No Madrid politician is fooled: this year, the many Christmas dinners and drinks organized by the parties throughout the region have strategic importance. For the PSOE, opened wide by the resignation of Juan Lobato, the holidays are the opportunity for his replacement as regional general secretary, Minister Óscar López, to heal wounds and make himself known: he will visit more than a dozen groups. For the PP, they are once again the ideal setting to defend the harmony between Isabel Díaz Ayuso and Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who met at the party dinner in Madrid this Monday. For Vox, it is time to consolidate its new leadership, after the departure of Rocío Monasterio. And for Más Madrid they represent a litmus test, an internal thermometer, the possibility of listening to the guts of an organization still shaken by the Íñigo Errejón case —who left politics after an anonymous complaint of harassment posted online, which was later followed by another filed with the police by the actress and presenter Elisa Mouliaá— and the Loreto Arenillas case —accused by the management of “minimizing” the first case, and who for now refuses to resign as a deputy.
“Óscar López has dinners, and above all, Christmas drinks, every day in a group,” says a socialist source about the new regional general secretary. “Madrid is kicking itself, and it will continue like this. It’s logical,” he adds. “Although he is known, he does not know the groups and the people,” he describes. And he concludes: “The normal thing is that he dedicates himself to feeling the opinion and mood of the people. It is very important: vulgarly speaking, people touching you is essential. That’s why Óscar is going to make all the Christmas drinks he can.”
“It will go to many,” certifies a spokesperson for the party manager in Madrid about López’s agenda, which moved on Wednesday to a massive event in San Blas, on Thursday to Arganzuela and Chamartín, on Friday to Leganés and plans to do so on Sunday to Alcorcón.
This is how a veteran of the party sees it, who controls several socialist groups at the same time and feels “disillusioned” by having to start mobilizing the bases again in favor of a new leader, the fifth in ten years. “López has to take advantage of Christmas,” he maintains. “In the towns, in the territories that are not Madrid capital, like Fuenlabrada, they don’t know him. It doesn’t exist there”, photograph. “That’s why he has to do the tourist tour, and from now until the end of the year he will surely have all kinds of parties, drinks and troubles.”
However, López is not the only newcomer to a regional position of responsibility who has a tactical opportunity for Christmas. The new spokesperson for Vox, Isabel Pérez Moñino, has only been in office for two months. In her, the national leadership sees “a cannon of a possible candidate” for the 2027 elections, according to the expression of a leader with a direct connection to Santiago Abascal. And to go from project to reality, the first step is to fill the large gap left by the departure of Rocío Monasterio, who was the watchword of the ultra party in Madrid for years. Thus, Vox plans to organize parties by electoral area or municipality, with cocktails of between 15 or 20 euros and dinners or lunches of about 35 euros per cover. Pérez Moñino, who has become spokesperson thanks to the new regional spokesperson, José Antonio Fúster, “will accompany the councilors to whatever dinners he can,” they say in Vox. They are meetings, they add, “very familiar.” Quite the opposite of the PP.
At the end of November, Alfonso Serrano, Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s right-hand man, enters a restaurant at the Metropolitano stadium, the home ground of her Atlético de Madrid, to the sound of Bruce Springsteen, her favorite rocker. It is the Christmas dinner of the PP of San Blas, and its president, Carlos Díaz Pache, who is another of the pillars of the president’s hard core, receives him to celebrate that the conservatives govern with an absolute majority, and that they have seen how everyone The rivals of its president have left the Assembly since the legislature began.
By comparison, the PP is a raft of oil: it has recovered the official reception of the Assembly, which has not been held since 2007; has reunited Díaz Ayuso with the national leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, who staged their harmony this Monday at the PP dinner in Madrid (December 16) after a course in which their hidden disagreements made them out of tune again as a duet ; and has organized about 80 Christmas dates, including dinners, drinks, meals and Christmas cakes.
The Grinch
“When Christmas Eve comes, I’m sick of Christmas, I’m The Grinchbecause there are 21 dinners and drinks throughout Madrid,” laughs a senior official of the regional PP with whom all the groups want to count, where between 50 and 300 people meet in each of them. “I now choose not to eat, but to be present.”
Another colleague almost as influential as him listens to him, also aware that these quotes are a thermometer of the internal pull of each politician. And he completes: “Since this Christmas cycle began I have gained a kilo and a half of weight, it is impossible like that. But I do want the 24th to arrive, even if I have to cook. That day at least I don’t have to speak and give a speech!”
Those who did speak this Friday at the Luchana Theater, during a meeting with the Más Madrid bases, were its three coordinators, Mónica García, Rita Maestre and Manuela Bergerot. This was the call: “It will be a special moment to close the year together, hug each other and continue building, as always, with strength and affection.”
It happens that the three leaders did not agree on an act of this type since they appeared at the end of October to give their version of the Errejón case. Almost two months later, the party has not recovered from the shock caused by the departure of the leader and the continuity as deputy of its former chief of staff, Arenillas. Their problem is that the controversy is still alive. On Tuesday, the guarantees committee confirmed that the management had acted correctly by dismissing her as a member of the executive and responsible for coordination, but not as a member of the Regional Board. And on Thursday, the judge reopened the case and summoned Errejón to testify on January 16.
A crisis that marks the Christmas of Más Madrid: if the manual of good manners recommends not talking about politics at the table, at the table of Madrid politicians it is impossible to avoid the topic.
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