The exterminator

ON March 16, Isabel Diaz Ayuso, president of the Madrid Community, messaged Pedro Muñoz Abrines, the Partido Popular’s spokesman in the regional parliament.

“The Left is finished… kill them,” Ayuso’s WhatsApp declared.

The message was leaked shortly before the regional president’s visit to Rome during the Jubilee celebrations in honour of the city’s patron, San Isidro.

Ayuso revealed later that the Madrid delegation enjoyed a “cordial” meeting with Pope Francis who, amongst other things, encouraged them to promote political unity inside Spain.

Ayuso was accompanied by the bishop of Madrid, Carlos Osoro, and Madrid’s mayor Jose-Luis Martinez Almeida, whom Francis addressed as “the heir to the great Manuela.” He was referring to Manuela Carmena, the retired Supreme Court judge who founded the Mas Madrid party and was Almeida’s predecessor at city hall. The greeting was guaranteed not to have delighted anyone in the group.

Ayuso later failed to recognise incongruity between the Pope’s message and her WhatsApp. “I didn’t send the message to a group chat,” she protested.

“Declarations like that aren’t made in public or in a group. It was a conversation between two people,” she said, adding that she’d like to see other people’s WhatsApps when they discussed someone else.

“That’s how people talk. For me, it’s very colloquial and normal between two people,” the president said, dismissing the issue as a “fictitious controversy.”

Not everyone shared Ayuso’s insouciance regarding her advice to exterminate the Left like irritating flies. Nor did they necessarily swallow her argument that the WhatsApp was forgivable because it wasn’t meant for public consumption.

When describing Ayuso, it’s tempting to recall Ronald Reagan who once said that Margaret Thatcher was “the best man in Britain” although in her case this would be limited to the Partido Popular.

Because the dangerous but interesting thing about ambitious Ayuso isn’t just her desire to kill the Left, but the fact that she is feared by so many of her fellow PP

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