Madrid, May 26 (AFP/APP): An outspoken right-wing hardliner who makes no secret of her national ambitions, Spain’s Isabel Diaz Ayuso is seeking re-election as Madrid’s regional leader through blistering attacks on Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez.
With Spaniards set to vote in local and municipal polls on Sunday, Ayuso has directed much of her campaign remarks at Sanchez, deriding his time in office as a “disaster” — and setting the tone for a year-end general election battle.
Known for her acerbic and polarising comments, Ayuso shot to prominence as one of the best-known faces of Spain’s right-wing Popular Party during the Covid pandemic.
Her remarks have drawn comparisons with those of Donald Trump or Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro.
“Sanchez hates Madrid,” she said during a televised debate with candidates hoping to replace her on May 28.
“It’s Sanchez or Spain,” she said this week.
Last year, she accused Sanchez of wanting to keep himself in power and “put the opposition in jail, like in Nicaragua”.
A year into the pandemic, Ayuso abruptly called a snap poll aimed at capitalising on the support she had earned among some residents by minimising restrictions on the local economy, presenting Madrid as the “capital of freedom.”
It worked: In May 2021, she won a resounding victory, doubling the PP’s results in Madrid, barely two years after taking power as a virtual unknown.
On Sunday, she could go even further, with opinion polls suggesting she could secure an absolute majority in the regional parliament, which would let her govern Spain’s richest region of 6.7 million people without support from the far-right Vox party.
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