Isabel Díaz Ayuso intensifies her commitment to the cultural battle with social measures that reaffirm her own program and align with the most right wing of the PP, also assuming the postulates of Vox. In recent weeks, his Government has announced a lifetime recognition for parents of large families, the elimination of the LGTBI acronym from the organization chart of its Executive and has insisted on its support for bullfighting.
During the presentation of the last San Isidro fair, Ayuso made his intentions clear by ensuring that he does not know “a place where prosperity and freedom have made their way after a bullring was closed.” A political profile that Anna López, doctor in Political Science and expert on the extreme right, defines as “Hispanic Trumpism.”
“It is that more conservative, more neoliberal and climate denialist speech,” explains the interviewee about the political positioning of the Madrid president, in which she also identifies “natalist winks”, bets “towards Catholicism” and a “ignorance of the victims of the Francoism.” In that sense, López considers that Ayuso is managing to occupy Vox’s space in the region.
Vox is “irrelevant”
In fact, the president chose this Thursday in the plenary session of the Madrid Assembly to belittle Santiago Abascal’s party by assuring, in her reply to the new regional spokesperson for the extreme right, Isabel Pérez Moñino-Aranda, that her party ” “It has become an irrelevant party.” And he added: “They only go from horse to horse, trotting from controversy to controversy, so that someone can pay a little attention to them against the PP.”
“Unlike the national PP, Ayuso has had a clear strategy that has worked,” explains political scientist Eduardo Bayón, author of Tribe fight (Sphere of Books. 2022). Bayón maintains that, after the pandemic, the Madrid president adopted “a quite radical discourse in its forms.” His team has opted to “move towards a right” closer to Vox, above all, in discursive and rhetorical terms, adds the political scientist. In this way, Ayuso has differentiated himself from the “discursive lurches” of the leadership of Pablo Casado and Alberto Núñez Feijóo by trying to compete with Abascal’s party.
The president coincided two weeks ago, at an event held by the Neos Foundation, with two figures linked to the hardest wing of the Popular Party: the former minister Jaime Mayor Oreja and the former president of the Basque PP María San Gil. Ayuso referred to the latter as her political mentor, defining her like this: “The woman who inspired me to get into a few troubles and join a political party.”
The Neos foundation, which organized the event that Ayuso attended, is one of the organizations that leads the anti-abortion lobby in Spain. This platform, founded by Mayor Orejadefines the voluntary interruption of pregnancy and euthanasia as “spearheads of the project of destruction” of “civilization.”
The president also shared on her networks the campaign that Neos launched in 2022 to demand October 12 with the message ‘You’re a badass’. This is one of the examples that López gives to explain that Ayuso and his chief of staff, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, “have read very well what the rules of the political game are.” With a “very Trumpist” positioning in his political communication. “With his entire career, we can define Ayuso as extreme right. She is not part of the conservative family. In Europe he could be part of the party of [Giorgia] Meloni”, adds the doctor in Political Sciences.
At a programmatic level, the Ayuso Government announced a “pioneering” measure to benefit parents of large families, a lifetime title so that they maintain the benefits and incentives to which they have access, even if their children are already adults. According to community calculations, this proposal will benefit more than 153,000 families.
1.7 million to the Toro de Lidia Foundation
At the same time that the Minister of Family, Youth and Social Affairs, Ana Dávila, expands the rights of large families, she reduces the visibility of the LGBTI community in her portfolio. His team has chosen to eliminate the General Subdirectorate of LGTBI Equality from the Madrid Government’s organizational chart and transfer its powers to the Department of Social Integration.
The suppression of this department has been criticized by organizations that defend the group, such as Arcópoli, which assures that “it represents an alarming setback in the protection of the rights of the LGTBI+ community.” However, Dávila assures that “no competence has been assumed.” His Government is also in a legal battle after reforming the LGTBI and trans laws, with criticism from organizations that defend this group and an appeal in the Constitutional Court of the central Government.
Another nod from Ayuso to the Madrid electorate more leaning to the right is his defense of bullfighting. This Friday, the Minister of the Environment, Agriculture and Interior, Carlos Novillo, confirmed that they will inject public money into the National Bullfighting Award, eliminated by the Ministry of Culture, according to Europa Press.
In this economic commitment to bullfighting and bullfighting, the Government of the Community of Madrid surprised in the presentation of the 2025 budgets with the inclusion of a new item of 1.7 million euros for the Toro de Lidia Foundation. The Minister of Economy, Rocío Albert, justified this decision. “We want to continue supporting this Foundation so that there continues to be fighting bulls and we can continue celebrating our National Festival that gives us so much satisfaction every year,” he said, at the press conference in which the new accounts were announced.
With these proposals, López considers that Ayuso “wants to position itself as an alternative to Feijóo’s leadership”, with “a solid and hegemonic discourse throughout the right-wing space.” However, he maintains that the president “is building an agenda of the Popular Party, extremist, neoconservative, neoliberal and climate retardant,” to prevent Vox or Alvise Pérez from being able to compete with her.
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