It hasn’t been a debate. It has been an unprecedented political scene: the entire opposition of the Móstoles City Council, from Vox to Más Madrid, has forced the mayor, Manuel Bautista (PP), to sit down, endure and listen to a unanimous request for resignation and ask for explanations regarding the accusation of a councilor from his party for sexual and workplace harassment. “Recommending a woman not to report is unheard of,” said Nieva Machín, from Vox, about the pressure from the Madrid PP on the former mayor. “They have destroyed his life,” continued Ana Tejero, from Más Madrid. “They have made the victim invisible,” added Mónica Montreal. “It is not only harassment, it is isolation, discredit,” concluded Susana López, from the PSOE. The councilor, however, has repeatedly used the excuse that everything was “a fabricated hoax” and has threatened that he will denounce anyone who dares to tarnish his name. His defense has pivoted on these two ideas and he has not said anything about the PP closing the case without listening to the victim or that they pressured her not to report.
Bautista, haughty, has been proud to show his face and go “head on” when it comes to offering explanations at the extraordinary plenary session held this Tuesday at the town’s Town Hall. The reality is that he does not appear out of his own free will and sense of duty, but because he was obliged to call him because the municipal groups requested it en masse, who also demanded and have demanded again his resignation.
They have all attacked the councilor and the PP of Madrid for covering up the accusations for months, discouraging the victim from reporting, which they consider “unheard of”, minimizing her suffering and attacking her in public and private. Bautista, cornered by the groups, has on several occasions alluded to his innocence and thrown things out – “it’s a hoax,” he has repeated – to justify his permanence in office.
Minutes before the start of the Plenary Session, surrounded by several popular councillors, the mayor used the arguments of the PP of Madrid to defend himself. “This is one more trick and a work of that factory of spreading hoaxes. All they want is to penetrate Móstoles. Sánchez and Moncloa have made up a big lie and are defaming me,” he attacked. These are phrases similar to those that he and other popular leaders have been repeating since the accusations were made public. The president of the Community, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, spoke of a “fabricated hoax” in the Assembly, and that has been the tone of the rest since then. Also after the ex-cejala’s lawyer, , presented this Monday in the Criminal Section of the Court of Instance of Móstoles of sexual and workplace harassment, crime against moral integrity, injuries, coercion and revelation of secrets.
In two hours of plenary session, the municipal groups have repeated to Bautista that they do not question the presumption of innocence, but they do demand coherence and the same political rectitude that he and the PP demand in the face of complaints of sexual harassment of political opponents. “No one here intends to replace the courts,” Mónica Montreal, from Podemos and part of the Mixto group, began. “We are facing a situation that directly affects the integrity of the institution and the trust of citizens in their city council. You are not just another worker, nor an intermediate position, you are the highest municipal authority, the ultimate hierarchical superior of the entire staff,” he snapped.
Nieva Machín, spokesperson for Vox and former government partner with Bautista, has harshly attacked the mayor and the way of proceeding of the PP of Madrid: “Recommending a woman not to report alleged acts of abuse is unheard of. What is consistent is that it be investigated, not that it be silenced. It is contradictory that the former councilor’s version is called into question for not having reported it before and then [cuando denuncia] “She will be penalized.” It refers to the strategy of direct attack on the former councilor that Bautista and the Madrid PP have followed through fake news and threats, with the aim of discrediting her version and denigrating her image through information leaked to different media, where even photos of the former councilor have been disseminated, or the publication of the emails that she sent to her party asking for help and in which her full name could be read.
Ana Tejero, from Más Madrid, reminded Bautista of a phrase that Ayuso’s number three, Ana Millán, said to the former PP councilor in one of their two meetings to dissuade her from denouncing: “We have all put up with things in politics.” The councilor has summarized the chain of events since the former councilor went to the PP seeking protection until she resigned, after months without a response and feeling abandoned by her lifelong party. “In those seven words is contained a whole chain of events and silences. The image that has been built about a colleague has been devastating. They have destroyed her life. And it is worth asking what the PP bodies have done to listen to her, protect her and prevent her from being left alone,” Tejero snapped. Susana López, from the PSOE, has brought to the debate a reference to Nevenka case: “Because the problem is not only the harassment itself, but everything that comes after. The isolation, the discredit, the silences, the doubts planted on those who report. That is the real ordeal.”
