Isabel Díaz Ayuso will appear on March 5 at her own request due to the controversial dismissal of the Minister of Education, who leaves highly criticized by the hard wing of the PP and the president’s own advisors. Emilio Viciana by failing to unblock the financing law for public universities and by listening too much, according to Ayuso’s entourage, to Antonio Castillo Algarra, an eccentric, ultra-Catholic playwright, who guided education and cultural policies in Madrid from the outside.
Added to this is that Viciana brought a case to the prosecutor’s office that, if the thread is pulled, reaches Enrique Ossorio, current president of the Assembly and Rocío Albert López-Ibor, Minister of the Treasury. López-Íbor is basically in charge of everything on a day-to-day basis in the Community, the administrative part, so his role in the Government is key. Viciana had the duty to put the Education documentation at the service of the prosecutor’s office of what is known as the FP casea series of irregularities detected in the construction of educational centers. To sort out the awards, the items were divided into small contracts.
This series of factors caused the perfect storm that struck down Viciana. The opposition had requested her appearance, but also herself. The president will be able to explain the reasons that led her to make this decision, although they have already been revealed by this newspaper and other media outlets.
Viciana has tried to leave on good terms, but it has not sat well with the PP that he insists that it was a resignation. “Dismissed,” they say in Sol. Nor that Algarra has accused the president’s main advisor, Miguel Ángel Rodríguez, of intoxicating the press to send the message that he was a harmful person in the president’s environment and it was necessary to nip the matter in the bud. Outside Viciana, three PP deputies and two other general directors of the highest importance in the Ministry, the one from universities and the one from secondary schools, left on their own accord.
All of them were known as ‘los pocholos’, for their appearance as children from a rich neighborhood. They had attended the academy of studies and art as students and were people he fully trusted. When Ayuso asked him to recommend people in 2023, in his desire to renew the popular parliamentary group, Algarra gave him their names. They were external to the PP and that created some resistance among the old guard. Now, the veterans smile when they see them leaving through the back door.
