Mocks, laughter and even bad taste jokes. The scandal carried out by Sumar’s former spokesperson, Iñigo Errejón, whom several women accuse of sexist behavior and one has denounced him for sexual assault, has served both the mayor of Madrid, José Luis Martínez Almeida, and the president of the Community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, as ammunition to mercilessly attack the two left-wing opposition groups, Más Madrid and PSOE, and, incidentally, to disqualify the entire feminist movement.
After the case broke out, it didn’t take long for the mayor to use the thorny issue as a weapon. First, and especially, against the municipal spokesperson, Rita Maestre – who was Errejón’s partner – whom he accused of “knowing everything” and “hiding it.” And, incidentally, against the socialist Reyes Maroto. The councilor was extremely harsh in the duel he had with both of them in the last Cibeles Plenary Session. “The truly disgusting thing is that they covered it up. And they have acted like this not to protect the victims, but to protect themselves, Yolanda Díaz, the Minister of Health, Mónica García, and you as the head of Más Madrid,” the councilor snapped at Maestre between gestures. of reproach from the bench of opposition groups, who accused him of being “sexist.”
Meanwhile, Ayuso took advantage of the first opportunity she has had to use the scandal as vendetta against the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the Assembly, Manuela Bergerot – and, therefore, against her partner and predecessor in office, Mónica García – for putting her on the ropes in the case of her partner, Alberto González Amador, pending confirm his conviction for tax fraud. “Have you asked me about the weather or the climax? Because if your party knows anything, it is warming up,” he asked Bergerot sarcastically during the Government control session held this Thursday in the Madrid Assembly. “Tell me, friend, I do believe you: Are they going to benefit Errejón with their yes-yes law?” she later mocked to the delight of the deputies – and many female deputies – of her parliamentary group.
At the end of October, the mayor of Madrid had already managed to revolt the left by stating that if the protagonist of a sexual assault scandal like the one in which Errejón has been implicated were a PP official, “the feminist movement would be demonstrating every day.” in the streets.” In a post uploaded to X, the Madrid councilor ironically expressed that idea.
days later, In the last Plenary Session held in Cibeles that same month of October, Almeida was the protagonist of a loud fight with the municipal spokesperson of Más Madrid, Rita Maestre – to whose party Errejón still belongs – and with that of the PSOE, Reyes Maroto, for once again using the issue as a political battering ram against both of them and against the entire feminist movement. In a climate of maximum tension, and in the wake of questions unrelated to that scandal, both accused him of being “sexist” and asked him to withdraw his jokes and what he had said moments before in the plenary session. The Madrid councilor said that he found the “silence of all these years” regarding the behavior of Sumar’s former spokesperson “repugnant”. “You knew it and you covered it up” and added that they only forced him to resign when “they saw that he was taking over” Mónica García and Yolanda Díaz, leaders of Más Madrid and Sumar, respectively.
“What feminism has defended is that machismo and sexual assaults and patriarchal attitudes are transversal in all parties,” replied, very annoyed, Maestre, who, like Maroto, brought up the case, in the time of José María Aznar, from Nevenka Fernández, the former councilor of Ponferrada (León) harassed by the former mayor of this party, Ismael Álvarez. The councilor, who was the first politician denounced for this crime, was finally sentenced to a nine-month prison sentence, in addition to paying a fine of 6,480 euros and compensation of 12,000 to Nevenka, being able to continue with his hospitality businesses and nightlife until briefly returning to politics a decade later. The exedil, on the contrary, was forced to leave Spain due to the rejection of her former colleagues and the numerous criticisms from her own neighbors. The PP did not lift a finger to protect her while praising the mayor’s “bravery” for resigning, without condemning his attitude.
The reaction of the PP to the serious accusations of sexual harassment that various women launched against the tenor Plácido Domingo, which kept him away from the stage for a season, also came to light. At that time, Almeida apologized, assuring that “the mere existence of irregular conduct does not invalidate a person’s career either.” Ayuso, for her part, assured that it was necessary to separate “the professional from the person” and complimented him when the newspaper ABC, in the midst of controversy, published an interview with him: “The greatest,” stated the Madrid regional president in X.
