Letter from Spain #59

Hypocrisy or complicity? How much did Sumar know about the 'real monster' in their party?

There’s been one major news story in Spain this week, and it looks like another nail in the coffin for the left-wing umbrella group known as Sumar. The group was formed only two years ago by Spain’s current Labour Minister, Yolanda Díaz, who also acts as deputy prime minister. Sumar is the socialist-led government’s junior coalition partner.

The news story concerns accusations of sexual assault by a (now former) left-wing politician called Íñigo Errejón.

Firstly, who is Íñigo Errejón?

Well, as a sideline, I always thought he was about 14-years-old - I mean, he’s always looked as if he was 14-years-old - but apparently he’s now 40. Anyway, that’s beside the point.

Íñigo Errejón shot to prominence a decade ago as the co-founder and deputy leader of the left-wing (many call it far-left) political party Podemos (meaning ‘We can’), and which shook up Spanish politics.

Errejón is a ‘Doctor of Philosophy in Political Science’ and was an MP and the secretary for policy, strategy and campaigning for Podemos. He split from the group in 2019 after his relationship with the party’s then leader Pablo Iglesias broke down over differences on strategy. He then founded his own platform called Más Madrid, under which he was elected to the Madrid regional government. This party was later re-constituted as Más País so that Errejón could run in Spain’s November 2019 general election, successfully returning to the national parliament as an MP.

Last year Más País joined the left-wing / far-left umbrella group, Sumar. Up until midweek, Errejón was Sumar’s parliamentary spokesman.

Now, to add a bit more context before what follows … Sumar, Más País and, of course, Podemos, have always prioritised gender equality in Spain and the fight against sexual violence in their political manifestos. And with Sumar as his fragile coalition partner, Spanish socialist (PSOE) Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has often boasted that his government is ‘the most feminist’ in Spain’s history, putting the defence of the feminist movement in Spain at the height of his policies.

Errejón himself always associated himself closely with the feminist values of Podemos, Más País and Sumar, and was also a prominent critic of Luis Rubiales, who resigned as head of Spain’s football federation after forcibly kissing a player from the national women’s team (see Letter from Spain #19).

So, what’s happened?

It started on Tuesday with a social media post from a well-known feminist journalist and writer, Cristina Fallarás on Instagram. She cited an anonymous account by another woman who said she had suffered sexual violence from ‘a well-known politician who lives in Madrid’, describing him as a ‘psychological aggressor’, a ‘real psychopath’, and a ‘real monster under the guise of a normal person’. The accuser did not name this ‘well-known politician’.

Cristina Fallarás said she had gathered similar testimonies of at least eight other women who also described alleged episodes of ‘abuse of power and psychological mistreatment’, reportedly by the same well-known politician.

Although he had not been named, on social media the suspicions immediately fell on Íñigo Errejón. On Wednesday, Sumar and Más Madrid said they had opened ‘internal investigations’ - although the issue is also whether these investigations should have been opened several years ago, or indeed whether they were opened but then hushed up.

On Thursday early afternoon, Errejón suddenly announced his resignation from frontline politics. He did so in a cryptic (or simply weird) written statement posted on social media. Without making any apology about anything, he instead referred to his mental health, ‘mistakes’ in the ‘neo-liberal’ environment of politics, and a breakdown of his ‘sentimental and emotional structure’.

‘ … this generates a toxic subjectivity that in the case of men, is multiplied by the patriarchy … with male and female colleagues, with organisational colleagues, with affective relationships, and even with oneself’, he wrote … or at least that’s my best translation of what I think he wrote. He also said that in this ‘intense and accelerated’ political cycle, he had reached the ‘limit of the contradiction between the character and the person’. If you want to practise translating neo-liberal Spanish, you can try and make your own sense of what he wrote on X by clicking here.

That evening, deputy PM Yolanda Díaz - founder of Sumar, remember - posted the following short statement: ‘This week, Sumar has started a process to gather information about the testimonies that have emerged on social media about Iñigo Errejón. As a result of the process, he has resigned from all his posts today. Our commitment against sexism and for a feminist society is firm and without exception.’

Her statement was not enough. It quickly became apparent that testimonies about ‘alleged behaviours of Errejón’ had been appearing on social media for over a year, yet Sumar had failed to initiate any investigations at the time.

Just an hour after the statement from Sumar’s founder, and in the face of accusations that his deputy PM had been aware of Errejón's behaviour but had done nothing about it in the past, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez himself waded in, posting a message on X to express his ‘confidence’ in Díaz and that Sumar was ‘an organisation that has done and is doing a lot for the progress of women’.

‘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. ‘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.’

It still wasn’t enough.

Shortly after Errejón resigned, an actress and television presenter, Elisa Mouliáa, suddenly announced that she had lodged a complaint with the Spanish police against Errejón for sexual assault - and she is the first person to publicly accuse him.

