The forger

Among the pedantic, stony and victimizing verbiage of the text published by Iñigo Errejón on Thursday of last week, I now retain his confessed distinction between his person and his character, between what he really is and the role he played until that day. Errejón was thus added to the long list of human beings with dual personalities, with substantial falsehood caused by some illness or mere convenience. This is the list that feeds the ranks of spies, scammers and perhaps even writers.

In his autobiography fly in circlesJohn Le Carré said that he had always lived among lies: those of his father, Ronnie, a professional fraudster, and his own, first as an agent of the British secret services and then as an author of spy novels. He stressed it in several paragraphs, this one among them: “Is there really a big difference between a man who sits at his desk and schemes on the blank page (me) and the man who puts on a clean shirt every morning and, With nothing but his imagination in his pocket, he goes out in search of a new victim of his scams (Ronnie)?

No human being is absolutely transparent with others, we all keep little secrets, ghosts, unspeakable drives. But there are some who make bending a way of life. I think of those infiltrated by the Police in anti-system movements, like that official who posed as an ETA member of whom a film has been made that is now showing on Spanish billboards. I think of the classic agent provocateur that incites protesters to extreme violence. I think of those Mossad employees they told me about in Beirut, capable of posing for years as Arab beggars from the Hamra neighborhood and then reappearing, clean and uniformed, at the head of the invading Israeli troops. I think of Jean-Claude Romand, the fake French doctor who killed his entire family and inspired the novel The adversary by Emmanuel Carrère.

It has become abundantly clear to me that Errejón was a fake: a lip-service feminist during the day, a slimy sexual harasser at night, and perhaps a violent macho in bed. I never held him in high esteem, I always saw him as petulant, arrogant and prone to changing his jacket. But I am not one of those who say that they already knew that he was also a predator with women. I was therefore surprised by the revelations of my colleague Cristina Fallarás, although, once digested, they began to fit into my never admiring vision of the individual. You will not find in my articles from the last decade any praise for Errejón, he never seemed like clean wheat to me.

Now allow me a pause to confess that my role as a voracious reader of Le Carré leads me to think that Errejón could inspire a common protagonist in the English writer’s novels: the mole. Objectively, Errejón has given a perhaps lethal blow to the political movement that emerged from the street protests of 15M 2011. I think that, with not too much effort, Le Carré would imagine him as an infiltrator from the first moment of some secret service.

I leave it there, as a mere literary suggestion in an after-dinner conversation, and return to journalism. The 15M was right to express its indignation at the political and socioeconomic shortcomings of a democracy that claims to be exemplary. But the young politicians who proclaimed themselves his heirs left the streets, entered the institutions, assured that from there they would change things and became more and more like the old politicians. Of course, contributing as a great novelty a very own passion for egomania, sectarianism and fratricide. Its brilliance has barely lasted a decade.

I continue with journalism. Women have had to endure specific discrimination, fear and aggression for centuries. Suffering particular violence just because they are women. Feminism has been standing up against this for two centuries and, fortunately, it has made very important progress. But let’s not fool ourselves, we are still far, very far from full equality. In the public sphere and perhaps more in the private sphere. Machismo has also been anchored in men for centuries and even millennia. Including the impulse to sexually possess the woman, even if she says no.

Errejón said he was clear and his fellow party members believed him. But in this specific and transcendental matter he turned out to be a Dr. Jekyll by day and a Mr. Hyde by night. I am not a professional of the human mind, I do not know if yours is a dissociative identity disorder and if it has a cure. Maybe he’s just a thorough hypocrite. What I know is that Gisèle Pelicot is right when she proclaims that shame has to change sides. I am very ashamed of the scam embodied by the character Errejón.

#forger