BarcelonaÍñigo Errejón resigned last Thursday after the first accusations of sexual harassment surfaced in the networks and anonymously – through the Instagram account of journalist Cristina Fallarás – timidly. They were anonymous, but after a few hours more emerged with names and surnames. The spotlight was put on them and the veracity of their version of events was even questioned. A pattern that the councilor of the PP of Ponferrada Nevenka Fernández already experienced in 2001. More than twenty years later, however, a political Me Too has now been unleashed in Spain – it had already spread to countries such as France and the United Kingdom – which many women hope will be a turning point, so that these violences stop being lived in silence in the political sphere – and in any area -.
“It means making visible what feminists have been saying for a long time, that male violence does not understand ideologies or social classes, that the aggressors can be in our closest environment. What made us think that politics was not a space where didn’t happen?” reflects the director of the Instituto de la Mujer, Cristina Hernández, in statements to ARA. For who he is and what he has defended, sociologist Gemma Altell believes that the Errejón case is even more outrageous and paradigmatic. In fact, he considers that it may have been even more difficult for the women who denounced him, because they could think that what had happened to them was “dissonant with the political approach” defended by the former leader of Sumar. “You can doubt your own feelings: someone who says they’re a feminist and what’s happening to you, you can think that it’s you who doesn’t interpret it well,” he analyzes.
Focus on the aggressor
The Errejón case is not the first to emerge from the political scene, but it has certainly been the most media-driven and the one with the most impact, due to the visibility that Sumar’s export spokesman had and the trajectory within the Spanish left . “Despite being anonymous, when the force is collective, it ends up having a real impact on the aggressor”, defends the director of the Catalan Women’s Institute, Sònia Guerra. Still not having digested the scandal, more cases surfaced: a woman reported being sexually harassed by a socialist politician from Badajoz and another took a PP mayor to court for alleged sexual assault.
Other cases have been uncovered in Catalonia, such as that of Alfred Bosch’s chief of staff, Carles Garcias, or that of former CUP deputy Quim Arrufat, advanced by the ARA. Garcias was removed from ERC for sexual harassment and Arrufat left the CUP with two internal complaints of sexual abuse. The cupaires also removed the former mayor of Argentona Eudald Calvo for sexual harassment. The now Junts senator Eduard Pujol was also reported internally for the same issue, but later the victim said it was a false report. In the case of the PP, both former general secretary Daniel Serrano and deputy communications secretary Albert Fernández Saltiveri received judicial complaints for assault and ill-treatment, respectively, but the former’s case was dismissed and the latter was acquitted. There have also been deputies who have decided to explain their personal case of sexist violence, such as that of Republican deputy Jenn Díaz. “Reporting is a difficult process and in the case of men who have power, it is even more difficult. It is not a question of them being afraid, but rather that society ends up questioning them”, points out Guerra, who calls for the focus to be placed on the aggressor and not the victim.
With the law of only yes is yesthe victim can receive psychological care without reporting his aggressor if he does not want it. “Women have to be recovered, strong and positioned to take a step like this [presentar una denúncia judicial]”, points out Altell. A few months ago, the central executive also approved the parity law that obliges parties to have an equality plan with a protocol against harassment. A tool that also has the Congress of Deputies or the Parliament. However, beyond compliance with the rules, Hernández also focuses on the need for “transformation” of men: “If there is still a culture of rape in society, we will be able to continue attending to the victims, but what I aspire to is that there are no victims.”
The Me Toos of the United Kingdom and France
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56 British MPs were investigated between 2019 and 2024
More than one in twenty UK MPs – there are 650 in the House of Commons – faced allegations of inappropriate behavior during the previous legislature, between December 2019 and May 2024. Inappropriate behavior is a tailor’s drawer in which all kinds of reprehensible attitudes fit: from watching pornography on the office computer, on the mobile phone and during a plenary session, sexually offensive comments towards female deputies in addition, of course, to sexual harassment in all its forms: touching without consent, sending sexual images, assaults. Over the previous five years, up to 56 MPs, including three members of the government, have been investigated.
Faced with the seriousness of the situation and some scandals reported by women in the past decade – parliamentary assistants and auxiliary staff: the community of Westminster has a population of 15,000 people -, in 2018 a protocol was created – The Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme – designed to tackle harassment, intimidation and sexual misconduct within the UK Parliament. It includes four points: confidentiality of complaints, independent investigations and recommendation of sanctions, which do not exclude criminal and judicial actions.
Of the 56 investigations launched between 2019 and 2024, 34 parliamentarians ended up resigning or were sanctioned by their parties. Seventeen MPs were from the Conservative Party, thirteen from the Labor Party, three from the Scottish National Party and one from Plaid Cymru.
The former Labor MP Harriet Harman, who until July was the one with the longest career in the Commons, denounced this past summer, on the BBC, a comment, in accordance with the confession made to her by a former Westminster aide: “A man with a higher position told her: “Your breasts look very firm in this blouse”. Harman pointed to the possibility that all this was common, and called for male solidarity, so that men also report other men in case of reprehensible attitudes of any kind, if they occur in their presence.
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From the Strauss-Kahn case to the ministers of the Macron government
In 2011, the then managing director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, was arrested in the United States after receiving a complaint for sexual abuse, attempted rape and illegal detention of a waitress Sofitel Hotel, Nafissatou Diallo. The socialist leader of France aspired to preside over the country, but his political career was dashed as a result of this case, which ended without conviction. Now, it wasn’t until almost ten years later that an explicit Me Too was unleashed. Up to 285 women working in political parties and institutions signed a letter published in Le Monde demanding that all men accused of sexual violence be removed from electoral lists. The text prompted the hashtag #MeTooPolitique in France where dozens of women denounced sexist situations in the political sphere. The initiative ended up leading to the Observatory of Sexist and Sexual Violence in Politics.
A few months later two women denounced the former Minister of Solidarity Damien Abad, who ended up resigning two years ago after being accused of sexual assault. He was not the first member of Emmanuel Macron’s government to resign due to a similar complaint. In 2018, for example, Nicolas Hulot, former minister of ecological transition, also had to step down following an allegation of sexual harassment. At first, Macron himself had defended it.
The latest cases uncovered have particularly affected the Macron government, but recently the France Insubmissive party also removed one of its militants, Taha Bouhafs, after receiving two allegations of sexual assault that were channeled internally. If we go back a few years, in 2016 we also find the case of former vice-president of the National Assembly Denis Baupin, one of the leaders of the French ecological party, who had to resign from his position after being reported for sexual harassment .
