The Government of the Community of Madrid, headed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, is open to taking to court the regeneration plan sponsored by the central Executive of Pedro Sánchez if it concludes that its final implementation invades regional powers when it comes to contracting advertising campaigns in the media. Thus, the regional spokesman, Miguel Ángel García Martín, has described the government proposal as a “plan for democratic degeneration”, and has said that it is “a plan for censorship” that “has no other objectives than trying to control the free press in our country”. And he added: “If executed, we see this plan as one more step towards turning Spain into an autocracy and a loss of democratic quality”. Thus, the regional spokesman for the PP Government has stated that the push for the plan by La Moncloa is due, he said, to his desire to control the media that have uncovered the controversies affecting his wife, Begoña Gómez (investigated for alleged crimes of influence peddling and corruption in business); to his brother, David Sánchez; or to the PSOE (in reference to the Koldo case).
With the entire PP coordinated in its criticism of the government plan, the Madrid Executive is seeking to leave its own particular mark this Wednesday, during the press conference that follows the Government Council every week. First, García Martín intervenes to criticise the Government plan without anyone asking him, and highlighting his broadside as the start of his speech, a sign that he wants it to be heard, listened to and transmitted. Then, he reiterates it in response to questions from journalists. And to top it off, when they raise the option of going to court, he uses a mixture of prudence (we must wait for the project to be specified in regulations) with a forceful phrase of those that make headlines: “We are going to fight it wherever it is necessary, without a doubt. Sánchez has no limits, and they must be set for him.”
García Martín’s belligerent tone fills Ayuso’s previous complaint with content. The president, accustomed to opening the weeks with an informative breakfast, or a radio or television interview in the prime time from the first hour of Monday, he makes a criticism the day before, when all the details are not yet known.
“It is an inversion of the truth,” she says on Telecinco, while attacking the police who have investigated her friend Nacho Cano for a crime against the rights of foreign workers, believing, the president maintains, that they went too far in the means used because the musician is a critic of Sánchez. “The most worrying thing for me is something we had not seen: it is the contempt, the discrediting of judges, presenters, artists, that is, ‘everything that bothers me or everything that has put me in a difficult position at some point will be attacked directly or indirectly.”
A few days later, and after the presentation of the reform by Félix Bolaños, Minister of Justice; and Ernest Urtasun, Minister of Culture; Ayuso’s spokesperson is extremely harsh, knowing that it contains 30 measures, or that it modifies the crime of offending religious feelings, something that the Madrid government does not share.
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“We will have to be on the lookout for development,” García Martín said on Wednesday. “Now it is practically a statement, it is not a plan that we will have to see how they shape it,” he added. “Just as we are going to denounce the distribution of journalist cards and good and bad media, we are very concerned that public administrations are told which media they should interact with and where and with what amount we have to develop our institutional advertising campaigns,” he argued. Is Pedro Sánchez’s Government also going to tell the Community of Madrid where it can invest, where not; where it can advertise, where not; which media I cannot answer in this press conference?” he asked. “It intends to invade powers by saying which media we can or cannot interact with,” he insisted. And, on the possibility of going to court, he concluded: “We are going to fight it wherever necessary, without a doubt. Sánchez has no limits, and they must be set for him.”
This is not the first time that Madrid has hinted at an appeal against a law whose specific content is not yet known. In fact, in March 2023, Ayuso announced an appeal against the housing law before it was approved. One more chapter in the ongoing clash between the two administrations, which disagree on such sensitive matters as fiscal, economic, international, educational, and health policy.
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