When Isabel Díaz Ayuso responded "It's for sale, ciao, fish" to questions about the penthouse acquired by the Community of Madrid, she turned a matter that harms her into a brief phrase, capable of occupying headlines, circulating on social media, and forcing everyone to take a position. Just like what happened with "I like fruit." For her supporters, it was a display of confidence in the face of a controversy they considered exhausted. For her critics, a dismissive way to avoid explanations. The expression was the same; the political meaning depended entirely on who was listening.
This episode helps to understand why Ayuso provokes such intense support and equally strong rejection. The most polarizing leaders do not need two different styles to generate both responses. One very defined style is enough, because each gesture activates opposing values in audiences that already view politics from conflicting identities. Communication alone does not explain her success or the criticisms she receives. Management, ideology, the electoral structure of Madrid, and the weakness of her opponents also weigh in.
The question is whether Ayuso's communicative model can withstand a succession of crises, especially since it is designed to navigate within them. She rarely accepts that a controversy remains in the realm of management, as she usually incorporates it into a broader narrative of political persecution or confrontation with the central Government. In this way, part of her supporters does not evaluate the specific explanation as much as her ability to withstand and hit back. However, that strength has a limit. When a crisis demands empathy, precision, and sustained explanations, the communication strategy loses effectiveness. Her main risk is that accumulation ends up turning the firmness celebrated by her supporters into arrogance and visceral contempt for audiences less identified with her or opposed to her profile.
In recent weeks we have observed an intensification of the model. Ayuso uses increasingly harsh language and personalizes confrontations, so we can speak of greater aggressiveness and even verbal violence, although not of political violence in the strict sense. This hardening makes her especially suitable to propose a tête-à-tête communicative with Feijóo, because she possesses a recognizable identity and an emotional mobilization capacity that the national leader of the PP does not always manage to project. Every time Ayuso sets the tone and Feijóo is forced to modulate it or react, the comparison symbolically places them at the same level. Her communication already allows her to contest the emotional leadership of the right; another question is whether the style that strengthens her as an internal antagonist would also serve to expand a national majority, because radicalization mobilizes with enormous effectiveness, but it can set an electoral ceiling that is difficult to overcome.
A brand that is understood in seconds
Ayuso has reduced much of her discourse to a small repertoire of broad and reiterated concepts. Freedom, Madrid, Spain, taxes or family work as frameworks to which each supporter can incorporate their own experience. During the pandemic, freedom came to gather under a single word the opening of hospitality, the maintenance of economic activity, Madrid's social life, and resistance against the decisions of the central Government. That elasticity allowed her to transform concrete measures into a political identity.
Those who sympathize with her hear autonomy, prosperity, and pride of belonging. Those who distrust her project may hear personalism, attack on the public, or exclusion of those who do not share that model of Madrid. That is why her clarity is, to a large extent, an emotional clarity. The public, when listening to her, knows right away which side they feel on, although the precise content of the word admits many interpretations.
The conflict orders the narrative
Ayuso rarely accepts the framework proposed by the opponent because when she receives criticism, she tends to reframe it as part of a broader offensive from the left, from Moncloa, from "sanchismo," or from those opposed to the prominence of Madrid. Questions about her actions then cease to be merely management questions and become part of a moral confrontation. In this way, regional politics acquires a national dimension and each controversy offers a clear role to her supporters, that of defending a way of life they perceive as threatened.
For a part of the electorate, this behavior conveys courage. Ayuso verbalizes the anger that many people feel towards the government of Pedro Sánchez and does so without the usual prudence of institutional language. Her voters perceive someone who fights in their name, while on the opposing side, it creates a very different impression, because it turns the dissenter into a moral adversary and reduces the space to recognize legitimate reasons outside of their own bloc. Firmness is read as arrogance; transgression, as bad manners; colloquial closeness, as trivialization.
The conflict, moreover, acts as a distribution system. A controversial phrase travels further than an administrative explanation and gains diffusion both from those who celebrate it and from those who are outraged. "I like fruit" and "ciao, pescao" are expressions that quickly leave the appearance in which they were born, become memes, and end up functioning as signs of belonging. Their critics also contribute to amplifying them when they repeat them to censure them. In the attention economy, rejection can increase the visibility of the one who provokes it.
From leader to identification figure
Personalization also changes the relationship with the electorate by directly associating the decisions of the regional government with the character of its president, and political evaluation mixes with sympathy towards her public persona. A 2024 investigation into her Instagram and the main "ayuser" accounts observed that personal and commercial posts received more interaction than other content. It also detected that Ayuso's profile tended to show her as active and positive, while follower accounts reinforced the attack on the left and praised her figure.
There appears something similar to a political fandom. Part of its community is not limited to supporting a fiscal proposal or a health policy, but defends the leader as an expression of a shared identity. Ayuso represents an idea of Madrid and, at the same time, the opposition to everything that her supporters reject. Among her adversaries, a similar process occurs in the opposite direction: she embodies a way of doing politics that they consider hostile, simplistic, or directly corrupt.
It is clear that the provocative style also has a cost and much risk. If all controversies are presented as a battle against the same enemy, management is relegated and it becomes more difficult to correct a mistake without it seeming like a surrender. This type of communication also offers fewer resources when a crisis demands empathy, precision, and long explanations. The sharp phrase mobilizes easily, but does not always repair the trust of those who need information. Furthermore, the intensity that coheses the block itself can set a ceiling among citizens who reject the tone even when they share some of the policies.
about the author:
Imma Aguilar Nàcher is a consultant and advisor in political communication, electoral strategy, reputation, and institutional relations. She was the director of the Cabinet of the Minister of Science, Innovation, and Universities. She has advised governments, parties, companies, and public figures in Spain and Latin America, where she has participated in presidential campaigns.
She has also been the director of communication and coordinator of parliamentary groups in the Congress and the Senate. She is currently a professor of political campaigns and government communication at Spanish and Latin American universities. Her career combines institutional experience at the highest level, electoral strategy, university teaching, and a broad journalistic career in television.