“I have neither been a part nor am I aware of any cover-up of any aggression or violent action, because there has not been one. Rather, I feel deeply deceived, and that deception is devastating,” said the spokesperson for Más Madrid in the capital’s city hall, Rita Maestre, with these words regarding Íñigo Errejón, whose partner she was. Four days after Errejón resigned amid accusations of harassment and sexual assault, Maestre has broken his silence in the face of criticism from sectors of the right who claimed his possible knowledge of the complaints about Errejón.
“I am now discovering that some of the episodes of misogynistic behavior and violence reported by the victims occurred when the aggressor was still my partner. A normal-looking person, a ‘good boyfriend’, was at the same time a misogynist who returned home normally after attacking a 20-year-old woman in a hotel,” Maestre says in his statement posted on social networks.
The leader of Más Madrid responds directly to criticism about whether or not she knew about the episodes now reported: “I need to respond to those who today happily speculate with the degree of knowledge of her actions or complicity in the spaces of personal or political coexistence of which she was a member. part. Obviously, it is impossible for each of the people who have shared parts of our lives with him (in whatever area) not to think about 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 who sustains a network of attacks and humiliations of this magnitude in their daily lives is: a manipulator. Now it can be very easy and tempting to put the different information that has emerged under a focus of obviousness that, simply, is not such.”
A normal-looking person, a ‘good boyfriend’, was at the same time a misogynist who returned home normally after attacking a 20-year-old woman in a hotel
Maestre also addresses the victims and asks for measures “no matter who falls”: “Now the important thing is the pain of the victims, who have to feel respected and accompanied. The important thing is to eradicate sexist behavior and aggression from politics and society. Whatever the cost and whoever falls falls. Whoever the aggressor is, and whoever the victim is. The important thing is to end every space of impunity, with every small detail that minimizes comments, attitudes and attacks that should have no place.”
Finally, it encourages victims to rely on “feminist support networks” to report: “I also encourage any woman who has suffered a situation of aggression or harassment to use feminist support networks to move forward, and I reflect honestly: there may be no more important feminist political task than making yourself available. Nothing will be able to muzzle this wave of dignity. It is another of the lessons of the strength of feminism. I, of course, am going to give my all.”
Source: www.eldiario.es
