A few minutes after noon, the spokespersons for Movimiento Sumar appear before the cameras at Espacio Larra in Madrid, in the improvised headquarters for the first press conference after the resignation of Íñigo Errejón and the complaint of sexual assault that the actress Elisa Mouliaá against him. Ernest Urtasun, Lara Hernández, Elizabeth Duval, Paula Moreno and Amanda Andrades stand before the microphones, still in the middle of the state of shock in which the resignation and the thread of testimonies that have appeared afterwards have left the leaders of the party and the coalition.
The first words of the Minister of Culture and spokesperson for the party are for the women “who have suffered harassment and sexual violence” by Errejón. Then he assumes the errors of his organization in the “detection and prevention” of what happened, and gives the floor to the spokesperson for Feminismos, Amanda Andrades, to explain the first measures they will take.
Andrades’s voice trembles as he begins to speak. “My first words will be directed to those women who have suffered sexual violence by our spokesperson. As a feminist woman and person responsible for feminism, I empathize with your pain and suffering and I repeat that we put ourselves at your disposal,” she says. The measures announced have to do with improving procedures to establish secure communication channels and mechanisms for “reparation, support and accompaniment” for those who have been affected.
But these protocols, according to some sources from the party itself, had been approved by the constituent assembly of Sumar in Villaverde and were not activated. “We have been working on it for some time to launch these trainings, until now it has not been possible, we have gone through an entire process of organizational development and the various elections we have had but we have been working for some time to have this done as soon as possible” Andrades justifies.
In the press conference there are no more announcements than the activation of all these measures that had yet to be activated since last March and many questions point to other possible previous cases of which Sumar could have been aware. Urtasun tries to make it clear that no. The first information that reaches them is the anonymous complaints that appeared on Tuesday on Cristina Fallarás’ Instagram account, which spoke of psychological abuse and sexist behavior that Sumar immediately associated with Errejón.
“If we had known the information earlier, Errejón would have left much earlier. The mechanisms failed as is evident,” Urtasun responds. In the last few hours, an anonymous thread on Twitter, published in the summer of 2023, before the general election campaign, became relevant, which recounted how the former leader had touched a girl’s ass and his friend and regional deputy from Más Madrid had tried to to “mediate” with her to prevent her from publicly denouncing him.
At that time Movimiento Sumar only existed as an instrumental party for the coalition that had just been put together for the general elections and Errejón belonged solely to Más País. That Twitter thread circulated among the main leaders of the parties, in the campaign teams, but hours or days later it was deleted and the matter had no further impact. This is reported by some people who were part of the campaign team and recognized these days by the former leader of Sumar María Eugenia Rodríguez Palop. “We know that there were other previous anonymous reports from June 2023 in which Errejón was accused of similar behavior and it is evident that the attention that should have been paid was not given,” he said in an interview on Cadena SER.
After Errejón’s resignation, some information came out that pointed to Arenillas for that complaint and the Más Madrid executive requested his dismissal this Friday at the last minute. The party states in a statement that they asked for explanations at that time and closed the case.
But in view of the events of these days they understood that the regional representative and spokesperson for Women had not acted correctly. Shortly after that statement, Arenillas announced that he was leaving the minutes, denied having mediated to cover up the case, explained that he brought the facts to the attention of the then Secretary of Organization and today spokesperson in the assembly, Manuela Bergerot, and denounced being a “goat.” “expiatory” for his own organization.
Sources from Sumar who were there at that time, during the campaign, remember that they contacted Más Madrid, which informed them days later that they had opened an investigation and then closed it without major consequences. This, together with the deletion of the thread, calms the internal rumors, although those same voices recognize that part of the “detection” errors have to do specifically with not having made more efforts to investigate that complaint.
Sumar and Más Madrid thus try to digest a scandal that is hitting hard at these two groups and at the left in general. The Madrid party plans to hold a press conference next Monday to give more details and Sumar’s parliamentary group will meet that same day in the afternoon, urgently, to analyze the situation and try to reorganize the organization in Congress. Yolanda Díaz is scheduled to appear there, returning this morning from her trip to Colombia.
