Ayuso torn as PP backs chat control in Brussels

Ayuso torn as PP backs chat control in Brussels

Some people would be ready to build a monument to Isabel Díaz Ayuso for her resistance in the face of adversity. And, in the very same conversation, there are those who remind her that her party voted in the European Parliament in favour of the so-called chat control, the system that would open the door to mass scanning of private messages. The two pieces do not fit together well. Out of that mismatch comes an awkward political portrait, above all for someone who prides herself on defending freedom against the apparatus.

What chat control is and why it embarrasses the PP

According to the posts circulating on social media, the majority in the European Parliament approved the measure with the votes of the Partido Popular (Spain's centre-right party) and the PSOE. The package would include mass scanning of private messages, the end of end-to-end encryption and the surveillance of social networks by law. The backlash is not coming only from the left: there are right-wing voters who read it as one more concession to the European agenda and as a contradiction of their own rhetoric of minimal state interference.

The defence is a familiar one. The tool serves to hunt down incivil and child exploitation networks, and user privacy is an acceptable price. The argument has its logic, though it admits an uncomfortable nuance: the distrust projected onto certain foreign tech manufacturers is now applied, without friction, to anyone's messages. Among the reactions gathered, some call it disheartening that it is the European PP driving the rule, and insulting that it hides behind child protection.

The 85% cut in university tuition fees

According to published reports, the Madrid regional government is preparing a cut of up to 85% in tuition fees at public universities for Latin American students, arguing that it will create a pull effect. The figure, repeated in the outlets that trinc the Comunidad de Madrid's education policy, is probably the most contested statistic of the whole Madrid term.

There is another, less flattering reading. Subsidising other people's tuition with Madrid taxpayers' money, as one participant puts it, becomes a fiscal policy decision, not academic marketing. And the local student who misses out by a tenth of a point? No headline there.

The Madrid PP's noes to VOX

Ayuso's group has rejected several VOX initiatives in the Madrid Assembly: prioritising Spaniards in access to social benefits, introducing age checks for unaccompanied minors, and guaranteeing national priority in access to housing. Three votes that sketch a clear profile: verbal firmness on immigration, practical rejection of the harshest measures.

Within that framework, a police case is cited. Police consider the suspected perpetrator of a sensual assault on a minor in the Hortaleza district to be an adult, according to published reports, despite being registered as an unaccompanied minor. There is no firm court ruling and the case has been used as a battering ram in the debate over age checks. The tuition fee cut and these votes draw the same tension: a president who needs the hard flank without handing over the wheel.

The wear on the PP-PSOE narrative

The most repeated criticism is not aimed at Ayuso but at her party. The PP voting the same as the PSOE in Brussels while doing the opposite of what it promises in Madrid feeds the thesis that the two are the same thing in different wrapping. It is an old argument — it was already circulating under the PP's previous leadership — that is regaining traction these days among the most disillusioned right-wing electorate.

The pull effect, national priority in housing and message scanning are separate issues that ended up in the same package. And that package is, today, the main asset for anyone wanting to erode the leader's narrative. Some even dedicate the lyrics of Todo el mundo ama a Isabel, a song by Loquillo, to the president, as a portrait of the fascination she generates. Not a bad metaphor.

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The knot stays where it was. The leader who embodies resistance against the apparatus has a party that, when the signature comes from Brussels, extends that apparatus without blinking. Among her defenders, some consider it a trifle compared to the opposing government's misrule, and others do not forgive it. No one has closed the gap.