Loreto Arenillas has refused to resign this Friday as a representative of Más Madrid in the regional Assembly after being accused by an anonymous account on the social network to prevent “public ridicule” of a case of sexual harassment allegedly committed by Iñigo Errejón in the summer of 2023. The politician’s former chief of staff, pressured by the party, has refused to leave the seat one day after Errejón left politics due to the scandal, and on the same day in which the actress and presenter Elisa Mouliaá has presented a complaint against Sumar’s former spokesperson for a episode of sexist violence that he allegedly suffered three years ago. Given her refusal, Más Madrid has removed her from her positions in the management, where she had the coordination portfolio and also sat on the Regional Table. The double decision, therefore, entrenches a crisis that threatens to affect the leadership of the Minister of Health, Mónica García, and the spokesperson in the Assembly, Manuela Bergerot. Therefore, the party has also decided to cancel its fall summit, which was scheduled for this weekend.
“Regarding the complaint of the attack in Castellón and the intervention of Deputy Loreto Arenillas, we appreciate that the explanations she gave then do not correspond to the reality that we have known during the last days and hours,” reads a statement from Más Madrid. “Given this circumstance, we have demanded the resignation of the deputy,” it is added. “Given his refusal, we announce the cessation of all his responsibilities and positions in the party,” concludes Arenillas. The party has not clarified whether, as seems logical, it will no longer belong to its parliamentary group in the Assembly.
The events that have ended Arenillas’ political career in Más Madrid would have occurred in June 2023and in Castellón de la Plana, where a girl claims that the deputy Errejón touched her waist and ass without her consent at a festival, the Tremendous femfest. After complaining to the organization, Arenillas, according to the story of those anonymous messages published in X, presented herself as a “mediator” to resolve the harassment case. His objective, he said, always according to that chain of messages, was to “repair the damage,” although, he noted, “public ridicule did not seem like the most appropriate way.”
This argument scandalized the complainant. “I’m tired of straight cis men on the left who learn transfeminist discourse better than us, paint their nails and it seems like everything is already done,” she lamented. And he recalled: “It wasn’t just any guy, it was a public representative (Errejón) who has made a career out of continuously and openly protesting against these types of situations.”
At that moment, they now assume in Más Madrid, the case stopped affecting only Errejón and involved the entire party. “Loreto is stopping it”. That was the phrase that circulated in the ranks of Más Madrid a few months ago, according to a former member of that party – founded by Íñigo Errejón in 2019 – to whom this information reached directly and from within.
More than a year later, the attempt to achieve Arenillas’ resignation came this Friday as an attempt to tackle an internal crisis that threatens to affect the leadership of Minister García and Spokesperson Bergerot. A source familiar with the inside of the organization recognizes the total shock that the party is experiencing due to the case that affects its founder, and the departure of Arenillas. Added to this is that the attempt to nip the controversy in the bud will clash with the strategy designed by Más Madrid’s political rivals to erode its initials and the credibility of its political discourse, in which feminism is a key argument.
Thus, Carlos Díaz-Pache, spokesman for the conservatives in the Assembly, has been extremely harsh before the resignation was announced. “Manuela Bergerot knew it and covered it up, and Mónica García knew it and covered it up,” he said about the Errejón case. “It seems that Más Madrid has dedicated itself for a long time, instead of accompanying the victims, to keeping them silent and not denouncing the aggressor, it has continued. “The hypocrisy of the left is disgusting and Más Madrid has to give many explanations, who knew it and what has been done,” he claimed. “Loreto Arenillas is in a complicated position and we will have to ask her for explanations if her intermediation to silence a victim of sexual assault to protect an aggressor is true,” he noted.
Along the same lines, Alfonso Serrano, the general secretary of Díaz Ayuso’s PP, also pointed out Arenillas this Friday, without mentioning her by name.
“When they said “sister, I do believe you,” they allegedly had public officials from Más Madrid, today sitting in the Madrid Assembly, trying to cover up these alleged cases of abuse or harassment,” said the regional president’s number two.
Furthermore, the spokesperson for the extreme right in the regional Parliament, Isabel Pérez Moñino, has demanded this Friday the appearance of Arenillas “to explain what degree of participation he has had in covering up Iñigo Errejón”, and his PSOE counterpart, Juan Lobato, She has stated that “without a doubt” she should leave the bench if the facts with which she is accused are true.
Even Equo, electoral partner of Más Madrid, joined the request for explanations with a statement in which it stressed that “the behaviors that are coming to light are not admissible.”
