Sanchez´s Coalition Partner Sumar Rocked By Sexual Resignation Scandal

October 28, 2024October 28, 2024 Madrid Metropolitan pedro sanchez, spanish politics

Íñigo Errejón, Podemos founding member, quits politics amid series of sexual assault accusations

Íñigo Errejón, one of the founders of Spain’s left-wing Podemos party, has quit politics and his post as spokesman for the Sumar left-wing party – the Spanish government’s main coalition partner led by Yolanda Díaz – following a series of accusations of sexual violence towards women.

Accusations are still emerging; so far from four different women including Spanish actress Elisa Moulia of sexual and psychological harassement and abuse.

Errejón announced over the weekend that he was quitting politics due to the strain on his ‘physical and mental health’ and media reports that the 41 year-old politician is now under police investigation over the allegations which include a BDSM relationship with a fellow party worker.

Announcing his resignation in a message posted on X (Twitter), Errejón did not mention the accusations yet suggested his ‘mistakes’ were down to working in the ‘neo-liberal’ environment of politics, which he said ‘generates a toxic subjectivity, which, in the case of men, is multiplied by patriarchy’.

The allegations against Errejón have dealt a blow to the government of Pedro Sánchez, the socialist (PSOE) prime minister, who has put the defence of the feminist movement in Spain at the height of his policies. They have also prompted accusations of hypocrisy against the left-wing Podemos and Sumar parties, as it emerged that sexual harassment allegations were first made against Errejón years ago.

‘The government is working towards a feminist Spain where women have the same rights, the same opportunities and the same freedom and security as men,’ Sánchez wrote on X (Twitter). ‘I fully condemn those who threaten this project of equality. All my support to women who suffer harassment and abuse. And all my confidence in the deputy prime minister Yolanda Díaz and Sumar, an organisation that has done and is doing a lot for the progress of women.’

In her complaint against Errejón, according to El Pais, Mouliaá alleged that he accosted her at a party three years ago and took her into a room, locked the door and touched her several times without her consent before exposing his penis. Afterwards, she said that they went by car to Errejón’s home and there he tried to have sex with her against her will.

Mouliáa is the first to publicly accuse Errejón. ‘Hello, I am a victim of sexual harassment by Íñigo Errejón and I want to denounce it,’ she simply wrote on X (Twitter) – see below – as well as tagging some journalists and the EFE news agency. She later told a radio station she had not made the allegations public before ‘because of fear, because of who Errejón was, because of the power of politics’.

Errejón was a founding member of Podemos, which he quit for Sumar. Both parties have lost support in recent years. One of the leading politicians of the populist left in Spain, Errejón was a prominent critic of Luis Rubiales who was forced to resign as head of Spain’s football federation after forcibly kissing a player from the national women’s team and is now the subject of a criminal investigation over alleged corrupt practices and bribery.