The mayor’s responses have been repetitive. “I protect my integrity, my honor and the honor of my government, and I am going to defend them tooth and nail here and in the courts. They will not be able to defeat me; it is a campaign to dehumanize a person,” he said just before entering a full plenary hall, something very unusual in Móstoles. There was not a free seat and that has caused complaints from several people who have been left at the doors. “Let the people in!” they shouted.
Outside, in the square in front of the City Hall, dozens of residents queued at nine in the morning to enter and attend the plenary session. When the police guarding the entrance to the Town Hall announced, around 9:20, that the capacity had already been reached, cries of protest were heard. Some had been waiting for up to an hour: “Fuck, how is it full?” one woman complained, “But full, from whom?” asked another. In the room, the chairs were mostly occupied by municipal workers.
María del Mar García, 59, was waiting in line and was left outside. He accuses the PP of “having a double standard” and of wanting to silence the complainant. “What image are we giving to women who suffer this type of violence and abuse? Why does she have to leave her record and he continues in his position?”, criticizes this neighbor who has spent her entire life in the city. A few meters from her, Carlos Martínez, 33 years old, was also trying to access the plenary session and showed his surprise at the attitude of the popular people: “In this case of harassment, the PP has decided not to give information and try to hide it. They are pointing out the complainant as if she were responsible.”
Inside, half an hour after the session began, the neighbors who had managed to enter registered and crowded at the window to gain access. “If you are on the list, get your ID!” the municipal workers appeased. Meanwhile, a handful of people were still protesting in the square. “Shame! Shame! Baptist harasser, PP concealer,” they proclaimed.
The plenary session, which lasted two hours and in which a concise tone was maintained, began at 10:10 and Bautista was the first to speak. The mayor, much more restrained than before the media, has subsequently read several articles related to the presumption of innocence, a topic on which all his interventions have revolved. The only councilor who has shown his support for Bautista, in addition to his team, has been Daniel Martín, previously one of the three Vox councilors in the Móstoles City Council and who left the party this January and became a non-attached councillor. “Joining the pack is easy, but I’m not going to do it. I’m not going to join the political lynching of Manuel. I assume the media cost of not doing it,” he stated.
Bautista, who has responded to the joint criticism from the rest of the parties in a concise manner, has returned in his interventions to an idea that he already repeated in the two press conferences he gave to the media when the accusations were made public: there has been no sexual or workplace harassment – Millán, in conversation with the former councilor, told her that her story was “textbook harassment” -, and the former councilor’s complaint is the result of disagreements between the two. “In political life there can be tensions or disagreements. Those who have worked with me know that I have never confused authority with abuse or direction with harassment,” the mayor defended. And then he raised his tone: “I’m not going to resign. They’re not going to come in here.” [por Sánchez]”Applause among the attendees, who also cheered the mayor as he left the plenary session.
Since this newspaper and the treatment he received from the Madrid PP, which insisted that he not report, and the national PP, which filed the harassment file without citing the victim, Bautista has maintained his usual agenda and participated in different local events. In two press conferences, the mayor of Móstoles said practically the same thing: that he is the victim and that the accusations respond to revenge on the part of the former councilor for not having been granted the position of deputy mayor, which, according to Bautista, she asked for. “Have you asked me to be deputy mayor? No. You have never asked me directly,” he told her in a conversation published by EL PAÍS. She replied: “No, not to you or to anyone.”
The hammering to delegitimize the work and personal life of the exedil has been constant during the last month and a half, in which the Popular Party has spread false versions about the process of internal reporting of the events and even hoaxes that have later been denied. A councilor from Móstoles, from Bautista’s closest environment and who remains in his position, went so far as to describe his former colleague as a “miserable bird” and “fresh” on social networks.
