Sumar’s spokesperson and deputy Íñigo Errejón He announced this Thursday, through his X account, that he is leaving politics and all the positions he held. What follows is an analysis of his cryptic letter, where he does not clarify the reasons why the political party to which he belongs was preparing his expulsion in case he did not decide to leave.
“In recent months and, more insistently, in recent weeks, I have been thinking that I had to make some important decisions. Today the day has come”.
Errejón published his resignation letter at 2:33 p.m. this Thursday, three days after Sumar opened an internal investigation following accusations made on social networks against him, although without directly mentioning him, who described him as a “psychological abuser.” The warning had been given by journalist Cristina Fallarás, promoter of the #Cuéntalo hashtag, which encourages women to share experiences of machismo and sexual harassment. On Tuesday he published the following testimony on his Instagram account: “It happened to me with a politician who lives in Madrid. A very well-known politician. I had been warned about his treatment of women, but given his political position I couldn’t believe that was true (…) He is a psychological abuser. This is the dynamic he uses: being extremely nice initially to get you hooked, when he sees that he has achieved something the rudeness and gaslighting begins (it’s always you who doesn’t understand the deputy). In the afternoon he shows you affection and even makes relationship proposals to you and two hours later he throws you out of his house. (…) Their way of having sex marks you and you never forget it. It is a way of exercising power, it is not sex. As if he were masturbating with your body. He asks you to do humiliating practices and when you refuse, he gives you trouble. The social indignant never shows his head on the days of 8M, nor when there is a case of sexual abuse. Intuyo will know that it can blow up in his face any day. (…) If a woman comes across him, I want her to know that she is not crazy, that he is a true psychopath and that his airs of a normal person hide a real monster.”
“On the political and media front line one survives and is more effective, at least that has been my case, with a way of behaving that is often emancipated from care, empathy and the needs of others. This generates a toxic subjectivity that in the case of men, patriarchy multiplies, with co-workers, with organizational colleagues, with emotional relationships and even with oneself.”
Errejón does not include in his letter the anonymous accusations spread by Fallarás and which Sumar understood to allude to him. He also doesn’t ask for forgiveness. The former spokesperson of the party avoids describing the behaviors that have led him to make the decision to resign and frames them in a kind of generalized evil among those who occupy the front line of politics ―and therefore, are obliged to be exemplary―, using the reflexive (“se emancipates”), the third person (“genera”) and the plural (“the men”).
“After an intense and accelerated political cycle, I have reached the limit of the contradiction between the character and the person. Between a neoliberal way of life and being a spokesperson for a formation that defends a new worldmore fair and humane. The ideological struggle is also a struggle to build better, more careful, more supportive, and therefore freer ways of life and relationships.”
The testimony that Fallarás shared on his Instagram account did not mention the name of the woman who explained that she had been a victim of psychological abuse, nor that of the Madrid politician and “deputy” to whom he was referring, but Sumar sources explain that other testimonies on social networks that pointed it out directly as well as “rumors” that had been circulating “for a long time” led them to Errejón, from whom they asked for explanations. The seriousness of the accusations against a prominent member of a group that champions feminism, they explain, forced them to act as soon as possible, that is, to open an internal investigation and prepare a documented report to justify, where appropriate, the expulsion.
“I have been working on a personal process and psychological support for some time, but the truth is that to advance in it and to take care of myself I need to abandon institutional politics, its demands and its rhythms.”
Sumar’s former spokesperson explains that his problems are not recent, as the political party has begun to find out, following the internal investigation in which these “rumors” were taking shape, but Errejón’s decision occurred not when the alleged events occurred. facts that several women anonymously report, but when these complaints have reached a larger audience through social networks and specifically, from the account of journalist Cristina Fallarás.
“I thus announce, as I have already communicated to my responsible colleagues, my resignation as spokesperson for the Plurinational Parliamentary Group of Sumar, I leave my seat in Congress and all my political responsibilities. I will always continue to be active and committed, but For me this institutional political stage is over and I hope to contribute in this way to the generational renewal and renewal of cadres and ideas that the democratic and popular forces need.. I finish the most important stage of my life. A hard and exciting stage. With successes that I am proud of and mistakes that I hope to help repair with this decision.”
Errejón is 40 years old and has been in politics since 2014, when he helped found Podemos together with Pablo Iglesias and Juan Carlos Monedero, among others. In 2015 and 2016 he was parliamentary spokesperson for the formation that was born at the risk of the citizen indignation of 15-M, where the majority cry chanted: “They do not represent us”, in reference to the pre-existing parties. In January 2019, the fifth anniversary of Podemos, Iglesias and Errejón broke all their ties when the latter decided to ally with Manuela Carmena in a new political brand, Más Madrid, which was later integrated into Sumar, the platform established by the Minister of Labor. Yolanda Diaz. The resignation of Errejón, one of its best-known faces, having until now been a parliamentary spokesperson, catches Sumar at a delicate moment, when the barometer reaches 40dB. for EL PAÍS shows that it has lost half of the electoral support it garnered in the general elections. Several scandals are now added to the complicated parliamentary arithmetic that the coalition government has been fighting since day one. On the one hand, the imminent indictment of the former minister and former organizational secretary of the PSOE, José Luis Ábalos, about whom the National Court sees signs of influence peddling, bribery and membership in a criminal organization, and on the other, the behavior of Errejón. Both cases allude to nuclear elements for the parties that make up the Executive: on the one hand, corruption – Ábalos was one of the negotiators of the motion of censure against Mariano Rajoy after the Gürtel ruling – and on the other, feminism or fight against degrading attitudes towards women.
