Better talk about Emiliano García-Page than of Paco Salazar. The PSOE men prefer to divert the focus of the last bomb that fell early on Saturday over the Moncloa: the testimonies of several women about inappropriate behaviors of one of the most narrow collaborators of the president, revealed by Eldiario.es. That if there are no complaints, that if you have to accelerate the investigation to close it as soon as possible, that if no one listened to, that if no one saw, that if they did not tell it before … the usual in an organization where they have mostly power. The normal thing in a macho, patriarchal society and where it suspects always falls on women because it tells it years after it happened, because it did not file a complaint, or because it still confused a joke with something else or because, you know, you have avious intentions.
Listening to the arguments of some of the socialist leaders give an idea of everything that remains to be done in this country, and not only in normative matters, about machismo. Salazar, yes, “was a cry, and not isolated cases,” according to dozens of women working in the PSOE and Moncloa and have contacted this newspaper to corroborate the testimonies of those who have dared to tell their story. Many have identified some of the expressions that eldiario.es reproduced last Saturday and that one of Salazar's subordinates reported.
Now that the Secretary General of Institutional Coordination is no longer in Moncloa or Ferraz, where he was going to be appointed Secretary of Deputy Organization, the rain of testimonies does not cease. “When she arrived at La Moncloa for the first time in 2018, the complex workers, especially men, referred to their team like Paco's Haren. Everything were young, beautiful women and between 20 and 30 years,” says a former exness.
Since eldiario.es revealed the accusations of sexual harassment and abuse of power, many others have sent the complaints accumulated by those who were victims of Salazar, subordinates and party companions. And that is why they demand that any of the confidence positions that had neither in Ferraz nor in La Moncloa, even in the event that the internal research that is now intended to promote does not specify results.
“We do not believe that the open complaint channels in Moncloa and Ferraz guarantee anonymity. All IP is traceable. This is not talking about those who knew and looked the other way,” adds another young socialist, for whom in his party and in the government “there are those who are most interested in identifying women than in ending this scourge within the organization.”
It will not be easy for this investigation to have express complaints within the party of affected women, mainly due to the fear of retaliation, since many are still on the payroll of the organization. There are those who describe even an atmosphere of “signaling and hunting of witches” in a part of the socialist direction, especially of men more determined to locate in the Moncloa the people who shared their experience with Eldiario.es that to clarify the behaviors of Salazar, according to testimony also of a socialist deputy.
There is no party corner – which is defined in its statutes as a feminist – where a testimony has not been found on the modus operandi of Salazar with the women, and yes many voices that ensure that the complaints were raised and “looked the other way.” Those Monday spoke to the media from the government repeated the argument received in the morning. “There has been no complaint in the internal channel of the party, I had never heard any of this. No one is free from something like that, because we have spent centuries of a sexist culture,” said Minister Óscar López, who stressed The speed of government actions in front of the scandal and compared it to the slowest of the Xunta de Galicia in similar situations.
During the meeting of the new executive of the PSOE that presided over Sánchez, the president presumed that the Federal Committee held last Saturday was “the most feminist in recent years” and the same phrase employed, at a press conference, the new spokesman, Montse Mínguez, who valued the level of demand with which measures were taken both against the former secretary of Organization Santos Cerdán and with the leader Francisco Salazar.
Mínguez insisted on the importance of the use of the denunciation channels for situations such as Salazar, which have been reinforced this weekend to supposedly guarantee the anonymity of the complainants, but also stressed that to date there had been none. “I want to lead the companions: any complaint, situation of harassment you can suffer, you have open doors, economic support, privacy and psychological support,” he said.
Asked about the complaints of sexual harassment against the socialist militant Francisco Salazar, who was going to be appointed attached to the organization of the PSOE until this Saturday was indicated by ill -treatment of women, Minister López has assured that “it has no foundation” and “is out of place” to say that it is a structural situation within the party.
For his part, the Minister of Transportation, Oscar Puente, said that he knew and had treated Salazar, with whom he said he had “a very good relationship”, adding that he had never heard anyone say anything “around this issue.” Of course, at least, he snapped that “if there was someone who knew it, he fell silent, he should have noticed.” He said more: “Whoever knew and silence it, is an unpresentable because I should have realized.”
Indeed, unpresentable, for using the same expression as the minister, there were. More than one and more than two, and if the complainants do not want to give their names it is precisely because if they facilitate them they will be identified immediately, something they intend to avoid. But that is something that should not be explained to be heights of the 21st century.
