Podemos demanded until the last moment that Irene Montero continue at the head of the Ministry of Equality in the new Government of Pedro Sánchez, unveiled on Monday. But it failed. According to the purple management, the president had made a “huge mistake” by doing without Montero. Although this opinion is not shared by other formations, nor is it widespread among the Spanish.
The trans law and the only yes is yes law are presented by Podemos as the two major contributions of the Montero stage to collective progress. But they had high costs. The first caused an unprecedented and destructive earthquake in the territory of feminism and had an impact on the cohesion of the LGBTI movement. The second had a serious unintended effect: designed to protect women from sexual assaults, it also ended up reducing the sentences of 1,205 convicts and releasing 121 of them (according to September CGPJ data), which discredited the his mentors and offended the victims, and not just them.
The defense of Montero’s candidacy began to manifest itself two months ago, when Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, and now also outgoing minister, said of her colleague that she was the best holder of Equality and she had to continue. It wasn’t saying much, since it had only one predecessor, who we remember mainly for coining the term member. But the aforementioned defense intensified little by little, and ended on Tuesday with a transfer of powers from Montero and Belarra in which their grudge surfaced, rebuke to Pedro Sánchez or Yolanda Díaz and also veiled threats to the stability of the leftist coalition. All this, staged with a raised fist.
It is difficult to understand that Podemos put all their eggs in Montero’s basket. Is it really the best asset you have? However, it cannot be said that it was the first surprising decision of this match. It was already that Pablo Iglesias – with whom Montero forms a young power couple of Leninist essences – decided to leave the vice-presidency of the Spanish government, after a year and a half in office. It was also the fact that he appointed Yolanda Díaz as his successor and then was surprised that, in the exercise of his powers, he took decisions without admitting the tutelage of his promoter, certainly deploying more friendly and politically more productive ways.
In this, Díaz was right, because the fragmentation of the left requires a lot of dialogue and he advises against any attempt to patrimonialize this political space or any temptation for an extemporaneous cult of personality. First of all, you need to make friends, just in case you can come to an agreement later. The vice-president knows this well, who smiles and hugs at all hours.
Perhaps Montero’s mistakes have to do with his youthful audacity and the speed of his rise: leader of Podemos at 26, deputy at 28, minister at 32 and ex-minister at 35. As Green Day sang, Too much, too soon . Perhaps something similar can be said about Podemos, which in 2011 had the ability to bottle under its own brand the indignant movement of the 15-M, and in 2015 was already dreaming of joining the PSOE, because it was the third parliamentary force and had 69 deputies. Now it has 5 and, to its leaders, in the sleepless nights, the evanescent ghost of Ciutadans appears to them.
But perhaps these mistakes should also be attributed to the pride of the purples, who seem to have reached the conclusion, also wrong, that in a democracy mistakes are not paid. Well, yes, they are paid. Sometimes, some time later, at the polls. Sometimes before. Puigdemont and independence have already paid them, in the form of support for the down payment. The PSOE will probably pay them for the audacity of its leader, which he considers remedial, but others disapprove more or less loudly.
Feijóo’s PP will pay them for flirting with Vox and for the insubstantial opposition style, based on the rival’s discredit and the absence of viable, progressive alternatives of their own. But, as we said, there are those who have the dignity to pay for mistakes in advance, such as the Portuguese Prime Minister António Costa, who ran to resign when he was linked to a corruption case, which was later deflated.
Why didn’t Montero have to pay them, after promoting a law that benefited those who had to punish and alarmed his victims?