The tension in that municipal plenary session increased, to the point that Borja Fanjul, its president – of the PP – had to call even the mayor himself to order. “Their laughter and smiles are repulsive and disgusting when talking about sexual assaults, when talking about victims, when talking about such important issues. “Your laughter is shameful,” cried Maestre, who reproached the councilor: “You come to attack me and feminism,” he lamented. Then he explained that “the difference between a left-wing party and a right-wing party is not how many sexists there are in it, it is how many feminists fight to throw out the sexists as soon as they know about the first aggression, the first attitude. That is exactly the difference between us and between you.”
The same indignation was demonstrated by Reyes Maroto, whom Almeida had also attacked for the “corruption” of the Government and had accused of “covering up” Errejón: “There is a predator, as has been said from Más Madrid and its brand, who has been undercover for a year and you, in order not to break a coalition government, remain silent.” In his opinion, who had to resign was “the one who allowed Koldo, Aldama and a businessman to meet in his meeting room at the Ministry of Industry,” which Maroto directed before arriving at the Madrid City Council.
Ayuso uses Errejón to attack Bergerot
The issue of Errejón’s resignation due to his inappropriate sexual behavior had not reached the Madrid Assembly until this Thursday simply due to a mere calendar issue; Sumar’s former spokesperson presented his resignation just a few hours after the plenary session on the 24th, and the following week the regional Legislature did not hold a session in the chamber.
Until then, the regional president had limited herself to attacking the group of Mónica García and Manuela Bergerot for “flagship of feminism” while they “hid” and covered up the behavior of Sumar’s former spokesperson. At the end of October, at a PP event in the Pontevedra town of O Porriño where Ayuso coincided with the mayor of Madrid, the Madrid leader attacked Más Madrid, ensuring that both Errejón and “many leaders of her party and partners” have been doing “flag of feminism”, and they are “hypocrites” because “they are involved with all kinds of causes, which always have to do with violence against women.”
The catastrophe of the storm in Valencia displaced the issue from the political and information front, but the spokesperson for Más Madrid, Manuela Bergerot, felt obliged to make an allusion in this Thursday’s session, with a message for the PP. “We guarantee that doing politics in our spaces is incompatible with exercising sexist violence, no matter who falls. That’s the difference between us and all of you, who keep sitting [en el escaño] to charges accused of corruption [Ana Millán, número 3 del PP madrileño y vicepresidenta de la Asamblea] and they have no scruples about making government pacts with those convicted of sexist violence [en la Comunitat Valenciana, aunque el diputado en cuestión renunció para facilitar el pacto]”.
As often happens in her debates with the opposition, Isabel Díaz Ayuso did not respond directly, but instead read a speech already prepared, in the form of rhetorical questions in a humorous key, in which she mixed Errejón with Pablo Iglesias, the law of yes is yes or even the trans law, whose own reform in Madrid the PP has had to amend on the recommendation of the Council of State. “Have you asked me about the weather or the climax? Because if there’s one thing his game knows about, it’s about warming up, he ironized. ”Tell me, friend, I do believe you: Are they going to benefit Errejón with their yes means yes law? When they came from the other party, wasn’t it also called Unidas Podemos around the alpha male so he could give us a list? Did they come home alone and drunk when they went out with Errejón at night? “Is it micro-machismo to want to whip a journalist until she bleeds?” he bombarded Bergerot. This last allusion came about some conversations intercepted by Pablo Iglesias and some phrases within a private messaging conversation for which the former vice president of the Government came to apologize. It was in 2018.
But Ayuso continued, excited: “Did they later pay Mr. Errejón for a course to deconstruct masculinities and to go against heteropatriarchal machismo? How much money did they take from the purple points? Are they going to continue erasing women with their sectarian laws, including the trans law?” Then he got tangled up in a hodgepodge that was intended to be an amendment to the entirety of the last years of political action of the feminist left: “Their ideas are always bad; They are disastrous, they are traps and in all of them they have despised women and have taken advantage of it to go against the rule of law, the presumption of innocence, the effective protection of judges, of the courts, ending the legal guarantee, treating women as ‘Poor thing, whatever you say is true because you are a woman’, reversing the burden of proof and now it turns out that it is going to be the rule of law that has to take charge of Errejón. “Isn’t that poetic justice?” the regional president continued prodding.
In his review, Ayuso forgot to mention the only issue that directly affects the Assembly itself, which is the delayed resignation of Más Madrid deputy Loreto Arenillas, singled out by the party leadership for minimizing another alleged sexual assault by Errejón in 2023, and who has not yet delivered the minutes.
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