The leader of Spain’s leftwing Sumar alliance, the junior partner in the country’s ruling, socialist-led coalition, has apologised for its delay in dealing with a senior MP whose resignation last week amid allegations of sexual assault has severely damaged the government’s progressive and feminist image.
Yolanda Díaz, who serves as a deputy prime minister and Spain’s labour minister, said she had ordered Íñigo Errejón, Sumar’s parliamentary spokesperson, to stand down as soon as he had acknowledged “sexist and degrading attitudes to women”.
Errejón, who co-founded the anti-austerity Podemos party before forming the Más País party – which is part of the Sumar alliance – announced he was leaving politics last Thursday. His unexpected decision came after reports emerged that a well-known Madrid politician had been accused of “psychological abuse”, “gaslighting” and “humiliating sex practices”. Hours later, the Spanish actor and TV presenter Elisa Mouliaá said she had been a victim of Errejón’s “sexual abuse” and filed a police complaint.
Speaking after a meeting with MPs on Monday afternoon, Díaz defended Sumar’s handling of the issue, but apologised for its tardy action.
“Women and feminism have changed this country,” she said. “As feminism has shown over recent days, there will be no impunity – no matter who it is, what it’s called and who has to fall. Although we have acted swiftly and forcefully since we learned of these allegations, I know that we acted late and I apologise for that.”
Díaz said she had spoken to Errejón last Wednesday – a day after the allegations appeared on social media – and had “one of the most difficult conversations of my life” with him. As soon as Errejón admitted “sexist and degrading attitudes to women”, said Díaz, she had stripped him of all his public responsibilities and told him to resign his seat.
“Believe me, if I’d known about such serious facts earlier, I would have acted exactly the way I have and with the same forcefulness,” she added.
But a spokesperson for Podemos said it had informed Díaz last summer of online reports that Errejón had touched a woman’s behind without her permission at a music festival. Díaz said she had been aware of a tweet concerning that alleged incident but understood the matter had already been looked into by Más Madrid, the regional branch of Más País, and that the tweet had been withdrawn.
Errejón has not commented on the allegations, but said in his resignation statement that he had been receiving psychological support for a personal issue and hoped to be able to repair “the mistakes” he had made. Public and political life, he added, “generates a toxic subjectivity that, in the case of men, is multiplied by the patriarchy”.
After Errejón’s departure, the prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, said his government was committed to “a feminist Spain where women have the same rights, opportunities, freedom and safety as men” – and said he had full confidence in both Díaz and Sumar.
The accusations that led to Errejón’s resignation are the latest in a series of damaging allegations that have hit Sánchez’s administration six years after he came to power by promising “democratic regeneration” after seven years of corruption-mired rule by the conservative People’s party (PP).
Sánchez’s wife, Begoña Gómez, is being investigated by a judge over allegations of corruption and influence-peddling. The allegations – which the prime minister has described as a baseless smear campaign by his rightwing and far-right opponents in politics and the media – briefly led him to consider stepping down earlier this year.
Sánchez’s administration has also been under pressure since it emerged in February that an assistant to the former transport minister, José Luis Ábalos, had been arrested on suspicion of taking payments to facilitate contracts for face masks during the coronavirus pandemic.
More recently, a report from the Guardia Civil police force has alleged that a criminal network was operating inside the transport ministry in 2020 and 2021, when Ábalos, once a close ally and confidant of the prime minister, was in charge.
Ábalos was suspended by the PSOE in February after refusing to resign over the alleged bribery scandal. While Ábalos himself was not investigated and has denied any wrongdoing, the party insisted he bore “political responsibility”.
The PP has called on Sánchez to resign amid all the corruption allegations.
“Governing has become the last priority of a prime minister who’s become trapped in the corruption of those around him and a prisoner of their lies,” the PP’s leader, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, said on Monday. “The only decent alternative he has is to resign.”
A survey on Monday for Spain’s ABC newspaper suggested the PP and their potential partners in the far-right Vox party would easily win enough votes to form a coalition government were an election to be held tomorrow.
Although the PP finished first in last year’s general election, it was unable to muster sufficient backing to form a government and Sánchez’s socialists eventually secured another term by offering Catalan separatist parties a controversial amnesty law in return for their support.
