"You are the 'mamarratxa'": Ayuso and Puente clash over Madrid fires

BarcelonaThe fires that are devastating the south of Madrid, Toledo, and Ávila in a completely uncontrolled manner have not brought a truce between the Spanish government and the executive of the Community of Madrid. After the Madrid president Isabel Díaz Ayuso requested on Thursday night the declaration of a national emergency "due to the seriousness and simultaneity of forest fires in three autonomous communities" and that the Military Emergencies Unit (UME) joined the extinction services, this Friday Minister Óscar Puente has lashed out at the popular governments for this way of facing forest fires.

"In Madrid we have thousands of evacuated people and fires beyond our extinction capacity," Ayuso declared last night in a message on X, with which she demanded that the Spanish government take control of the situation due to the "seriousness and simultaneity" of the fires. "We must strengthen national and even international support for these fires," she added. Hours later, and faced with the shock caused by her request for help from the Spanish government – which had initially questioned the request – she warned: "The first clown who gets in the way to heat things up, that's their problem," she pointed out.

The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, replied, stating that the "mamarratxa" is her. "You live by stirring up trouble. Now you ask for help from a government that you spend your life insulting and disqualifying," he retorted on X.

The exchange of reproaches has not ended here. Subsequently, Puente justified the reproaches to Ayuso and the PP in general for questioning climate change and cutting funds to prevent fires. "They sign government pacts in which they deny climate change. They reduce prevention and firefighting services to a minimum. And then they call asking for help from this government, which they constantly insult and to which they deny all legitimacy. And they ask us to assist them without complaining," the minister concluded. And he added: "We do comply with our responsibilities. And this is compatible with responding to them as they deserve. And to those who say now is not the time, I ask when is the time. We already lived through this last year. And in December, no one remembers anything. The time is now. When the forest burns."

The PP has responded virulently to the criticism from Pedro Sánchez's government. The popular deputy secretary Alma Ezcurra, has called the actions of the head of Transport "miserable". "It cannot be that there is a minister, a minister of the Spanish government, insulting the governments that are trying to combat a crisis of this magnitude", stated the PP leader in a press conference from the party headquarters.

Ezcurra also criticized the first response given by the Spanish government's delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, after it became known that Isabel Díaz Ayuso's executive had requested that a national emergency be declared, which implies that the direction of the firefighting operation would pass to the central executive. Martín, in an interview this Thursday night on Cadena Ser, demanded that the Community of Madrid provide more details about "why" it was requesting a national emergency: "We are talking about something very serious to be resolved in a three-paragraph letter in order to post a tweet", he said. "They see factions and walls where we only see fire, a fire to fight". "It is not understood that all political forces do not collaborate towards the same objective", said the popular deputy secretary.

The mayor of the Spanish capital, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, also reproached the Spanish government's delegate for his attitude towards the request sent by the Community of Madrid, pointing out that asking for "justification", given the current situation, "is difficult". "When three autonomous communities are involved in this situation, it seems logical and reasonable that it should be the government of Spain that has to assume single command", argued Almeida, who also censured that this single command "is hindered by a purely bureaucratic matter", referring to the response of the Spanish government's delegate, who requested more information. Be that as it may, the central executive has ended up assuming management.

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, downplayed the exchange of recriminations and stated that coordination with the Community of Madrid is being "perfect, absolute, and of total loyalty, as it should be", and did not wish to comment on the statements of his own Spanish government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín. "Coordination is absolute and the central government does not argue", concluded the minister.