Rita Maestre, spokeswoman for Más Madrid in the City Council of the capital and partner of Íñigo Errejón for several years, has released a letter on her X account this Sunday in which she affirms that, after “reading carefully, and barely beginning to digest” the testimonies of women who accuse her former boyfriend of “aggressions and abuses”, she wants to “respond” to those who have speculated about the degree of knowledge she had of those behaviors. Errejón has left politics after resigning last Thursday as parliamentary spokesman for Sumar, where Más Madrid is integrated, after the coalition opened an investigation against him for accusations of sexual harassment and denigrating and sexist attitudes launched anonymously through the Instagram account of journalist Cristina Fallarás.
“As everyone knows, Íñigo Errejón and I were a couple for several years and, although we had been estranged for a long time, everything that has happened this week overwhelms and shocks me especially because I am now discovering that some of the episodes of behaviors and misogynistic violence denounced by the victims happened when the aggressor was still my partner,” Maestre explains. “A person of normal appearance, a ‘good boyfriend’, was at the same time a misogynist who returned home normally after assaulting a 20-year-old woman in a hotel,” she adds, referring to the anonymous complaint made by a woman through the El Salto media. “The aggressors,” continues the spokeswoman for Más Madrid in the Madrid City Council, “who usually present themselves as exceptional monstrous beings are a father, a brother, a work colleague or your ex-partner. But it is disturbing because now it is not a theory or a slogan; it is my life, and I find it impossible not to speak from there.”
Maestre then replies to those who have speculated about the degree of knowledge she had of Errejón’s behaviors. “Obviously, it is impossible that each of the people who have shared with him parts of our lives, in whatever area, do not think how we could not see that we were facing someone with those multiple faces, how we could blind ourselves to that level of manipulation, because that is what someone is who sustains in their daily life a network of aggressions and abuses of this magnitude: a manipulator,” she states. “Now,” she adds, “it may be very easy and tempting to put the different information that has come to light under a spotlight of obviousness that simply is not. I have not been part, nor am I aware of any cover-up of any aggression or violent action, because there has been none. Rather I feel deeply deceived and that deception is devastating.”
Pablo Iglesias, co-founder, with Errejón, of Podemos ten years ago, has said in recent days, referring to the accusations against the former spokesman of Sumar, that “this was talked about a year ago.” Loreto Arenillas, a deputy of Más Madrid in the regional Assembly, resigned last Friday after being identified as a mediator to prevent a case of alleged sexual harassment committed by Errejón in June 2023 from being revealed. The party announced that she was being dismissed because she refused to resign, but, finally, Arenillas announced that she was resigning, although on her X account she stated that she had brought the facts to the attention of “the then Secretary of organization and the person responsible for feminism”, without considering it necessary to elevate that information to the party’s bodies, so she believed they had turned her into “a scapegoat”. The spokeswoman for Más Madrid in the Madrid City Council emphasizes in her letter the need to attend, support, and respect victims and to “end spaces of impunity”, regardless of who the aggressor is. “We are tired of feeling judged when we have been part of the aggressor’s personal environment. Tired of not being believed and questioned when we are assaulted. Not knowing where to turn when something like any of the things that are occupying headlines happens to us, in all its seriousness.” So far, only one complaint has been filed with the police. In her letter, Maestre encourages any woman who has experienced an assault or harassment “to use feminist support networks to move forward.”
