The Popular Party has leaked a series of emails between the former councilwoman of Móstoles, who reported alleged sexual harassment by the mayor Manuel Bautista, and the Government of the Community of Madrid with the objective of discrediting the complaint, but upon reviewing the messages the councilwoman's version is confirmed: the president Isabel Díaz Ayuso refused to meet with her, alleging that she had a very tight scheduleThe emails published by 'El País' also show that Ayuso's team avoided dealing with the case and did not respond to several calls from the councilwoman, who even expressed her frustration at being ignored. In one of the meetings, the deputy general secretary of the Madrid PP, Ana Millán, even acknowledged: "This is textbook harassment", but, despite these words, no one in the party took measures to protect herFrom Ayuso's circle they assure that it was "a mistake" and they defend that the complainant never spoke directly of sexual harassment, but of "labor situation" and "discrimination". However, these statements have also been discredited by the councilor's lawyer's emails. Her lawyer contacted Ayuso's Cabinet on September 23, 2024: "I am contacting you as the legal representative of [omitted by this newspaper] to discuss the situation of alleged sexual and/or professional harassment suffered by her in Móstoles".
PP's inaction regarding the harassment complaint
The case remained stagnant since the councilwoman began to raise the alarm, on February 26, 2024. Her lawyer repeatedly demanded that the party intervene:
"Multiple times they have contacted you, asking for protection due to the situation that [omitted] is suffering and of which you are well aware, without any corrective action being known to us"
One of Ayuso's closest collaborators tried to discredit the victim and assured that the Madrid government acted correctly by forwarding the emails to the party, "since (the complaints) are not part of the government's action." Alfonso Serrano, secretary general of the PP in Madrid, has backed this justification, recalling that disciplinary cases affecting mayors of cities with more than 100,000 inhabitants, such as the one in Móstoles, are managed directly in Génova.The councilwoman joined the mayor's team in the fall of 2022, when he was a candidate and shortly before the elections in which he was elected with 38,200 votes. From her account and after receiving the position, she discovered that Bautistas' intentions went beyond the professional. The insinuations gradually worsened as time went by. She, who is married and has a young child, made it clear to him that she did not feel the same attraction, National Committee of Rights and Guarantees of the PP. After that, the mayor began to remove her from her duties and excluded her from his inner circle until October 2024, tired of not receiving answers or signs of support, she resigned from her position. according to a letter sent to the