints of sexual assault: “Ayuso is lying, he does not want to explain his management.” Soon, the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration called the alleged scabies outbreak described by the regional president a “hoax.” The conservative leader, in any case, maintains her statements, although little by little she is introducing nuances that bring her step by step closer to rectification: “Whether the aggressors are residents of Alcalá or if they are from outside must be determined by a judge ( …), it does not correspond to me.”

And so we get to this Thursday, when, then yes, Díaz Ayuso makes a delayed correction to a question from Monasterio in which the leader of the extreme right party tries to portray her as a weak politician, scared in front of Sánchez, without the strength to face the problem.

“Everything they say about emigration always comes with stigma, but crime doesn't come with race, culture or country, it comes with illegality,” Díaz Ayuso answers. “I will not go with you in a speech like that, mine is that of miscegenation, the mixture of cultures, which is what we have always done and that is why Madrid is international.”

Once that clash is over, Juan Lobato, the PSOE spokesperson, disgraces the president for airing Moncloa's alleged intention to leave the region without water or electricity (“A lot of attacks, but zero measures. Do you really think that anyone believes superconspiracy theory?” he says). And Manuela Berguerot, from Más Madrid, makes a detailed description of the problems in health, education or birth rates.

But Díaz Ayuso does not seem to be interested in these controversies this Thursday. The first plenary session of the Chamber after the Christmas break, which includes a barren January without activity, closes with an air of routine.

“Madrid doesn't love you because you don't love Madrid,” the opposition president says goodbye.

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