The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, appointed a new Minister of Education, Science, and Universities yesterday, Monday, replacing Emilio Viciana, who had held the position since 2023. The new minister will be Mercedes Zarzalejo, a member of parliament from the People's Party. This change—the first of the current term under Díaz Ayuso's government—comes amidst ongoing negotiations and the processing of the regional university law and the Controversy over the underfunding of public universitiesAccording to EFE, citing Madrid government sources, the change in the Education Ministry is motivated by a need for change and the implementation of a university model that, in Ayuso's opinion, the now former Minister of Education failed to lead. Specifically, the Madrid president had tasked Viciana "more than two years ago" with "a program to support, strengthen, and modernize Madrid's universities," which she did not see fulfilled. Therefore, she "has decided to give new impetus" to the Ministry with the appointment of Zarzalejo. The same sources state that the new Minister has taken on the same mandate and must "carry out this ambitious university project." The Madrid government avoids placing the Law on Higher Education, Universities, and Science (LESUC) at the center of this project, defining it instead as "just another tool that the Minister started working on but which also failed to bear fruit."

A new tax cut in Madrid is in response to the financing model proposal agreed upon between the ERC and the PSOE. Isabel Díaz Ayuso announced this Monday that her region will lower the regional income tax brackets by half a percentage point starting next year. These brackets were already the lowest in the country. The minimum rate will be 8% and the maximum 20%, further distancing itself from Catalonia, where the rate ranges from 9.5% for low incomes to 25.5% for taxpayers earning more than €175,000 annually. With this income tax cut, Ayuso boasted that a Madrid resident with an annual salary of €35,000 will pay €635 less than a Catalan with an equivalent salary. Furthermore, the president frequently points out that Madrid lacks its own taxes and contrasts her model of "freedom" with the "confiscation" carried out by the Catalan government. According to the regional government's calculations, 2.9 million taxpayers will benefit from the new tax cut, saving them €500 million. Madrid has implemented 34 tax reductions since Ayuso became president in 2019, and overall, sources within the regional government estimate the savings for Madrid residents at €40 billion.

The Community of Madrid intervenes in the decree with which the Spanish government wants to limit the creation of university crony barsSpecifically, Isabel Díaz Ayuso's government has filed an administrative appeal with the Supreme Court against the royal decree on universities, arguing that the legislation is "arbitrary," was drafted "without consensus," and infringes upon regional powers in educational matters. The regulation that Ayuso wants to halt was approved by the Council of Ministers in October with the aim of tightening the criteria for the creation, recognition, and authorization of new universities, in response to the surge in new private universities in recent years.Spain is just four universities away from having as many public as private universities.The Madrid regional government council is scheduled to receive a report this Wednesday on the legal actions taken by the regional Attorney General's Office against this regulation, which, according to the Ayuso administration, "unjustifiably limits the freedom of enterprise and the creation of educational centers recognized in the Spanish Constitution." They assert that tightening the criteria for the creation, recognition, and authorization of universities would undermine legal certainty and exceed the scope of the corresponding state legislation, leaving "very little room" for the autonomous communities to regulate on their own. Excellence controls

For the Madrid government, the national regulations would impose "arbitrary" requirements, such as demanding that new university centers have at least 4,500 students, a measure that the regional executive considers "in no way aligned with the purported interest in increasing the quality of Spanish universities." Furthermore, according to the Ayuso administration, the project was processed "opaquely, without prior public consultation and without involving the autonomous communities." The Madrid government also asserts that the procedure for establishing new universities and university centers in the Community of Madrid already includes "very rigorous controls that guarantee the excellence of the approved projects." It also believes that the new law on higher education, universities, and science, currently being drafted by the Ministry of Education, will incorporate improvements to these procedures, always within the framework of regional powers.