‘Hello, I am a victim of sexual harassment by Íñigo Errejón and I want to denounce it,’ she wrote simply on X, 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’. The police are now investigating the alleged assault that reportedly took place in September 2021.

According to El Pais newspaper, in her complaint Mouliaá has alleged that Errejón 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.

So, despite Más Madrid and Sumar now opening ‘internal investigations’ and stressing the importance of supporting victims of sexual violence ... how much did they already know about Errejón’s behaviour?

An anonymous Twitter thread, published in the summer of 2023, before the general election campaign, has also become very relevant. It recounted how Errejón had touched a girl’s bottom, and then a regional deputy for Más Madrid had tried to ‘mediate’ with her to prevent her from publicly denouncing him. On Friday, a party member was dismissed over the incident, but has since claimed that she has been made a ‘scapegoat’. She claims she had brought the accusation to the head of the party but that it had been ignored.

The Sumar party has said it is ‘implementing a series of protocols to try to prevent these situations from happening again’. It has admitted to failures in ‘detection and prevention’ in the Errejón case and asked for forgiveness.

‘If we had known about the information before, Errejón would have left much earlier. The mechanisms failed, as is evident,’ Ernest Urtasun, Spain’s Culture Minister and leading Sumar official said on Friday.

Even Pablo Iglesias, the former leader of Podemos and previously a close friend of Errejón before their highly publicised split, said that ‘this [these accusations] was being talked about a year ago’ and that ‘there were victims who didn’t have a safe space to complain’.

Spain’s right-wing and far-right opposition parties have seized on to the scandal to argue that the government’s pro-feminist stance is ‘hypocrisy’ - and they are also pointing the finger at the deputy PM Díaz, claiming that she was more than aware of Errejón’s behaviour.

A top official in the People’s Party (PP), Elias Bendodo, has claimed ‘everything suggests’ Sumar's leadership ‘knew about it and covered it up’.

‘And if they knew and covered it up, that’s called complicity,’ he said.

It’s a powerful accusation to make. I’m no fan of the right-wing in Spain, but if Sumar did deliberately turn a blind eye, then the book should be thrown at them.

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You might have noticed that I didn’t post a Letter from Spain last week … and for the moment, I will continue this way and post something every two weeks. But it’s all good news: I’m just very busy writing The Madrid Connection … and we’re also busy working on the development of The Barcelona Connection for the screen …

Thank you for reading!

Books, Reviews, Research, News & Events

The Barcelona Connection - Research

In my weekly ‘Letter from Spain’ from #7 right up to #42, I included notes about all the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection. Many of the posts include photos and descriptions of locations that appear in the book, from Nîmes, Figueres, Cadaqués, La Bisbal d’Empordà and, of course, many areas of Barcelona. There are also posts about Salvador Dalí’s Hallucinogenic Toreador and ‘The Face’, the Dalí Museum in Figueres, the Picasso Museum and MNAC in Barcelona, even Girona Airport and nearby motorway service station - as well as the G20 Spouse Party, museum visits and ‘art attacks’. I hope the notes about the research are of interest … and I hope you might buy, read and take The Barcelona Connection with you to some of the locations that appear in the book! If you do, please send me a photo and I’ll post it here …

The Barcelona Connection - Book & Reviews

A murder. A kidnapping. A lost Salvador Dalí painting. Just 36 hours to resolve all three. Every crime scene is a work of art …

Benjamin Blake is no ordinary detective. Specialising in the criminal underworld of stolen and forged art, things don’t always go the right way for Benjamin. But when they don’t, he has a stubborn determination to put them right.

Within hours of being sent to Barcelona to authenticate a possible Salvador Dalí painting, Benjamin is left stranded without his cell phone at a service station alongside a bloody corpse in the early hours of the morning, after being savagely attacked with his hire car stolen, together with the painting.

Helped and hindered by the fiery Elena Carmona, pursued by a psychopathic hitman, Benjamin becomes the prime suspect in a politically motivated kidnap and murder. All this on the eve of Barcelona hosting a G20 summit and UN climate change conference, with the police in hot pursuit fearing a wider terrorist threat.

From Nîmes in the South of France, across the border to the sweltering humidity of Girona, Barcelona, Figueres and Cadaqués, The Barcelona Connection is a fast-paced, gripping page-turner sprinkled with black comedy, blending the real with the surreal, art crime and mistaken identity … and where the clues at the crime scene might just be the mirror image of a long-lost work of art …

If you can’t locate a copy of The Barcelona Connection in your local store, it can be ordered from any bookshop simply by giving the ISBNnumber: 978-1-7393326-1-7.

