Yolanda Diaz gave two contradictory versions of his knowledge of sexual violence from Iñigo Errejón. The Sumar leader and vice-president presented herself to the Congress of Deputies this Monday after holding a long meeting with her parliamentarians, four days after the scandal broke. Díaz assured, initially, that he was aware of these violent attitudes by Errejón himself, last Wednesday. However, when questioned by journalists, he later admitted that We can already inform you he last year of a sexual assault committed by the politician during a music festival in Castellón.
Despite the controversy, Díaz made an official trip to Colombia in recent days. “The only way to make up for this it’s much better and improve detection, prevention and support mechanisms,” he simply declared.
The vice president said that last Tuesday she became aware of Errejón’s “sexist” behavior following several complaints on social media. On Wednesday, he spoke with his former spokesperson, who admitted the facts, and demanded his deputy status and the cessation of his responsibilities.
I knew it since 2023
However, when questioned by informants, Díaz later admitted that, during the 2023 general election campaign, Podemos had already informed him of a case of non-consensual touching by the politician during a festival in Castellón. This is the complaint of a woman who said on social networks that Errejón touched her without her consent.
According to Díaz’s version, he was interested in the matter and asked Más Madrid, but the party led by Mónica García “closed the file”. “My team is handling it with Más Madrid and they tell me the case is closed. Afterwards, I was told that this woman removed the tweet. “I never heard of this fact again,” he defended himself. Likewise, he stated that Errejón was “going to therapy.”
The vice president admitted that she should not have chosen the MP as Sumar’s spokesperson. “He should not have been a deputy or spokesperson, that’s obvious,” he said, while insisting that he did not have as much information then as in recent days .
“We arrived late”
Yolanda Díaz said that when she contacted her former spokesperson last week, it was “one of the most difficult conversations” of her life. “He recognized humiliating and sexist attitudes towards me,” he stressed. “I asked him for a certificate of deputy, of cessation of his functions. “If I had known about such serious events before, I would have acted exactly like this week, with the same force,” he insisted. However, he admitted: “We arrived late and I apologize for that.”
Crisis on the left
The tension left on the Errejon affair is increasing, and with contradictory versions. This Monday, Podemos claimed to have informed Díaz of the Twitter feed of the young woman who accused Errejón of touching in June 2023.
“The only thing we did was communicate it to the person who we thought could do something, namely Yolanda Díaz, the person who was running Sumar and who was preparing the electoral lists for Sumar,” explained the spokesperson. -speaker of the purple party, Pablo Fernández.
On Saturday, however, Sumar denied knowledge of any episodes of gender-based violence by the politician. This was stated by spokesperson and minister Ernest Urtasun, denying any responsibility. Podemos avoided specifying who and how the information was transferred to Díaz.
Furthermore, Más Madrid acknowledges having knowledge of the events reported in June last year. During an appearance, also this Monday, the leaders of the group, Mónica García, Rita Maestre and Manuela Bergerot, admitted to having “become aware through social networks” of this public complaint.
“The next day we asked Loreto Arenillas for an explanation and she informed us that she had contacted the victim on her own,” Bergerot explained. The party accuses the former MP of “minimizing” the aggressiveness of Sumar’s former spokesperson and of acting “behind the party’s back”.
Arenillas, who renounced her membership as a deputy, assured that the leadership of Más Madrid did not consider the information relevant and did not “transmit this information to the party organs”, affirming that it used as a “scapegoat”.
