The former Minister of Equality Irene Montero claims that the second vice-president, Yolanda Díaz, demanded her resignation. in the midst of the crisis over the ‘only yes is yes’ law. and he even emphasizes that he went so far as to ask “shouting” that when his resignation was going to take place.
It also assumes that the decision to to propose Diaz as a future candidate The electoral process after the exit of the government of former Podemos leader Pablo Iglesias was the “biggest political mistake” committed by his formation in these years.
This is how the current Podemos MEP puts it in her book ‘Something we must have done’, published by the publishing house ‘Navona’ and that will be presented this Monday afternoon at the cultural center of Madrid La Casa Encendida, in which he reviews the main moments of his political career until today.
For example, Montero reproaches Moncloa, in view of the lack of agreement with Podemos at the beginning of last year for the reform of the penal framework of the Law ‘only yes is yes’ because of the judicial resolutions that reduced sentences to sexual aggressors, which his calculation was to “drop it”. instead of having a coordinated response to the “judicial offensive” and agreeing on an article that, he claims, would leave consent at the center.
However, and according to his version, it was “very distressing and despicable” the way in which they acted then several of those who were his then colleagues in Unidas Podemos, asserting that Diaz requested his resignation in several meetings that he called “specifically for that purpose”.
“To Isa Serra (current Podemos MEP), in one of those meetings. asked her shouting on several occasions that when she was going to resign Irene Montero”, asserts the former minister to add that, a few days later, she was told that the vice president “could see well” to dismiss the former Secretary of State for Equality Angela Rodriguez ‘Pam’ and the former delegate of the Government against gender violence, Vicky Rosell.
“Both (‘Pam’ and Rosell) came to my office to make their responsibilities available. I still cry with rage when I remember it. Yolanda was acting to force my resignation or that of a relevant person in my team,” Montero criticizes.
“Diaz multiplied the aggressiveness of the blows.”
Then, he argues that the decision to push forward the reform proposed by the Ministry of Justice and “drop Igualdad” was of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, but the one who “multiplied the aggressiveness of the blows” was “Yolanda and who together with her decided that it was necessary to side with the PSOE. and take advantage of it to try to mortally wound Podemos”.
She also assures that the “most painful moment” for her during those days with her former colleagues was with the current deputy of Sumar and leader of IU, Enrique Santiagoto whom he attributes that he “saw well” the PSOE proposal of to return to the penal scheme prior to the ‘only yes is yes’ law.
On February 1, 2023, recalls the former minister, she had a tense conversation with Santiago, whom she suspects is negotiating “in his name or in the name of Diaz with the PSOE, outside of Equality” and that when she raised her suspicions he replied that she was “encastillada”. However, he says that he received a series of WhatsApp messages from Santiago himself that had sent “by mistake to the wrong Montero”. (the Minister of Finance María Jesús Montero), giving him an account of the conversation with her. “It is the last time I spoke with Enrique,” he remarked.
Montero emphasizes that the entire PSOE endorsed the “counter-reform” of returning to the criminal framework prior to the Law ‘only yes is yes’ and thus derived “all the pressure” to try to “break it” and to get as “hard hit as possible”. And he alleges that Diaz and others understood that “the reactionary judicial offensive was a golden opportunity for them.”
Montero: “Your career doesn’t have to end here.”
On the other hand, he argues that the night before the PSOE presented the reform of the law agreed with the PP in Congress he received a call from the now first vice president María Jesús Montero to tell her that there was no more time to negotiate and that she should sign with them the initiative to return to the previous Penal Code, something that, according to her criteria, was “the surrender to the machista judicial offensive”. and “wash the face” of his agreement with the ‘populares’.
Specifically, she said the following: “sign the reform, Minister. Your political career does not have to end here“. To which she replied no because she was convinced that it was a setback for feminist rights. “The most serious thing is that I don’t think it was a threat, although it seems so (…) I was summarizing with enormous sincerity how the PSOE works,” she assures.
That attitude also evoked Diaz to claim that he called the secretary general of Podemos, Ione Belarra, to ask if Montero wanted “maybe an embassy, for example in Chile” because it was a good political outlet. “They were (…) reproducing certain rules of power that surely they will also have used against them and that they have indeed accepted,” he reproaches.
The Irene Montero’s conclusion after the controversy of the ‘only yes is yes’ law and the clash with the PSOE over the reform of the law, is that Sanchez decided to “silence feminism” and “punished” the “institutional feminism” that had been deployed by Igualdad.
“Veto” in the lists that Colau opposed.
In turn, as Podemos denounced in its day, Montero indicates that Díaz’s team communicated to her party that was “vetoed”. to go on the electoral lists for the 23J and that it was decided in a meeting with the participation of the current Minister of Health, Monica Garcia, the former leader of IU Alberto Garzon, the former parliamentary spokesman of Sumar, Inigo Errejon, and the former mayor of Barcelona Ada Colau, although he claims that the latter opposed his exclusion.
The former Minister of Equality states that there was an “operation” to replace Podemos with another electoral spacein allusion to Sumar, which “did not have political autonomy” nor went “beyond what the PSOE wanted” in the Government.
In this regard, he admits that they did not calculate, when they proposed in 2021 the Minister of Labor as an electoral referent, that Díaz would lend herself to it as, in his opinion, Íñigo Errejón had already done before when he split from Podemos.
“Strengthen Díaz”
Moreover, he says that the “progressive media and politics” worked to “strengthen Diaz” to facilitate what she “wanted to do with all her strength: to corner Podemos more and more in order to annul its political decision-making capacity in the Government, for, in the medium term, to replace the political leadership of the minority partner by another that prioritized getting along with the PSOE and not doing anything that the PSOE did not want to do”.
“The election of Yolanda was a firm commitment to expand the political space of Unidas Podemos (…) We were wrong. It was, insofar as it happened the opposite of what we were looking for, reduction of the electoral space and subordination to the PSOE, the biggest political mistake we have made in these years.“, he confesses.
In another passage of his book he declares that, in the midst of a clash with the PSOE to stop delaying the approval of the Trans Lawthe vice-president had sent her team the “suggestion” that they stop insisting on the processing of the norm “because generated many problems” in the PSOE.