Ayuso now opens the war against Moncloa's new electricity plan: "They are intervening in us de facto and in a sibylline way"

PABLO R. ROCES Madrid

Madrid

Updated Tuesday,16January2024 - 10:58

The central government's new electricity plan has once again opened a rift with the Community of Madrid. Because of the 276 million euros authorised by the Ministry of Ecological Transition, none will reach the capital, which accumulates 85% of the infrastructures in terms of data centres, the main sector in the need to acquire that energy regulated by the new legislation approved by Teresa Ribera's department.

In fact, as reported by EL MUNDO last October, the region's electricity grid is saturated and unable to cope with the enormous energy consumption of these data centers. Nor does the new national plan include an increase in that power beyond the approval of a substation in the municipality of Algete at no additional cost. Faced with this situation, the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, has revolted, accusing Moncloa of "intervening de facto and in a sibylline way" in the capital at a Europa Press breakfast briefing.

"All this does not come because the Government of Madrid has decided to have a new controversy, but it has been the technicians who have alerted us to the situation," said the popular leader, who has equated this situation with the Tagus Hydrographic Plan that the regional executive has appealed to the Supreme Court on the grounds that it prevents it from carrying out "essential transfers" for supply. "With these decisions, what the government is doing is preventing our power to decide with investments the developments that are going to come in the coming years," said Ayuso, whose cabinet has already submitted allegations to the plan, according to Voz Populi.

From the Puerta del Sol they assure that this new electricity plan of Moncloa, which ensures that the green light has been given to those strategic projects with a deadline of completion, puts at risk investments worth 16,000 million euros, 58 projects, especially in the data center sector, and 18,000 direct and indirect jobs in the region. "The Ministry intends to leave the region without the energy it needs to be the node of southern Europe," said the regional president, who added that with this move "Spain risks being relegated to the background" in this matter at a continental level.

Ayuso, as has the Junta de Andalucía, has stressed that the Ecological Transition plan is "insufficient", "puts at risk the industry of high technological added value" and "sends dissuasive messages to investors", who "will choose other countries" to settle if they do not have enough power in the network to install their data centres. That is why the popular leader has pointed directly at the Ministry, assuring that its work is "sectarian", "treacherous" and, therefore, they seek to "hide it from the population".

"As you can see, the government's obsession with Madrid has no limits", said the regional president, who, in her speech, added that "what happens in our country, does not happen anywhere else in the world with a president encouraging separatism", in reference to Pedro Sánchez's pacts with Junts Per Catalunya, Esquerra Republicana and EH Bildu to be invested. "Spain's interests are being scrapped in order to return the favours between them," he insisted.

The regional president has assured that "the narrative of ETA is winning" at the moment, represented in the figure of Bildu, by "the meekness of a president of the Government dedicated to the separatists". "When ETA was in agony and cornered without a euro, to its political terminal, which should be taken to the Supreme Court, in the PSOE they want to sell it to us as men of peace and as they say around here it has done more for democracy than we have," he said in direct allusion to the Government delegate in the capital. Francisco Martín, who was present at the event and made the same allusion.

Precisely to the government representative, who has offered a meeting with Ayuso to re-establish the relationship between administrations, the popular leader has addressed himself asserting that "gallery photos of false consensus do not solve anything" "What is needed here is concord, to defend what we believe in and the truth, they have not put us here to be friends and to look for that easy photo", expressed.