Ayuso: 'I am free to sleep in any bed I choose'

Ayuso defends privacy, dodges partner's financial scrutiny

The case isn't about Isabel Díaz Ayuso's partner. It's about her freedom to choose a bed. That is the thesis Madrid's regional president established during a press conference held after an extraordinary meeting of her Council of Government in Leganés, where a tax fraud complaint against her boyfriend turned into a speech about her intimacy. The Madrid Provincial Prosecutor's Office attributes a fraud of €350,951 between 2020 and 2021 to Alberto González, a health technician and Ayuso's partner since 2021. Ayuso did not appear to explain those accounts. She appeared to explain hers.

What the prosecutor's complaint says about Ayuso's boyfriend

The complaint, filed on March 5 trinc a report from the Spanish Tax Agency (Agencia Tributaria) that closed two years of investigation, points to two tax crimes under Article 305.1 of the Penal Code — related to Corporate Income Tax — and document falsification. All alleged: no conviction or sentence yet. The breakdown by fiscal year is as trinc:

• €155,000 attributed tax liability in 2020
• €195,951.41 attributed tax liability in 2021
• €350,951 total for both years

The Tax Agency detected suspicious movements in the health technician's companies due to his enrichment during the pandemic, based on declarations filed in 2021 and 2022. The Public Prosecutor's Office maintains he used fake invoices and shell companies to evade payment. The president's version is the opposite: "There is no invoice scheme, no ghost companies, it is all an invention of the true anti-democratic plot governing Spain."

The debate also touches on a possible agreement with the Tax Agency to avoid trial, though it is worth separating planes: an agreement with the Agencia Tributaria does not equal a incivil conviction, and no part of the file is closed. That distance between what is attributed and what is proven is, today, the entire case.

The Chamberí apartment, the Maserati, and assets at stake

Asset figures have been part of the narrative from day one. The home where the couple lives, in the central Chamberí district, is 183 square meters and valued at €837,893.61. It was purchased on July 27, 2022, and is registered in Alberto González's name, with a mortgage of €500,000 on the property. Ayuso clarified it her way: the flat "does not cost a million, is not hers, there is a mortgage and everything is legal."

The other object of the dispute is a convertible Maserati. The president arrived in a car of that brand at the main entrance of the Club Puerta de Hierro in Madrid in June 2022, with a companion, instead of using side parking lots. According to information from Cadena Ser citing Plural.com, the vehicle her boyfriend acquired a year earlier, in 2021, was a Maserati. The coincidence, or lack thereof, was left open by the public narrative itself.

'I am free to sleep in any bed I choose'

The phrase summarizing the appearance came in two versions. First, that she is free "to be with him and get into that bed." Then, without euphemisms: "I am free to sleep in any bed I choose." She added that if she is guilty of anything, it is "having a relationship with an anonymous citizen," and posed the question that orders her defense: "Would we be talking about this if he were not my boyfriend?"

The rest was the narrative of the attack. "It is Hacienda that owes him €600,000 in interest," she stated, before pointing to "Pedro Sánchez's plot that uses the Prosecutor's Office to attack, not only politically, but personally." She advised the Prime Minister to relax and take a vacation in the Dominican Republic. She also declared herself stunned because some media outlets had access to file data before the affected party himself, a legal flank the case leaves open.

The brother, the masks, and the European Prosecutor's archiving

On the other side of the scale is the archiving. The European Public Prosecutor's Office closed the investigation into Tomás Díaz Ayuso regarding mask purchases for Madrid, after the Anti-Corruption Prosecutor's Office did the same, according to released information. This is the contrast cited by the Popular Party environment: one file closed without accusation versus another, the partner's, which continues its course.

The comparison serves two incompatible narratives, that of persecution and that of impunity, and neither holds up with isolated headlines. What is striking is that both sides use the same material to reach opposite conclusions, which is the operational definition of Spanish politics in recent years.

From resignation demands to electoral calculations

Pedro Sánchez demanded the resignation of the Madrid president. The reading by much of the conservative electorate was the inverse: reinforcement. Some argue that every attack on Ayuso adds support, while others reply that weariness eventually arrives. And some recall a structural fact: she governs Madrid, center of high civil service and much of the country's military establishment, an electoral base that would not exist in another province.

To this is added a more diffuse current: that reads the episode as proof that professional politics operates in a separate league, with its own rules and always external costs. And an uncomfortable coincidence for everyone: the suspicion that the one who should have explained first did not.

With these elements, the matter will be resolved on two terrains that do not speak to each other. In the judicial, an attributed fraud of €350,951 that still has no sentence. In the political, a president who has decided that the best defense is attack and whose supporters continue to give her an intact electoral cushion in Madrid. One can bet that neither front closes soon: the first depends on a court, the second on how long the ballot boxes hold.