“It seems horrible to me.” These have been the first words of the former mayor of Madrid Manuela Carmena about the alleged sexual abuse and harassment allegedly committed by his former electoral poster partner in 2019 Íñigo Errejónwhich led him to present his resignation four days ago. “I could never think or hear anything related to that behavior,” says the former mayor. in a statement published on his Instagram account early this Monday about the complaint for sexual assault of actress Elisa Mouliaá and the wave of subsequent testimoniesas well as the suspicions that the former politician’s entourage knew what was happening and tried to hide it.
“It hurts me that a person who was an ideological reference on the left could have had that attitude,” admits Carmena, whose statement comes one day after Rita MaestreErrejón’s ex-partner and spokesperson for Más Madrid in the capital’s City Council. Precisely at twelve in the morning this Monday, Maestre, the leader of Más Madrid and Minister of Health, Mónica García, and the spokesperson for this party in the Assembly, Manuela Bergerot, appear before the media to talk about this case. In her note, Maestre also denied any “cover-up” and said she felt “deeply deceived.” “A good boyfriend was at the same time a misogynist who returned home normally after attacking a 20-year-old woman,” he said.
“It hurts me deeply because of what the victims of these behaviors are going through,” the judge adds on her Instagram about the flood of complaints, which arose from a first comment from the journalist Cristina Fallarás. “The first thing, of course, was a great shock. Then I thought I should reflect on what happened,” says Carmena about the fact that she has remained silent for four days. To close her comment, the former mayor goes beyond this specific case and points out some advice: “I dare to suggest that we should know about politicians, not only their political and intellectual lucidity, but also their emotional intelligence. We must know about their sensitivity and how they care and love.”
Errejón has been Carmena’s great political son. Together They founded Más Madrid together in 2019thus causing a split in Podemos and dismantling the project of Now Madridwho had governed the capital between 2015 and 2019. For the parties to the left of the PSOE in Madrid, this decision opened a deep crisis, which led to the loss of the capital government in favor of the right after this political space was divided into different brands.
For the relationship between Errejon and Pablo Iglesias, already very worn out, it marked a point of no return. And for the promoters of the project, who had designed it at the mayor’s house, during the famous empanadillas dinner, it opened a very brief stage of collaboration, which also left the seeds of discord sown in Más Madrid.
Thus, Carmena abandoned politics after the elections, having not been able to revalidate the position. And his party, without a leader in the City Council, experienced a struggle hidden by the leadership between those who had been its main collaborators: Rita Maestre and Marta Higueras. Errejón, for his part, He soon left Madrid politics to found a third projectafter Podemos and Más Madrid: Más País. In this way, in a matter of months, the kiss between Errejón and Carmena that marked the regional electoral campaign of May 2019 went from none of them did politics in Madrid.
