Threats continue to shake Madrid campaign: Minister Reyes Maroto receives a letter with a knife

MadridThreats continue to shake the 4-M campaign. After the candidate of Unidas Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, the Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, and the director general of the Guardia Civil, María Gámez, received a threatening letter with bullets, sources have reported that the Minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Reyes Maroto, has received this Monday a letter with an "apparently bloody" knife. Maroto is precisely the member of Pedro Sánchez's executive who is most involved in the elections, since the PSOE has pledged to make her Ángel Gabilondo's vice president if they manage to govern

The spokeswoman for the Socialists in Congress, Adriana Lastra, has explained the threat during an event in Ferraz after she was given a note and warned that in these cases "indifference" is "criminal". "You will not beyond thtis point, this is what democracy is all about," she warned, calling for a vote against "fascism" on 4-M. In turn, Gabilondo has assured that "we all feel threatened, in our own democracy and way of life". According to the same sources of Interior an investigation has been opened on the case and the Ministry of Industry confirms the receipt of the letter with a small knife with red traces on the edge.

Pressure on the PP to get involved

The left will focus the last week of election campaign in Madrid in trying to put the PP between a rock and a hard place and comment on the role of Vox. Turned into a debate between "fascism or democracy" or "communism or freedom" - as Isabel Díaz Ayuso wants -, Unidas Podemos, PSOE and Más Madrid pressured Isabel Diaz Ayuso in different ways to say whether she would accept Vox's support. While the socialist candidate, Ángel Gabilondo, has called for the creation of a "cordon sanitaire" around the ultras as has happened in France and Germany - "between fascism and anti-fascism there is no neutrality, you have to choose," he said - and the Más Madrid candidate, Mónica García, has called on the PP to "close the door" to the extreme right. The leader of United We can, Pablo Iglesias, has gone further and said that fascism "is part of Isabel Diaz Ayuso's project" because in his opinion "she seems more like the candidate of the far-right than Rocío Monasterio".

Iglesias has returned this Monday to the Ser after leaving halfway through the debate on Firday. But this time in an interview format in which he has assured that the PP "is not homologable" to the rest of European parties because "it has assumed that it has to govern with Vox". In the same vein is expressed the first vice president of the Spanish government, the socialist Carmen Calvo, in an interview to El Periódico, where he says that "Ayuso leads the PP towards Vox". But the former second vice president of the executive of Pedro Sánchez has gone further and has pointed out that the PP "can not be delivered" because "Vox is a split of the PP". After the news of the letter received in the Ministry of Industry, Trade and Tourism, Iglesias has expressed solidarity with Reyes Maroto. "Enough of fascist threats," he wrote in a tweet.

The Spanish government has reinforced the security of both Marlaska and Iglesias and Gámez after the receipt of the threatening letter, according to Interior. Part of the doubts, however, focus on how these missives have been able to pass the controls. Correos has removed those responsible for not having detected the bullets and has pointed to the subcontracted security company and the worker who had to be aware of the scanner.

Ayuso maintains that she does not want to have partners

In turn, the Madrid president has insisted that she has no preferred partners to govern because she does not want to have partners. "I will not participate in circuses [in reference to the debate on the Ser]," she said during an event to present her social programme. On the strategy of the left, she recalled when Pedro Sánchez praised Vox because "he had more sense of state than the PP" - during the vote in Congress on European funds - and now "it turns out that you have to apply a cordon sanitaire", has ironised the popular candidate. "The left is suffering a lot this campaign, they have not found the way, or the message or principles," he concluded.