Yolanda Díaz: €225 jumper and €550 handbag for her daughter

Yolanda Díaz's €225 jumper and her 13-year-old daughter's €550 handbag

On October 23, 2025, a society column placed the second vice president and Minister of Labour, Yolanda Díaz, at the Teatro Real. There, accompanied by her 13-year-old daughter Carmela Meizoso, she had gone to see the Spanish National Ballet, a program with four choreographies by José Granero and premieres by Miguel Ángel Corbacho and Eduardo Martínez. The performance mattered less than the attire: a navy blue jumper costing €225 and a handbag costing €550 in the teenager's hands.

The minister, 54, separated from Andrés Meizoso in 2024 after two decades of marriage. The outing to the ballet is, in principle, a family afternoon like any other. The problem is that this family afternoon can be priced.

How much the Yolanda Díaz jumper and her daughter's handbag cost

The jumper is from the French brand Claudie Pierlot: navy blue, fine knit, round neck, long sleeves, and gold ties, with ribbed finishes on the collar, cuffs, and waist. It is also sold in red and sky blue and is available at El Corte Inglés. €225, according to the report. The garment has a detail that the report underlines with a hint of sarcasm: it was worn open in such a way that it revealed the blue bra underneath. The brand's models, it implies, don't pose like that.

The outfit was completed with a navy blue full-length skirt, closed-toe black pumps, and a black handbag. The daughter's is something else: a Marc Jacobs The Tote Bag in white leather with black lettering, a top zipper closure, double handles, and an adjustable detachable strap. The specific model is no longer listed on the brand's website; similar ones retail for €550. For a 13-year-old girl, the accessory is not exactly from a flea market.

The discourse against fast fashion and luxury brand shopping

This is where the conflict begins. In April 2024, the Minister of Labour wanted to implement measures to encourage citizens to abandon the trend of fast fashion and opt for reusing old clothes. The same person has been seen on more than one occasion shopping in luxury brand stores, something the report itself points out as contradictory to the discourse she preaches.

Scrutinizing others' wardrobes has illustrious precedents. In 1988, Pilar Miró spent 19 million on clothing, meals, and gifts, a case cited in the thread as a point of comparison. The difference between that case and this one is the context: work attire of a public official and the question, never resolved, of who pays the bill.

Who pays for a public official's clothing?

It is not recorded. There is no published document clarifying whether the jumper came out of the vice president's pocket or from an expense account. And that absence is precisely what inflames the controversy, because it turns any calculation into speculation.

Some argue that the Minister of Labour pays taxes like any ordinary person and spends what she has left on whatever she wants, without asking anyone's permission. The objection, they counter from the other side, is not about that: no one disputes the right to buy an expensive jumper, the problem is doing so from a position that preaches wealth distribution and austerity. The idea that the purchases are covered by representation expenses circulates without any proof and should be treated as what it is, a suspicion.

The simplest defense also appears: that everyone dresses their children as they wish and that the reproach should not be the price, but the distance between what is preached and what is practiced. Some of the public see it as perfectly normal and add that the dignity of the position deserves no less. Others respond with the same yardstick and recall that a few months ago a regional president was questioned for going out to eat on a rainy day. Depending on who it is, the same gesture is either frivolity or habit.

From the €620 suit to the €15,000 bicycles

More figures enter into the comparison. A €620 suit from a French brand, despite her declaring herself a fan of Zara and Galician fashion. €1,000 bicycles: the scenario proposed by a participant is that if other leaders gave them to their sons, no one would question it. And the bicycles stolen from the Visma team during the 2025 Vuelta a España, whose price per unit exceeds €15,000 on the market, according to information cited in the thread.

The conclusion that is repeated is uncomfortable for everyone: the double standard is not upheld by a single side. If others' luxury is only outrageous when worn by the adversary, the scandal ceases to be sarracena and becomes seasonal posturing.

The new royalty and the bicycle joke

One line of analysis puts it bluntly: they are everything they claimed to hate, and in reality, they envied it. 'You get out so I can get in.' The nomenklatura has always worked this way, they conclude, only now it's more visible because social media and society magazines amplify everything.

There is a much-cited anecdote. When the PSOE won its first elections, the story goes, the party's top brass were dining at a posh seafood restaurant. They were served a bowl of water and lemon, they brought it to their mouths, and didn't notice that the other diners were rinsing their fingers. And there's the classic Russian joke: would you give your house to the Party? Yes. And your car? Too. And your bicycle? No. Why not? Because I have a bicycle.

The exact point where this gets stuck is the usual one. No one will dispute the price of a handbag until it is clarified who paid for it. And that information, to this day, is still nowhere to be found.