At the moment the management of the crisis has aroused some internal criticism. “In my opinion, the focus is not being placed where it should be placed, which is first on damaged women, and then the structures must be changed. And I don’t see people checking each other, but rather I see people holding knives up,” reflects a leader of the space, who sees absolute helplessness in Sumar’s press conference. “I would have assumed more precisely that there is a part of the responsibility that lies with the sexist structure itself. Errejón’s case is a symptom of a system that is very bad in political organizations. There are such categorical power relations that make it possible for an abusive subject to become a spokesperson,” he argues, to reason that when the organization is above everything “the protocols are of no use.” “There are some men that some of us have been saying internally for a long time are abusers and that they have been allowed to do,” she laments.
Some of the parties that make up that group, such as Compromís, prefer to wait until next week to talk about the matter, but other parties such as Izquierda Unida have already warned that Errejón’s succession must occur in a democratic manner. In statements to the press in the Balearic Islands, the general coordinator of Izquierda Unida, Antonio Maíllo, has called for a “major restructuring in every sense” of the group and “radical surgical measures”, that is, to be done in a democratic way. Sources from that direction recognize the “understandable shock” of the news and criticize in some aspects the political management that both Más Madrid and Sumar have been carrying out since Thursday.
Other deputies openly warn that they are going to ask for explanations at that meeting not only about what exactly was known about Errejón, but also why the decision was made to elevate him to spokesperson. “If there was that history from June 2023, I am surprised that now it is said that they had no knowledge,” explains the deputy of Sumar, Francisco Sierra, who was on the lists as an independent, in the Sumar Movement quota and who joined the Coordinating Group in the constituent assembly of Sumar, when the project still had the vocation of being the umbrella of a broad front of parties.
Sierra welcomes the response of Movimiento Sumar, but points to its hard core, Yolanda Díaz and Ernest Urtasun, for placing him as spokesperson at the time, without subjecting him, he says, to a vote in the group. At that time that decision was ratified once it had been published by several media outlets. “When they now say that they have failed, what has failed is that there has been no organization, nor development of those protocols. There has been nothing,” he laments about the difficulties that Sumar has had to articulate itself organically in recent months.
Jorge Pueyo, from Chunta Aragonesista, also criticized Sumar’s management of the resignation of his spokesperson in recent hours. “The news caught me while I was doing an interview in El Mundo. Sumar had not shared with the group any information that this resignation was going to happen, I am disgusted, angry and, honestly, disappointed,” he wrote on his social networks.
The process that led to Errejón’s resignation was effectively managed among a small group of leaders of Movimiento Sumar, after criticism from deputies and workers of the parliamentary group and pressure from the leadership of Más Madrid, which requested his dismissal after a emergency meeting. The Secretary of Organization of the former spokesperson’s party, Lara Hernández, contacted him for the first time to ask for explanations on Wednesday and that afternoon she acknowledged the facts in a first call with Yolanda Díaz.
The resignation occurred a day later, after a second call from the second vice president, already on an official trip to Colombia, in which the imperative was categorical: if she did not resign, the management would demand her dismissal. Errejón, according to some sources familiar with this process, did not resist because the internal noise that the complaints had aroused was now irreversible.
But in Sumar they recognize that after the resignation of the already former spokesperson, the complaint by actress Elisa Mouliaá, the first to speak with names and surnames of a sexual assault, and the anonymous testimonies such as the one published by this newspaper that have occurred since then, were produces a turning point. Firstly, because the seriousness of what is said exceeds the explanations provided by the former spokesperson, who had admitted the complaint about Fallarás’ post but clarified that he has never committed any crime and predicted that there would be no judicial complaint.
That is why the information that follows the resignation is a blow for Sumar that is growing with the days. The spokesperson had resigned with a statement that the executive did not approve and that he sent in the middle of the meeting, which forced the party to come out with another statement whose content was also small in relation to the complaints that became known later. The state of shock remains among the leaders of the space, who will try to regain their pace starting Monday.
“I am very aware of the damage it does to the political space, the question is the solution we give it because if there is not a bold solution we find ourselves in a margin in which there is nothing to do,” says the leader of the space consulted by this diary. Other voices send a message in a different direction: “It cannot be that this is only measured by the political impact, we have been the first organization to force a resignation of this type without the need for a public complaint and in the courts.”
#Sumar #state #shock #Errejón #scandal
