• Ayuso appeals to the Supreme Court against the Hydrological Plan for putting Madrid's supply "at risk"

After the lawsuit before the Supreme Court, advanced by EL MUNDO, the political reaction has arrived. This Monday the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has charged against the Tagus Hydrographic Plan, approved by Moncloa last January, stating that Pedro Sánchez has designed it to "besiege the Community of Madrid" and that "he is using water as a political weapon to besiege the capital of Spain" because "he does not bow to his abuses".

"Now Sánchez wants Madrid to surrender out of thirst, he has come to appropriate the natural resources of all Spaniards and has approved a royal decree that puts at risk the water supply of almost seven million Madrilenians," said the popular leader about the Hydrographic Plan, which the regional government has carried out. through the Canal de Isabel II, to the Justice after the Ministry of Ecological Transition did not accept "the vast majority" of the allegations presented by the Madrid public body.

The regional president remarked that Sánchez "intends that the water of the people of Madrid depends on permits that they themselves would authorise or deny month by month", in reference to the requirement that has been established in the new plan to make transfers, such as the one that Madrid has in the Alberche system, which contributes the amount relative to the annual consumption of three million citizens of Madrid

"They want to leave us without trains, without short-haul planes, without museums and without institutions... They want to discriminate against us with financing..., but there is nothing worse than trying to ration water for almost 7 million people," said the popular leader, who added that "when you think that Sánchez has already given the worst of himself, he always surprises us with a new one."

In the same vein, the parliamentary spokesman of the PP, Carlos Díaz-Pache, has assured that the Hydrographic Plan is "a new attack that changes the rules and boycotts the water supply system of all the people of Madrid". "It cannot be that impediments are placed in the way of transfers that guarantee the operation of a system that is exemplary and that is one of the best in Spain," he stressed.

Even the secretary general of the PSOE-M, Juan Lobato, has ironized the matter, referring to the pact that was signed today between the Junta de Andalucía, chaired by the popular Juanma Moreno, and the Minister of Ecological Transition, Teresa Ribera. "It seems that he has said: 'There is an announcement from the PP-PSOE, it is looking for water issues. Let's go to the Supreme. Tomorrow we will go out denouncing that the Government of Spain is drowning Madrid,'" said the leader of the Madrid socialists at the press conference after the Board of Spokespersons in the Assembly, according to Europa Press.

"I would like Mr. Lobato to serve as secretary general of the Socialist Party in Madrid and not as a defender of any other region before the people of Madrid," Díaz-Pache replied on the same stage a few minutes later. "Maybe, that's why the PSOE has to hide in an Ifema pavilion to hold a rally while Mr. Feijóo and Mrs. Ayuso can take a walk in the center of Madrid," he added.

For their part, in a joint statement, the environmental groups ARBA, Asociación Ecologista del Jarama El Soto, Ecologistas en Acción de la Comunidad de Madrid, GRAMA, Liberum Natura and Jarama Vivo have pointed out that Ayuso, with her demand, is generating "a completely unjustified social alarm". "It doesn't stand in the way of planning. The Community of Madrid does not have any power in terms of the planning of the hydrographic basins of its territory, it is an attribution that corresponds to the State, according to the Water Law", they argue.

  • Isabel Díaz Ayuso