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The trial against the Attorney General has now endedNow all that remains is to await the verdict, which they say we'll know before the end of the year. The last session ended on a high note, with the Civil Guard's Central Operative Unit (UCO) accusing the prosecutor of being the leaker, which he denied. Judging by what was seen and heard, the prosecution has failed to prove that Álvaro García Ortiz was the leaker. Rather, the defense has presented witnesses who demonstrate that news of the agreement between Ayuso's partner and the Tax Agency was already circulating before the infamous email was in the Attorney General's possession.

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The Community of Madrid will finally send its cancer screening data to the Ministry of Health after weeks of back-and-forth between Isabel Díaz Ayuso and the Spanish government. This afternoon, the Ministry of Health and all the autonomous communities agreed to share data on breast, colon, and cervical cancer screenings based on three indicators: the number of invitations to participate in the screening programs, the response rate to these invitations, and the number of positive cases detected during these screenings. The ministry, headed by Mónica García, requested the data from all the communities after... The breast cancer diagnosis scandal in Andalusiawhich affected at least 2,000 women.

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1. This is a crucial Monday, from a legal standpoint. Spain will experience a political upheaval that will be discussed for some time. Both the PP, led by Mazón and Ayuso, and the PSOE, led by Pedro Sánchez, have a lot at stake. Sánchez will face a pivotal day with the Attorney General in the dock. In Valencia, Maribel Vilaplana, as a witness, will hold the key to clarifying, minute by minute, what happened at El Ventorro, outside the restaurant and in the parking lot where Carles Mazón allegedly accompanied her after a feast for which we haven't seen the bill. The journalist, who as a witness cannot lie, should today reveal all the details of Mazón's silence, regarding those 40 minutes in which the President of the Valencian Generalitat didn't check his phone and didn't answer the calls from his Minister of Emergencies, who was calling him repeatedly. The same week as the state funeral for the 229 people who died in Valencia, we learned that Salomé Pradas was aware, from 1:56 p.m., that the greatest danger would come from the Poio ravine. The irresponsibility of not doing enough to warn people when necessary should not only force Mazón to resign, even if it's a year later, even if it's only because the cries of the victims' families have moved him, but should also make him pay for his actions in court. He could have prevented many deaths and was, so to speak, idly by. The fact that he hasn't even been charged is outrageous.

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Demonstration yesterday afternoon in Barcelona, in support of those detained by the Israeli army during the Flotilla. And as in Barcelona, ​​the protests spread to other Catalan cities and dozens of European cities.

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The Prosecutor's Office is requesting three years, nine months, and one day in prison for tax fraud against Alberto González Amador, the partner of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as confirmed by Efe.

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They have an army, secret services, a justice system administered in the name of a king, embassies, a seat in NATO and the EU, a World Cup, and even two Eurovision Song Contests, but the Spanish right, in its attempt to return to power, peddles the idea that Spain is breaking up. Certainly, on October 1, 2017, their shirts weren't touching their skin, and even if it was only a theoretical exercise, they had to face the thought for the first time in life: "What if Catalonia…?" Reinforced, then, by the nightmare of the Trial, the pardons, and the amnesty, the PP intends to return to power by reviving May 2, 1808, and the cry of the mayor of Móstoles, "The homeland is in danger."

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On Friday, the Conference of Regional Presidents was overshadowed by Isabel Díaz Ayuso's disdain for the state's co-official languages. Some media outlets emphasized the Madrid president's conflictive attitude. Cuatro, for example, summed up the headline with "Isabel Díaz Ayuso attempts to disrupt the Conference of Regional Presidents". They also defined his conduct as "a snub to the Catalan and Basque president". To illustrate the context of this situation, they included Salvador Illa's comment in which he spoke of the richness of the country's languages: "Understanding this is understanding Spain," and they described it as "a real dig at Ayuso".

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Laziness is worse than a lack of talent, and in the case of the president of Madrid, it's unclear which of the two is her greatest virtue. The fact is that for one reason, another, or both, coupled with her shamelessness, the president of the Community of Madrid has begun to lose ground within the PP.

