I had never been to Ponferrada before. The day before that morning of March 26, 2001, I learned that Councilor Nevenka Fernández had called a press conference at the Temple Hotel. Nor did he know the courageous woman who, 24 years later, would give her name to My name is Nevenkathe film by Iciar Bollain that the Zinemaldia of San Sebastian has just presented. He is probably one of the few journalists she did not identify, since most of those who attended that press conference were media professionals from Ponferradino or the province of León. I was there because I knew that something important was going to be announced, but not exactly what.
I still remember his exhausted face, which, in the column I published the next day in I described the Valladolid Day as “dejected and sad”. But firm at the same time, very firm, despite her tears, when she expressed why she had called the press: “I filed a complaint against the mayor, Ismael Álvarez, for sexual abuse. Because I am 26 years old and I have dignity. That allowed me to continue and now it gives me the courage to stand up. From that day on, first Ponferrada, and then Burgos, where the trial against the then mayor and PP deputy in the Parliament of Castilla y León was held, have become places of reference for my work as a journalist.
I have been to Ponferrada several times. This courageous woman faced a society that extended a trace of guilt to the victim or, at least, of complicity in the harassment she had suffered at the hands of her boss. The two had been in a consensual relationship for about four months, until January 2000. When she wanted to end it, the harassment began.
This was reflected by Fernández in the press conference on March 26: “I told him that I was not clear about my feelings and that the relationship was about to end. That’s when my hell began. My refusal provoked his harassment. “His pressure attitude manifested itself in the form of handwritten notes, messages on mobile phones, letters and comments.” These attempts to discredit Álvarez left their mark in Ponferrada, from where Fernández was forced to leave. He left for London to try to rebuild his life. In the column that I published on March 28, Ángel, a retiree who preferred to hide his last name, certified the triumph of this discrediting campaign: “It is true that they said that he was taking drugs and that he was in treatment, because he was no longer among the people.
Fernández was aware of what he was up against, not only the power of Álvarez, but also the attempt to discredit him: “They said I was in a drug rehabilitation center or in a sect. The same column reports the pessimism of a woman walking down El Reloj Street in the city of León. She also did not want her identity to be revealed: “I know Nevenka. Her parents have been here all their lives: even if what he says is true, we already know what always happens. We women have the ones to lose. And I don’t think that’s going to change.” He was wrong, at least this time.
The story is well-known: Ismael Álvarez was sentenced, by judgment of May 30, 2002, to compensate Nevenka Fernández with 12,000 euros and to pay a fine of 6,480 euros. The sentence does not include the disqualification of Ismael Álvarez, who faced the entire process of accusation, as well as the hearing, maintaining his positions, which protected his capacity. He presented himself as the victim of a political campaign against his party “to do harm”. It was the day that the sentence was announced that condemned him when he resigned from his position as mayor and prosecutor of the Cortes of Castilla y León. “I am leaving,” he said, “because of the love I have for the PP.”
When she decided to take the step of publicly denouncing the incident she suffered in court, Fernández knew she was facing a powerful man and the lack of understanding of a society even less evolved than the current one in terms of feminism. What I probably didn’t expect was what happened on the afternoon of April 30, 2002. I remembered the date thanks to the newspaper archives, but that moment is still etched in my memory. It was the trial session held in Burgos, the seat of the Superior Court of Justice of Castilla y León, in which Nevenka herself was to testify. As soon as that session ended, I left the room excited and the first thing I did was grab my cell phone. Because at that time, the data and audio transmission that WhatsApp offers today did not exist.
“Justino, something very, very important has happened…” My interlocutor, Justino Sanchón, was my editor-in-chief of El Día de Valladolid, a small newspaper founded two years before. I remember that before starting the car, as I had to go to Valladolid to write the column, the director of the newspaper himself, Ricardo Arques, who unfortunately passed away last May, wanted to check what I had transmitted to Sanchón: I had had him write it down in my notebook, it changed tomorrow’s cover. “Did you record it?” Arques asked me on the other end of the line. Yes, I answered, but I still couldn’t listen to the recording, I had to start the car and leave for Valladolid. An hour and a half of long silence separated us, because at that time hands-free cars were rare. As soon as I arrived at the editorial office, I had Sanchón, Arques and Carlos Blanco, deputy director of the newspaper, waiting for what I had told them on the phone. It was a leadership composed exclusively of men, which today, almost 25 years later, would surely have changed too.
It was going to make the front page, but they were surprised that the many teletypes already transmitted by the news agencies, as well as the radio bulletins, did not refer to what I had told them, the prosecutor said. There were still no social networks, there were no public conversations outside the media. Two pages awaited me, there was a lot to write and little time to close the newspaper and, given the importance that we had all given to these words of the prosecutor, to listen to the recording. Well, I have always been the type to take notes and extract transcripts only for interviews and controversial topics, and this one was a lot.
The next day, Valladolid day, While no one was talking about it yet, he recorded in the trial report the exact words (including secularism) with which the prosecutor, José Luis García Ancos, questioned Nevenka Fernández: “Why are you, who are not an employee of Hipercor? “They touch your buttocks and you have to put up with it for your children’s bread, why did you endure?” The next day, a holiday on May 1, no other newspaper reported what Nevenka Fernández’s statement had been through the prosecutor’s unusual harshness. But, as the hours went by, other media began to echo these words, to the point that already on that same day, let us remember, a holiday, the State Attorney General’s Office had decided to open proceedings against Ancos, who would ultimately be dismissed, a few days later, from the case.
Journalism has fulfilled its function. A modest provincial newspaper had highlighted the abnormality of an interrogation, which changed the news agenda and the social perception of what should have been broadcast, from the beginning, as an anomaly. The courage came from Nevenka Fernández, but journalism has also demonstrated its value. As something useful. It is worth remembering this in times of skepticism, when everything seems the same.
