There are at least two Irenes Montero. There is the image on the cover of your book, energetic, proud, who applauds while looking at the stands, where those who are prohibited from applauding, gesticulating, rebuking their lordships, cheering them when necessary, taking photos with their mobile phones sit. She is a woman who claps like left-handed women do, making the right-handed woman take all the impact. Who applauded that February 16, 2023, when the congress and while, behind, four deputies from the Popular Party were, let’s say, out for grapes. Or pretending he wasn’t there.
And there is another Irene, the one who appeared this afternoon in the auditorium of La Casa Encendida to present her first book, We will have done something, edited by Navona. The one who, demonstrating that she is energy and command, minutes before was swarming through the room, the sound of her heels echoing through the hallways. The nerves typical of the previous one, a certain obsession with perfectionism that is sensed in a few seconds. “She’s a boss,” joked her fellow member and former Jemad, “and look if I’ve been in charge.”
That woman who watched the posters placed in the first two rows, with the names of Ione Belarra – how exciting what she says about her in the pages -, Juanma del Olmo, Isa Serra, Pablo Fernández, Lidia Rubio. Those who for her are “Eche, Lidi, Isa, Rafa and Pablo”, those who have not left her alone. Many people were left unable to access the street. Who covered their necks with purple scarves and cold. Women, a few more than men.
The journalist Joanna Bonet was in charge of leading a conversation. A conversation in which Irene was involved, the one on this afternoon of November 11, took little time to break down. “This book is the result of a path,” he said as best he could. And he cried. “Pablo and our three children,” and he became excited again. She has a dedication on the refrigerator, very old now, with a note that Belarra wrote to her: “Whatever comes, it will come together.”
He says that these pages are not a reckoning, but rather a book for hope. If this were a heart program, we would say that Irene tells her truth to show that, no matter how many times they have tried to kill her, she is still alive. “It’s good that things happen, even if the PSOE and the two-party system don’t want to,” he said. Smile, teeth clenched, head held high. The public, of course, on their feet. A man in the penultimate row did not stop nodding during the approximately one hour that the event lasted.
And Irene from the congress returned. The one who remembered that while she applauded and that image now becomes the cover of her first book, she was experiencing a “reactionary judicial offensive due to the law of only yes means yes.” And he cited Judge Manuel Marchena. “What they have done to us is because we have done things”, “We can make possible what they tell us is impossible”. He recounted the offer that Yolanda Díaz made to Ione Belarra, a position in the Chilean embassy so that Irene “would have a good political exit.” The anger that this proposal produced in them. And by the way, liking everything, he verbally slapped the leader of the opposition in the Community of Madrid, the representative for Más Madrid Manuela Bergerot.
Now, the darts at Díaz, “the biggest political mistake” of Podemos, and “Columnists and talk shows from EL PAÍS and SER who, once a week, launch anti-racist messages” and very left-wing, but when the elections arrive “ They only think of one option, the PSOE.” Because it is then, at the time of depositing the ballot in the polls, when they remember that it is the only possible left, “with management experience.”
She wanted to highlight the day she and Iglesias thought about leaving it, and how her people convinced her that it was not a good idea. “It was a very Podemos moment. We cried a lot and moved forward,” he explained. The “bestiality and brutality of the attacks received, the persistence over time,” that meeting with the former Minister of Justice Pilar Llop, her team and professor Javier Álvarez, which he defined as “nonsense.” The sarcasm of the former Minister of Equality when highlighting that, of all the criticisms leveled by Podemos at the system, “the criticism of the hegemonic narrative of the transition is almost what has hurt them the most.”
He stood up, applauded again and began to sign. With the left hand.