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The PSOE wants to turn Isabel Díaz Ayuso into the wicked witch in the story, and she is delighted because the witches of the socialists are fairies in the Spain of the PP. The umpteenth blunder of the Madrid president at the regional summit in Barcelona – behaving rudely and acting offended when some of the presidents used Catalan and Basque – is nothing more than a publicity stunt that bothers the few sensible leaders of the PP, but not entirely, because also. While Ayuso gets down in the mud, Feijóo and the men They may appear well-mannered. But if the summit came to nothing, it's not just Ayuso's fault; she's the battering ram of a collective political strategy.

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Traditionally, parliamentary oversight of the government—of any government—has been understood primarily as dedicated to analyzing and criticizing its management. It was a useful function for society insofar as it allowed for reviewing the actions of those responsible for the various departments and reporting non-compliance or irregularities, making alternative proposals, and, ultimately, encouraging the administration's good work. But now all these issues have taken a backseat. What's important, essential, now is monitoring the activities of the ruler's family. This is what makes media headlines and what serves to attack the adversary and leave them looking like a dirty rag. The importance acquired by indirect control of power, through surveillance and, if necessary, persecution of the families of public officials, has been legendary this term.

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It's been years since a president of the Generalitat (Catalan government) has received such a massive outpouring of support or attracted the attention of so many political and economic powers in Madrid as Salvador Illa did this Thursday at the Círculo de Bellas Artes. The change in era is demonstrated by the fact that previously a head of the Catalan government could travel to the Supreme Court to support those repressed by the Process (Procession), and now even a judge of the Constitutional Court – the Catalan Laura Díez – has attended Isla's conference to display the economic plan with which he wants to make Catalonia a leader in the State"Catalonia's prosperity cannot be understood without Spain," he assured a large gathering of ministers and business leaders, who can now breathe a sigh of relief with the new direction of the Generalitat. "It's time to invest in Catalonia. Investing in Catalonia is investing in a better Spain," the president emphasized.

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1. The week of the forgiveness of part of the debt of the autonomous communities has ended with a final flourish. The president of Madrid, in a cover interview in The World This Sunday, left this headline: "Now we have to assume the Catalan debt, they treat us like idiotsIsabel Díaz Ayuso knows what the issue is that angers part of the citizenry, scares her followers and, at the end of the day, gives votes to the Popular Party. It is her version of "Catalonia is robbing us." and a pathological cynicism, she is given that what she says is true, she does not give a damn that it generates bad feelings among people of the same state and, if it suits her, she hides that the rest of the autonomous communities are also forgiven the proportional part of a debt that they would never have been able to return and that only in interest, was a bloody one for each community. gone again this week, the end justifies the means. But she knows badly that, in this perverse syllogism, it does not matter Catalonia. dead, that the independence movement is no longer the majority in the Parliament and that Catalan is only the habitual language of a third of the citizens. They have already won, but they like to fatten themselves. Cane in "The CatalansAgainst Junqueras and Puigdemont it is no longer enough.

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1. The week of the forgiveness of part of the debt of the autonomous communities has ended with a final flourish. The president of Madrid, in a cover interview in The World This Sunday, left this headline: "Now we have to assume the Catalan debt, they treat us like idiotsIsabel Díaz Ayuso knows what the issue is that angers part of the citizenry, scares her followers and, at the end of the day, gives votes to the Popular Party. It is her version of "Catalonia is robbing us." and a pathological cynicism, she is given that what she says is true, she does not give a damn that it generates bad feelings among people of the same state and, if it suits her, she hides that the rest of the autonomous communities are also forgiven the proportional part of a debt that they would never have been able to return and that only in interest, was a bloody one for each community. gone again this week, the end justifies the means. But she knows badly that, in this perverse syllogism, it does not matter Catalonia. dead, that the independence movement is no longer the majority in the Parliament and that Catalan is only the habitual language of a third of the citizens. They have already won, but they like to fatten themselves. Cane in "The CatalansAgainst Junqueras and Puigdemont it is no longer enough.

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