It is also available in print or as an eBook via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or you can also click here to choose where else to order your copy from.

Click here for the latest reviews on Amazon and on Goodreads.

A review by Michael Eaude of The Barcelona Connection was published in the October 2023 edition of Catalonia Today.

‘Short, fast-moving scenes and the deft joining of two completely different plots … the novel is not just breathlessly rapid and action-packed, but overflows with humour and satire.’

‘The excellent plotting, the local knowledge, the surreal humour, the political satire and the speed of events … it’s an admirable and very readable crime novel.’

A review by Dominic Begg of The Barcelona Connection was published in La Revista, a publication of the British-Spanish Society.

‘The Barcelona Connection is a fast-moving page-turner with a helter-skelter plot.’

‘The background to this thriller is realistic and familiar to those who know Barcelona well. It’s a world of cynical, ambitious politicians; civil servants promoted via enchufe; friction between Spanish and Catalan investigators; disruptive anti-capitalist activists; bumbling US dignitaries and security guards; the continuing influence of old supporters of Franco; the soulless 21st century, exemplified by apartment hotels seemingly without human staff-members …’

Here’s a link to a review of the book by Eve Schnitzer published by the Spain in English online newspaper.

‘Tim Parfitt very cleverly weaves together two parallel though quite different stories, set against the background of a contemporary Barcelona that is even busier than usual with major international meetings.’

‘Two plot lines interweave, with some highly ironic as well as suspenseful results … this book has a lot to offer the reader, from pure entertainment to solid information and, possibly, a fuller understanding of the complexities of Spain and Catalonia in particular.’

Here’s the link to an article I was asked to write for The Art Newspaper about my research on Salvador Dalí.

A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid - Book & Reviews

Eighteen years since it was originally published, ‘A Load of Bull - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid’ has been re-issued with a new introduction, new cover and five extra chapters that were cut from the original book.

It is available in print and as an eBook worldwide, in both formats. You can also order the new paperback or digital edition via Amazon and Barnes & Noble, or the digital version on Apple, Kobo, Smashwords, or on many other platforms by clicking here.

If you’ve never read the book, I hope you will now acquire a copy and laugh out loud. If you did read and enjoy the original edition, I think you’ll love this new edition with additional chapters! More details about the book and links to many reviews are below.

As with previous posts showing images and locations that form part of the research I carried out for The Barcelona Connection novel (above), I am also planning to publish an archive of photos here of Madrid that relate to many chapters in ‘A Load of Bull’ - although it will take time! In Letter from Spain #52, I cover Chapter 1 - the Centro Colón aparthotel (entrance) Watch this space for further images …

A LOAD OF BULL - An Englishman’s Adventures in Madrid

The hilarious true story of an Englishman sent to Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue …

In the late eighties Tim Parfitt blagged his way into a job at Condé Nast in London and from there into a six week stint in Madrid to help launch Spanish Vogue. Six weeks turned into nine years, and helping out turned into running the company. Along the way, Tim Parfitt discovered the real 'real' Spain. He never saw a Costa and he certainly never bought an olive grove. Instead, he discovered a booming city in hedonistic reaction to years of fascism, where sleep was something you only did at work and where five hour lunches invariably involved a course of bull's testicles.

Tim Parfitt's rise from unwanted guest to paparazzi-pursued mover in Spain's glamorous social scene is a hilarious comedy of errors. Frothing with a language designed to make foreigners dribble, hospitalised by tapa-induced flatulence and constantly frustrated by the unapproachable beauty of the women parading through the Vogue offices, he nevertheless falls in love with a city, a country and its people - despite the fact he hasn't a clue what they're on about.

You can click here for all the reviews of A Load of Bull on Amazon, as well as on Goodreads.

Links to newspaper and magazine reviews:

‘A hugely entertaining memoir ... frequently laugh-out-loud funny.’ (The Daily Express)

‘Parfitt is no ordinary Englishman … his light touch and neat line in self-deprecating humour perfectly suits this entertaining urban spin on the old tale of Brits having fun under the Spanish sun.’ (The Sunday Times)

‘A love letter to Madrid ... brilliantly captures a truly eccentric and hedonistic place.’ (The Daily Mirror)

‘Often hilarious ... a side-splittingly funny travel memoir.’ (BBC Online)

‘Vivid yet affectionate … fascinating, escapist stuff.’ (OK! Magazine)

‘Magnificent ... brilliant and moving, hilarious and truthful.’ (La Vanguardia)

‘Don't miss it … Madrid through the eyes of an Englishman.’ (Vogue España)

Spanish edition

A Load of Bull was also published in Spanish under the title, Mucho Toro - las tribulaciones de un inglés en la movida. Click here or on image below for the current eBook version.

Contact Details

You can email me at: tim.parfitt@hotmail.co.uk

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