The housing problem is something that obsesss most Madrid. It is the first concern for one in four inhabitants of the capital, according to a recent survey of the City Council that analyzes the aspects of the city that create the most difficulties in their daily lives. As it happens to its neighbors, the house was also a few years ago one of the things that occupied the thoughts of the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso.
“I have illusion to buy, but I lack time, and getting more difficult. In Madrid the house has been shot,” said the regional president now three years ago three years ago To Yo's questionsa supplement of El Mundo. In the same interview he explained that he was going to finish “that she continued paying rentals, because she had been doing it for 20 years, when she became independent to live in a room that cost 400 euros. “The evolution of the price of housing in Madrid worries me because it slows youth emancipation and causes the expulsion of the middle class of the center of the capital, which must avoid becoming a franchise without a substance,” he said in the same publication.
Since that date, housing in Madrid has accelerated its prices without the measures launched by the Ayuso Government – responsible for policies on this sector – this escalation has stopped. The floors have increased by 30% on average, according to the Tinsa Tasadores Society. In parallel, the personal situation of the president has improved a lot in the real estate, since as he predicted in the 2022 interview he has stopped paying rentals and now he has two floors available in a quoted area of Chamberí – one of them an attic – and has just used a villa in the mountains to spend his weekend with his family, on which he has had to give some explanations.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso's relationship with the controversies on housing began in an operation dated in 2011, which was recorded several years later. At that time, when he claimed to live for rent, his father donated a family floor in Chamberí, just as he had done his brother shortly before with a single -family home in a town in Ávila. The transfer coincided with the difficult situation lived by the father's company, which ended up breaking and with a multitude of debts, including the 400,000 euros of a public guarantee delivered months before the transfer of the floor. An investigation commission concluded that there were “irregularities” in the delivery of that loan by Avalmadrid, the public entity that granted it, but the Supreme Prosecutor's Office opposed to investigate the case criminally by not observing indications of crime.
The Chamberí floor is received by Isabel Díaz Ayuso in regime of Nuda property, as recorded in the declaration of goods of the Transparency Portal of the Community of Madrid, and has a cadastral value of 140,547.31 euros. It was the only material good that came from his parent, who died years later, whose inheritance Ayuso renounced to avoid the debts accumulated by the broken company.
Of the 50 m2 of Malasaña to the apartment of Sarasala
The regional president her current position was living rent in Malasaña, on a floor of San Ruiz street of about 50 square meters, she said herself During another interview in the world published in 2019shortly before the elections to the Assembly. “The same table where I work is where we had dinner,” he said then about his house, easy to identify in a neighborhood mostly left by the flag of Spain that hung on his balcony. He already pointed out that if he was chosen at the head of the Community of Madrid, he would need “a larger house, with a study to work and larger cabinets, because you change in many times clothes a day.”
The need for greater space due to its new occupation, together with the arrival of the pandemic motivated the transfer of the small floor of Malasaña to two luxury apartments in Plaza de España, managed by the Be Mate chain, owned by the businessman Kike Sarasla. There began another of the controversies because the president argued that he had left there because he had infected in the first days of crisis but the reserve occurred before the statement of the alarm state and his positive. For four years there was no bill that proved what the regional president paid for this new residence that were actually two apartments, one in which she lived and another in which she worked. Years later, in 2024, he showed a fertilizer of 5,680 euros for 69 days. About 82 euros each day for the two luxury stays, an affordable cost in view of this type of accommodation that Sarasla himself justified indicating the low demand at that time and the simultaneous rental of two units, which reduced the total cost.
The next time the Ayuso residence arrived in the media was a year and a half ago, following the problems with the Treasury of his current partner, Alberto González Amador. This time it is an elevated floor in a quoted area of Chamberí, its native district. The property was acquired by her boyfriend with a capital whose legality now discusses the courts: the Prosecutor's Office claims almost four years in jail for the buyer for alleged fiscal crimes for two years.
Isabel Díaz Ayuso lives in that house and also enjoys an attic located just above. He has it for rent González Amador for 5,000 euros per month, which pays a company administered by its own lawyer. The circumstances of the purchase of that second floor are also unclear: it took place almost at the same time that the acquisition of González Amador, in cash and after having received a payment of almost a million euros.
Another derived from this case are the works that Ayuso's couple executed on their floor, which in the first instance were declared illegal by the Chamberí Board by not having presented all the necessary permits. In between, both the official who signed this administrative procedure and the councilor involved were relieved of their positions and ended up far from this District Board. The cancellation of the works license was appealed by González Amador and last April a court gave him the reason in the first instance. The Madrid City Council, which usually appeales the sentences contrary to its administration, this time decided not to do so and the sentence became firm.
The weekend chalet: “I pay my house”
Once the works were legalized, the regional president saw how another controversy over housing assaulted him this summer, after it was known that he had spent a weekend with her family in a public property villa in the mountains. The house in question was acquired by its government in 2023 as part of a 453 hectares farm on which the Community of Madrid exercised its right of retracting. The Ministry of Environment paid 4.3 million for it and the objective of the purchase was – in theory – the protection of nature.
The Government of the Community of Madrid defined as “austere” the chalet at first but then it was known that it had two floors, suite and a luxurious interior, in addition to a pool of 100 square meters. As the comments were growing, last Monday Díaz Ayuso went out to give explanations before the media, defending the private use of a public villa, ensuring that he took the tuppers and bought in a supermarket in Rascafría, a municipality where the villa is located.
In the same appearance, in which he attacked President Pedro Sánchez for spending vacation in “Four Palacios” owned by the State while he saw no problem that she used one bought by her own government, the regional president complained about the “freezing” of her salary “for 15 years.” As regional president, it charges 103,090.32 euros. The same salary as when he declared, in that 2022 interview for me Dona, who was considered “one more citizen of the middle class who lives in Madrid and that has raffled the same obstacles” with the house.
He also left a phrase that several of the journalists who were in the room were thinking. “I pay my vacation, I pay my plane tickets, I pay my restaurants (…) and pay my house.” As he did not grant more questions, there was no possibility of knowing which house he was referring to, since the only one he owns in property is used by other members of his family and in which the real owner resides is his partner, Alberto González Amador.
