Former Minister of Equality Irene Montero claims that the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, requested her resignation in the midst of the crisis of law “only yes means yes” and he even points out that he even “yelled” to ask when his resignation was going to take place. It also assumes that the decision to propose Díaz as a future electoral candidate after the departure of the government of the former leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, was the “the biggest political mistake» engaged by his training in these years.
This is what the current Podemos MEP explains in her book “Something we will have done”, published by the “Navona” publishing house, in which she looks back on the main moments of her political career until ‘to today. For example, Montero reproaches Moncloa, given the lack of agreement with Podemos at the beginning of last year on the reform of the criminal framework of the law, “only yes means yes” thanks to the judicial resolutions that reduced the sentences of sex offenders, that her calculation was “Let it go» instead of having a coordinated response to the “judicial offensive” and agreeing on an article which, according to him, would leave consent at the center.
However, and according to his version, the way in which several of his Unidas Podemos colleagues acted was “very painful and despicable”, saying that Díaz had asked for his resignation in several meetings that he had called “especially for this”.
“Isa Serra (current MEP of Podemos), during one of these meetings, was interrogated shouting several times that When was Irene Montero going to resign?“, affirms the former minister, adding that, a few days later, she was told that the vice-president “clearly saw” that she would fire the former Secretary of State for Equality Ángela Rodríguez “Pam” and the former government delegate against gender-based violence, Vicky Rosell. “Both (‘Pam’ and Rosell) came to my office to tell me about their responsibilities. I still cry with rage when I remember it. “Yolanda was acting to force my resignation or that of an important person on my team,” criticizes Montero.
“Yolanda decided that she had to side with the PSOE and take the opportunity to try to mortally wound Podemos”
“Abandon equality”
Then, he maintains that the decision to promote the reform proposed by the Ministry of Justice and to “drop equality” was taken by the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, but who “increased the aggressiveness of the blows“It was” Yolanda and who, with her, decided to side with the PSOE and take advantage of it to try to mortally wound Podemos.
She also assures that the “undoubtedly the most painful moment” for her during these days with her former colleagues was experienced with the current deputy of Sumar and leader of IU, Enrique Santiagoto whom he attributes having “clearly seen” the PSOE’s proposal to return to the penal system prior to the “only yes means yes” Law.
On February 1, 2023, the former minister remembers, she had a tense conversation with Santiago, whom she suspects of negotiating “for his own account or for that of Díaz with the PSOE, outside of Equality” and that when When she expressed her suspicions, he replied that she was “castiled”. However, he said he received a series of WhatsApp messages from Santiago himself that he had sent “by mistake to the wrong Montero» (Finance Minister María Jesús Montero), telling him about the conversation with her. “It was the last time I spoke with Enrique,” he emphasizes.
Montero emphasizes that the entire PSOE approved the “counter-reform” of the return to the penal framework prior to the law “only yes is yes” and that this is how they obtained “all the pressure” to trying to “break him” and ensure that he came out “as hard hit as possible”. And he claims that Díaz and others understood that “the reactionary legal offensive was a golden opportunity for them.”
Clash with the PSOE
On the other hand, he claims that the night before the presentation by the PSOE of the reform of the law agreed with the PP to Congress, he received a call from the current first vice-president. Maria Jesus Montero explain to him that there was no more time to negotiate and that he was signing with them the initiative to return to the previous Penal Code, something which, according to him, was “surrendering to the sexist judicial offensive” and “washing one’s face” of one’s agreement with the “popular.”
“Sign the reform, Minister. Your political career does not necessarily have to end there,” said María Jesús Montero about the “counter-reform.”
Concretely, she explains that she told him this: “sign the reform, Minister. Your political career should not end there“. To which she replied no because she was convinced that it was a step backwards for feminist rights. “The most serious thing is that I don’t think it’s a threat, even if it seems to be one (…) I was summarizing with great sincerity how the PSOE works,” he said. he.
This attitude also evoked Díaz when he said he called Podemos secretary general Ione Belarra to ask if Montero wanted “perhaps an embassy, for example in Chile” because it was a good political solution. “They (…) reproduced certain rules of power which were surely also used against them and which they accepted,” he criticizes.
Irene Montero’s conclusion after the controversy over the law “only yes is yes” and the clash with the PSOE on the reform of the law is that Sánchez decided “silence feminism» and “punished” the “institutional feminism” that they had deployed since Equality.
