The Executive of Isabel Díaz Ayuso has censured this Wednesday that the Minister of Transport and Sustainable Mobility, Óscar Puente, tries to "confront" with his criticisms regarding the purchase of a penthouse in Chamberí by the Community of Madrid, and has urged him to focus on resolving the 1,400 incidents registered in the Madrid Cercanías network so far this year.
In an interview with Europa Press, Puente maintained that the acquisition and subsequent sale of said penthouse by the regional government was an operation to obtain an official residence "in secret," with a "dictatorial" use of public resources typical of a "banana republic," and considered that all of this "should" take a toll on President Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the upcoming regional elections.
The Minister of Digitalization of the Community of Madrid, Miguel López Valverde, replied that with these statements the minister is only seeking to "confront and clash with everyone" and feed a "climate of confrontation."
"As for what he has reproached or has tried to reproach, logically, our president, I believe he has already realized all of this. It has been commented on, he has already commented on it in the first person, that point about the issue of the penthouse," emphasized the minister.
Puente also criticized that the Madrid executive has tried to justify the operation by claiming that other ministers and regional presidents have official residences. "If that had been the debate from the beginning, things would have been different," he pointed out, emphasizing that, in his opinion, the matter should have been addressed with transparency and not presented as a residence intended for work use.
According to the minister, "that is no longer a valid explanation considering that this has been done in secret, it has been done through a commercial company, it has been done, from my point of view, in absolutely unacceptable economic terms," with a purchase for 6.3 million euros, which "exceeds the category of an official residence."
From the Madrid government, López Valverde also reproached the Minister of Transport for talking about red lines when, in his view, it is Pedro Sánchez's executive who is crossing them, and demanded that Puente focus on finding solutions for the Cercanías service, which he described as a "disaster" since it has been under his responsibility.
In this line, he insisted that this year more than 1,400 incidents have already been recorded in the network. "Let him invest what he has to invest in commuter services, let him put it into service as it should be with the quality it had and the quality above all for the citizens, for the people of Madrid, who in this case are the ones who suffer day by day from all these incidents. Let him focus on his work, on his competencies, as he has much left to do," he concluded.