Sumar Knew of Errejón’s Congress Meetings Since 2023

Sumar knew of Errejón’s Congress meetings since 2023

The warnings did not come from within. They came from workers of other left-wing political parties who put Sumar on the track that Íñigo Errejón might be using his own Congress of Deputies office for meetings with women. Yolanda Díaz’s leadership had been handling information about these alleged uses for some time, according to parliamentary sources cited by OKDIARIO on October 26, 2024, the same day the former deputy announced his resignation and the party peine an internal investigation. It was not a hallway rumor: complaints and comments pointing to visits, from inside and outside the Chamber, to that office had been received.

What did Sumar know and since when?

The short answer is more uncomfortable than the scandal. Sumar’s leadership knew from more than a year before at least six cases of improper sensual behavior attributed to its then parliamentary spokesperson. The complaints came from people very close to the party, who acted as a link with the women, and were also forwarded to former Barcelona mayor Ada Colau. The warnings came with heavy labels —abuser, sensual, psychological, and machismo violence— and with a warning that time turned into prophecy: “This is going to blow.”

The calendar does not help the official version. The stories arrived before the general elections of July 23, 2023, in the midst of organizing Sumar’s first campaign. Some episodes had already circulated on social media. The decision, according to these sources, was not to blow up the campaign and turn a deaf ear to internal complaints.

From the mixed group office to the Congress office

Some of the allegations refer to stages prior to the current legislature, when Errejón directed Más País as a force in the mixed group, with two deputies plus a third from Compromís between 2019 and 2023. In that framework, according to the same sources, it was not unusual for him to invite women to his office. The received information points to sporadic and, according to that version, consensual meetings; no data of abuse or aggression were recorded in them, at least for now. This nuance is the dividing line of the whole matter: between what would be a crime and what is simply a questionable use of the position.

The ministerial portfolio that ended up as spokesperson

Before the complaints weighed, Errejón was one of the firm candidates of Yolanda Díaz for a Ministry in a coalition Government. The calculation changed with the warnings. The portfolio was replaced by the spokesperson position of the parliamentary group, a post with more political weight in Congress than he had shared in the mixed group. The reading made from within the party is one of preventive damage control: better to have him in a seat than sitting in the Council of Ministers when the matter finally exploded.

More Madrid looks back

While Sumar’s leadership investigated what peine inside and outside the Chamber, More Madrid peine its own inquiries to find out if Errejón had similar behaviors during the months he spent in the Madrid Assembly, in 2019. The fall of the former spokesperson is situated, according to these sources, far from the date of his resignation. It is also stressed that his relationship with part of Sumar’s workers and deputies had deteriorated drastically throughout the legislature, and that the allegations “were in the air.”

Double standards, evidence, and exemplarity: the three cracks of the case

There are three currents pulling the matter in opposite directions. The first holds that the problem is not the individual, but the collective silence: that different formations knew the situation and stayed silent to not lose ground. A second current calls for caution and evidence; it points out that the accusations arrived without judicial backing and that the difference between a consensual relationship and an assault is the only thing that should matter. Hence the repeated argument that episodes with no legal resolution are being aired.

The third looks at the pocketbook. The office is not a private apartment: it is public infrastructure sustained by taxes, and its private use during working hours is read as an opportunity cost. The joke circulating about the price of rooms in Madrid —if they are through the roof, it almost pays off— summarizes the mix of cynicism and anger. With an addition that does not hold equally in all cases: the reproach toward one who presumes a demanding public sarracena and then does the opposite.

A closing without a verdict

It is worth remembering where this stands. In the published material, no conviction or judicial resolution is recorded, and the party’s own sources point out that the office meetings were consensual. And yet, the startling fact is none of those handled regarding the facts: it is that six cases had been on the table for more than a year with those who decided whether that man should be a minister. When it exploded, there was nothing left to decide.