As if there were not a second to lose, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s PP is exploiting the absolute majority it achieved in the May 2023 elections to turn the regional Assembly into a machine for approving legal reforms: in the first year of the legislature there have been ten, double the average of five of the other 11 regional Parliaments that went to the polls at the same time as Madrid (not counting the decree laws). The number, however, does not tell the whole story. The peace that is assumed in a Chamber where everything is decided in advance has not reigned in the Madrid Assembly. From the reforms of the trans laws or against LGTBIphobia, on which the Constitutional Court (TC) will rule, to the control of checks and balances of the executive power such as the Chamber of Accounts or the Transparency Council, also appealed to the High Court, the clashes between the government and the opposition have been constant.
“In this first year, ten laws have been approved,” said the president of the Madrid Parliament, Enrique Ossorio, during an informative breakfast organized this Monday by Forum Europa. “They range from the Budget for 2024 to tax modifications, the cybersecurity agency, the circular economy law, the regulation of various organizations or the rights of LGTBI people,” continued the former regional vice president, thus making a curious reference to a modification that has provoked protests from this group, and an appeal before the Constitutional Court of the central Government. “If we add up the number of laws that have been approved in all the regional Parliaments in this same period of time, we find that the average number of laws is five,” he continued. “We have legislated twice as many as the rest.”
The comparison with all Parliaments is not exact because the period from June 2023 to July 2024 marks the first year of the legislature of the Cortes of the regions in which elections were held in May of last year. However, during that time there have been elections in Galicia, Catalonia and the Basque Country, which therefore dissolved their Chambers. In addition, they had already formed theirs before in Andalusia or Castile and León. However, even with these considerations, the data remains the same.
And it is exceptional. During the first year of her first term, in which the PP and Cs formed the first coalition government in the history of Madrid, Ayuso did not manage to pass any law. In the same period of the second, barely two. The ten legislative reforms of now reflect an ambitious plan to make the most of the absolute majority and recover the institutional power lost during the minority government of Cristina Cifuentes (2015-2018). The objective is to approve almost 160 regulations before the end of the legislature, in 2027. Then, Díaz Ayuso will decide whether her work is complete or not: although she has now retracted, her initial approach was not to remain in power for more than eight years, a period that she would complete at the end of this term.
“The Madrid Assembly is the Parliament that works the hardest,” said the regional president after attending the breakfast offered by Ossorio.
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It has also been the most controversial Parliament. Because in Madrid, an opposition spokesperson has been sanctioned for voting twice on the same initiative (Rocío Monasterio, from Vox). An entire group (Más Madrid) has left the plenary session in protest at the bias attributed to President Ossorio, from the PP. A representative of the left (Pablo Padilla) has an open file for gesturing as if he were shooting during a debate. And the opposition’s appeals to the Constitutional Court have been accumulating at a pace as accelerated as that of the conservative party’s vetoes to Parliament investigating the most uncomfortable issues for Ayuso: from deaths in nursing homes during the worst of the pandemic to threats to journalists by her chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, including the administration’s contracts with the Quirón group, which in turn is the best client of the president’s partner, Alberto González Amador, investigated for the alleged commission of two crimes of tax fraud and one of falsification of commercial documents.
The Madrid Assembly is the autonomous parliament that works the hardest.
For example: 108 oral questions to the president; 81 in Catalonia; 35 in Valencia; 16 in Galicia; 0 in Castilla-La Mancha…
Magnificent speech by the president @eossoriocrespo. pic.twitter.com/gVIPuJjPFu
— Isabel Diaz Ayuso (@IdiazAyuso) July 8, 2024
As regards control over the Government, 26,000 initiatives have been presented to the Assembly in just one year, a very high figure that would lead to a projection of 104,000 by the end of May 2027. These are much higher numbers compared, for example, with the last four-year legislature (2015-2019), in which a total of 42,259 initiatives were registered, which would represent an increase of more than 146%.
But the PP’s absolute majority is also evident here: the opposition’s rejected initiatives number in the thousands, while the conservatives have used their position of strength to promote a commission of inquiry into the relationship between the Complutense University and the work activity of Begoña Gómez, wife of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, who is being investigated for the alleged commission of the crimes of corruption in the private sector and influence peddling.
New headquarters for the Chamber of Accounts
“The situation [de España] “I am worried,” Ossorio said, abandoning institutional neutrality to criticise the central government and its allies, or to express surprise that there are voters who vote for the PSOE. “Society is asleep, many people tell me that (…),” he continued. And he reproached: “I have never seen this level of degradation. I cannot say more than what I am saying.”
In addition, Ossorio has proposed that the Assembly use its remaining treasury, which amounts to 30 million euros, to build the headquarters of the Chamber of Accounts on an empty plot of land near Parliament.
The organisation spends around one million euros a year on renting the offices it currently uses, according to a source familiar with the project. Although everything is still to be done, the initial idea is to opt for a building with two floors above ground level, according to a parliamentary source.
“There is no estimate [del coste de la obra]”, said a spokesman for the Assembly. “We are looking at the needs and what the new building should be like.”
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