When news breaks like that of the resignation of Íñigo Errejón Due to a series of accusations of sexist violence, it is easy to get lost among the hundreds of pieces of information that are published. And this confusion favors those who do not want to explain too much. A big question hangs over this case from the beginning: did everyone know and no one did anything? But the answer is not easy. Because, first of all, who is everyone? And what exactly was known? It was rumored that the deputy went out a lot at night, that he might have a problem with drugs, get annoying with women… But did anyone know that there were specific complaints of sexist attacks? Who knew what? And, above all, what did Sumar know? What did Madrid know more? Should they have done something they didn’t do?
While the big questions are resolved, almost it is always useful to go down to the known details and arrange them chronologically. Shed some light even on what may seem less serious. So we are going to go to Castellón de la Plana, to June 2023, to the electoral pre-campaign, to that day when a girl claims that the deputy Errejón He touched her waist and ass without her consent (and without knowing her at all) at a festival, the Tremendas Femfest, with a precisely transfeminist theme.
Around one in the morning, according to the young woman’s story, while she was dancing she noticed Errejón’s hand on her waist. She moved. He did it again. A friend of hers slapped her hand away. The girl couldn’t believe it. He thought he was making a mistake. “How could it be possible for him to come?” here a national level politicianknown precisely for being left-wing and feminist, and would reach out to me?” he asked in the account of events he later made on Twitter (and which he later deleted). But it wasn’t a mistake. He didn’t stop. Then, he touched her ass. A long time. The girl went to complain to one of the organizers of the event, who went to talk to the Errejón group.
The next day, Sunday, she complained on WhatsApp and in writing to two people from the organization, who expressed their support. They told him that a friend of Errejón had sent them this message: “In fact, he (Errejón) tells me that if he could tell you that he is at your disposal in case he can do anything to remedy the situation, and that he is very sorry” . And they also asked him if they could pass his phone to a colleague who had been present that night. She agreed. The “colleague” turned out to be Loreto Arenillas, deputy of the Madrid Assembly for Más Madrid.
At this point is where the entire case stops being just conduct exclusively attributable to Errejón, and where the party intervenes. The events happened on a Saturday. That same Sunday is when he received the call from Deputy Arenillas. That is to say, a member of the party calls her on the phone not because they have seen an anonymous complaint on Twitter that did not yet exist. They call her because they know for a fact that a girl has complained to the festival organization about touching without consent by Errejón and there are witnesses. They are not managing a reputational crisis that has exploded on social networks over an accusation that they do not know if it is real or not. They are trying to control that something that they know is real and that has happened is not known.
A day before the young woman writes on Twitter is when Arenillas calls her. He very politely offers to mediate, and adds that “public ridicule” did not seem like the most appropriate way to manage things.
The next day was when the woman told everything on Twitter. Because? She explains it: “He groped me in a bar and I’m telling it because I’m SICK of straight left-wing cis men who learn transfeminist discourse better than us, paint their nails and it seems like everything is already done. And then we let them enter supposedly safe spaces so that later they act like real pigs and attack us anyway.”
She says she hesitated whether to tell it or not because, “as far as possible, it was not a serious event.” “I haven’t been raped, I’m not going to have lifelong trauma, it’s not the first time a guy at a party groped me, nor the worst, nor will it be the last,” he continues. And add a phrase that summarizes the keys to understanding the Errejón case: “But he wasn’t just any guy, he was a public representative who has made a career out of continually and openly protesting against these types of situations.”
Exactly: he was a public representative who publicly defended feminism. And what this public representative did was known to other public representatives. Like Loreto Arenillas, who tried to mediate so that it would not be known. But not alone. When the girl told it on Twitter, a former party member was told, by other members of Más Madrid, that Loreto was “stopping” him. Another person, a member of the party at the time, read in an internal chat that Loreto was “managing” this matter while it was insinuated that what the woman was saying was not true even though people in the party knew it was, as shown. clearly the chronological order in which the events occurred.
More Madrid cannot continue being silent or navigating between general self-criticisms. Not even the responsibility ends with Loreto Arenillas. She made the call, but it was something other party members knew about. There was a shared responsibility in the management of that crisis, which had nothing to do with any tweet invention but rather with the fact that, incomprehensibly, a national deputy started touching other people’s asses at a festival, that a woman complained about it and that the machinery of the party puts itself at the service of silence. Precisely, what the feminism of Más Madrid and Sumar always criticize.
