Isabel Díaz Ayuso, president of the Community of Madrid, said her comments on immigration during the plenary session had been “misunderstood” and “distorted” without taking into account the “full context” of her entire intervention. “When there is a three-minute intervention and a five-second sentence, the same thing always happens: the Ayuso scandal, the Ayuso statement,” the region’s leader justified this Friday in a statement to the media in Leganes, collected by the European Press Agency.
In a response to Vox in Congress on Thursday, Ayuso argued that the arrival of migrants is “related to law, order, border observance and orderly work.” “Someone’s going to have to clean the house, somebody’s going to have to harvest the crops, the gentlemen of Vox, somebody’s going to have to lay the bricks for the house,” he said.
Meanwhile, according to Ayuso, listening to her full intervention, what she is doing is defending that “we cannot blame immigrants for many of the problems that are happening in Spain.” “Even if you speak in an hour-long interview and have a 15-minute intervention or a three-minute parliamentary intervention and extract three words, it is impossible to see the truth,” the regional leader said, adding that this could lead to a “reversal” and “each one going to the market in search of opportunities”, which some would try to describe as “progressive” and others as a “dangerous look”.
“You can’t fight there,” Ayuso said. However, the regional president noted that what she does not intend to do is “live in fear” that her words will be twisted, adding: “I only encourage anyone who wants to see Ayuso’s latest scandal to fully understand what she means.”
After this justification, the Madrid leader claimed that there were many people who came to Spain from other parts of the world, pointing out that there were jobs that some people did not want to do, but which were “now done by other people”. He also emphasized that “Spanish elites include people from all countries,” including doctors, architects and engineers.
For this reason, he added, the immigration system cannot be used “as a tap when it’s convenient” and “works for some things and doesn’t work for others”. “It reminds me of Catalan nationalism, which for years treated citizens from other parts of Spain the same way. They loved them as second class and bothered them if they wanted something,” he charged.
Almeida, Tellado and Serrano defend Ayuso: ‘This is not racism, it’s a statement of fact’
This vindication was preceded by José Luis Martínez-Almeida, the mayor of Madrid, who came out in defense of his leader because, according to him, she was holding Vox “in front of the mirror of its contradictions.” From Plaza de Cibeles, he argued that “immigration policy needs more than open-door policies and leave-all policies, which is what the left is advocating on the one hand and Vox on the other.”
The lawmaker argued that Mr. Ayuso wanted “legal and orderly immigration that is connected to the world of work and that seems logical and rational”, which is the PP’s position.
PP General Secretary Miguel Terrado positioned himself along a similar line of defense, saying that what Ayuso had done was to defend the internal migration plan presented by the PP. “We do not defend the open door policy to illegal immigration or the open door policy to illegal immigration that the Socialist Party champions, nor do we defend Vox’s position to exclude immigrants,” he said at a press conference.
In this sense, Mr. Terrado asserted that Spain has “one million uncovered jobs, which means Spain needs labor.” “We support regular immigration and are open to anyone who wants to come to work in Spain. We are a welcoming country and a country of immigrants,” he said, noting that he is originally from Galicia and that for decades Galicians have migrated to other countries in search of opportunities.
The PP general secretary also recalled that “similar language” was used by Transport Minister Oscar Puente, but he had not seen “any controversy about it”. This defense has also been used by Madrid PP general secretary Alfonso Serrano, who claims Ayuso was “very lucky”.
The local lawmaker and senator defended Ayuso’s words, saying it was not a question of “racists or xenophobes” and that it “affirms the fact of what the distribution of our economic structure is at the moment.” And, following in Tellado’s footsteps, he recalled that the PP “defends a project of law-based and orderly immigration, and in Madrid we are an example of how all accents fit in this region.”
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