Ayuso returns from Mexico early and blames it on the "boycott" by Sheinbaum's government

MadridCornered by criticism, Isabel Díaz Ayuso has decided to return early from her official trip to Mexico. In a statement, the Madrid government attributes the decision to cancel the last leg —there were still four days of the tour left— to the "boycott" by the government of the progressive Claudia Sheinbaum, whom the Madrid president has confronted during her stay. "The president of Mexico has expelled Isabel Díaz Ayuso by threatening the organizers of an international film event. An unprecedented gesture against a representative of the Spanish state, culture, and freedom of enterprise and expression," assures the Community of Madrid.

According to the PP executive, Sheinbaum has "threatened to close the hotel where the Platino awards gala is being held" if President Díaz Ayuso attends. The ceremony is this Saturday in the Riviera Maya. Before the Madrid president made this accusation against Sheinbaum and announced she was canceling the rest of the trip, the Madrid opposition had reported that Ayuso would spend two days without an agenda in this tourist area of the Caribbean. The public complaint from Más Madrid that she was on "vacation paid for with public money" has generated an avalanche of negative comments on social media.

Previously, the claims made by Ayuso about Spanish colonialism in the first days of the trip had also generated criticism, both in her actions, with some protests and boos, and in the digital sphere among Mexican citizens. According to an analysis by the company Dinamic and disseminated by Efe, the first part of Ayuso's visit has caused more than 21 million impressions on social media, and around 60% were rejection due to considering it an "foreign interference".

His praises for the conqueror Hernán Cortés also inflamed institutional relations with Mexico, which the Spanish government and the monarchy have strived to redirect after years of clashes over Spain's refusal to apologize for the Conquest. The PP's state leadership tried to downplay it on Friday morning before the trip exploded, assuring that Ayuso's objective was to "defend the interests" of Madrid and, therefore, "good relations" with Mexico.

"International ridicule"

"After making an international spectacle and being exposed for taking a vacation paid for with public money in the Riviera Maya, Ayuso is once again playing the victim, as always," reacted the opposition leader, spokesperson for Más Madrid in the regional Assembly, Manuela Bergerot. Both this party and the PSOE attacked her this Thursday during the plenary session, which the Madrid president did not attend, for a trip with a "sectarian and fanatical" agenda without utility. The PP of Madrid, on the other hand, argued that its objective was to attract foreign investment.

"It is false, as the Spanish left claims, that the president's agenda was empty," replied the Madrid government, which with this turn of events consolidates itself as the antithesis of Pedro Sánchez's allies from the global left and opens a new front with Sheinbaum, whom it holds responsible for having created a "climate of boycott" that prevented her from making a final stop in Monterrey. The Mexican president, for her part, could not avoid ironically commenting this Thursday on the benefit this trip will have brought to the country's right-wing: "Imagine the ignorance of coming to pay homage to Hernán Cortés".