"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 totally 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 national emergency "due to the severity 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 tackling forest fires.

"In Madrid we have thousands of evacuees 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 "severity and simultaneity" of the fires. "National and even international support for these fires must be reinforced," she added. Hours later, and given 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 up the atmosphere, that's on him," she pointed out.

The Minister of Transport, Óscar Puente, replied, asserting that she is the "mamarratxa". "You live by heating up the atmosphere. Now you ask for help from a government that you spend your life insulting and disqualifying," he snapped at 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 reiterated. 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 that now is not the time, I ask them when is the time. We already experienced this same thing last year. And in December, no one remembers anything. The time is now. When the forest is burning".

The PP has responded virulently to the criticism from Pedro Sánchez's government. The popular deputy secretary Alma Ezcurra, has branded the actions of the head of Transport as "miserable". "It cannot be that there is a minister, a minister of the Government of Spain, 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 expressed criticism of the initial response given by the Spanish government's delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, after it became known that Isabel Díaz Ayuso's executive had requested a national emergency to be declared, which implies that the direction of the operation against the fires 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 resolve it in a three-paragraph letter to be able to post a tweet," he said. "They see factions and they see 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, has also reproached the Spanish government's delegate for his attitude towards the request sent by the Community of Madrid, pointing out that asking for a "justification", given the current situation, "is difficult". "When three autonomous communities are involved in this situation, it seems logical and reasonable for the government of Spain to assume sole command," argued Almeida, who also censured that this sole command "is being hampered by a purely bureaucratic issue," referring to the Spanish government delegate's response, which requested more information. Be that as it may, the central executive has ended up assuming management.

The Minister of the Interior, Fernando Grande-Marlaska, has 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 want 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.