On Friday, Isabel Díaz Ayuso celebrated seven years at the head of the Community of Madrid at the peak of her political power.
When she was sworn in as president on August 14, 2019, she needed the votes of Ciudadanos to carry out a coalition government that was already in turmoil.
Seven years later, he has swallowed up the now defunct orange formation, reduced Vox – an indispensable partner in the 2021 elections – to irrelevance and achieved an absolute majority in 2023 that allows him to govern without negotiating with anyone.
The political phenomenon built around his figure seemed to have achieved the status of an impregnable regime.
Precisely for this reason the way in which he faces this new course is significant.
I had never had so much institutional power and yet I had never faced a beginning of the year with so many signs of wear and tear.
Not because its absolute majority is in danger or because the PP has stopped being hegemonic, but because of something more subtle and perhaps more important for its future: for the first time since it burst onto the national scene, Ayuso seems to find limits to a formula that until now had demonstrated an extraordinary capacity for resistance.
For years, Ayuso has made the confrontation with Pedro Sánchez the axis of his leadership.
A permanent political fight that has helped him project himself as a national reference for the right and shift the focus of his own Administration's problems.
The residences, his brother's commissions or the controversies of his management were subsumed in a larger discussion about Sanchismo, taxes, freedom or the territorial model.
The formula worked because almost any controversy ended up turning into a plebiscite on Sánchez.
It was not always necessary for the president to be right; It was enough that she seemed willing to say what others dared not say.
That has been one of the keys to its success and to the so-called cultural battle: the discussion stopped being about the consistency of a statement and became a demonstration of resistance against the left.
But something has changed this summer.
Ayuso no longer seems to have the same fun.
Neither in certain sectors of public opinion, nor in some media that have been favorable to him for years, nor, above all, in his own party.
First it was Mexico.
An official trip that ended ahead of schedule after Ayuso reported having felt afraid and found herself unprotected, in an episode that generated confusion even within the PP.
Then came the fires, which forced people to respond for management that this time could not be attributed to Moncloa.
And, above all, the attic appeared.
The Community bought a luxury property in Chamberí for more than six million euros.
So that?
The answer has been changing: office, official residence, alternative while the Puerta del Sol headquarters is being renovated.
None has finished closing the question.
At the same time, Ayuso's couple put their two homes in the same neighborhood up for sale for 3.3 million euros.
The PSOE is preparing a complaint before the Prosecutor's Office against directors of Planifica Madrid, and Más Madrid demands explanations and appearances.
But the problem is no longer just the attic.
It's credibility.
Each explanation opens a new question.
And when the explanations do not close the questions, silence also begins to be a political response.
The opposition has found a crack, but the novelty is elsewhere: in the PP.
Cayetana Álvarez de Toledo has expressed doubts about the operation.
Criticism has circulated in the WhatsApp groups of popular deputies.
And Ayuso's team has had to ask Madrid PP officials to come out publicly in defense of the president.
Critical voices have also appeared in conservative media.
It's not a breakup.
But a change in climate.
In the Madrid PP they summarize it with an expression as graphic as it is revealing: “The hunger games, that's what we're in.”
The phrase says a lot about the internal moment.
Because the tension does not only affect the president.
When the pressure for the penthouse has increased, a good part of the political responsibility has fallen on Miguel Ángel García Martín, vice president and advisor to the Presidency.
Among popular leaders there is a feeling that Ayuso and her team have left the person who should act as the president's shield too exposed.
Ayuso's response has been to return to his usual formula: Sánchez.
In recent weeks he has fired on Twitter against the Post Office and voting by mail, against the management of migrant minors, against the President of the Government's vacation in a “shielded palace” or against the central Executive's spending for the eclipse, when that of his own Cabinet was almost identical.
It has also recovered its fiscal flag: Madrid, it says, is the region that contributes the most and receives the least.
But here a particularly uncomfortable paradox appears.
Ayuso has made a point of slimming the structure, has boasted of low taxes and has boasted of efficiency in management.
Until the forest fires arrived, which have revealed the difficulties of facing extraordinary expenses to the point of resorting to private donations and the sale of assets.
Including the recently purchased controversial penthouse.
Ayuso has 70 deputies and does not need anyone.
Its absolute majority guarantees, barring any surprise, the stability necessary to exhaust the legislature.
What it does not guarantee is that it can keep intact the political phenomenon that has brought it here.
And much less protect her from the judicial calendar that her partner, Alberto González Amador, will face for the alleged tax fraud of some 350,000 euros and the alleged crime of corruption in business related to his business ties with Quirón.
Because the problem for Ayuso today is not losing Madrid.
The fact is that, for the first time in seven years, the president who turned every limit into a new impulse may have found that some of the problems she faces no longer come from outside, but from her own management.
And that is the real unknown with which Ayuso is going to begin his eighth political year.
Not if he can continue governing Madrid, but if he can continue to grow as a national reference for the PP beyond Madrid.
