A string of sex-related and political scandals affecting Spain’s governing Socialists has rocked the beleaguered administration of Pedro Sánchez and caused deep unease within a party which prides itself on promoting feminist causes.
On Wednesday, José Tomé, the Socialist head of the provincial council of Lugo, in the northwest of the country, resigned after six women had made complaints about his behaviour. The women, who were current and former members of the party, claimed that Tomé had groped them, offered jobs in exchange for sex, and sent explicit photographs to their phones.
After a television programme had aired the anonymous complaints, Tomé insisted he was innocent. However, within hours he had stepped down, saying he would take the case to court to prove that it was “a set-up”.
Tomé’s case is extremely damaging for the Socialist Party in the Galicia region. Although he has resigned as president of the provincial council and requested that his party membership be suspended, he has not stepped down as mayor of the town of Monforte or given up his seat on the council.
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Lara Méndez, the party’s number three in the region, described the claims against Tomé as “repugnant”.
However, this is only the latest of several such cases to affect the party.
In July, Francisco Salazar, who had been a close ally of and senior advisor to prime minister Sánchez, was forced to step down after female colleagues had repeatedly complained about harassment by him. The allegations included that he had unzipped his trousers, made sexually explicit comments and mimicked sex acts in front of them.
It subsequently emerged that the party had failed to contact those who had made the complaints for several months.
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Salazar’s assistant in the prime minister’s office, Antonio Hernández, was sacked this week for allegedly enabling his boss’s actions and trying to protect him from being investigated.
Hernandez has denied wrongdoing and Salazar said he cannot recall inappropriate interactions.
Meanwhile, the Socialist Party has suspended Antonio Navarro, its secretary general in the southern town of Torremolinos, after a woman filed a complaint of harassment before the local prosecutor for violence against women, which he denied.
The prime minister has sought to mitigate the damage caused by the Salazar case by acknowledging his personal responsibility for mistakes made in handling it.
“Feminism teaches us lessons every day, and I’m the first one [to learn],” Sánchez told Socialist Party supporters at the weekend. “And the big difference between the left and right is that when we learn these lessons we apologise and act accordingly.”
The right-leaning El Espanol newspaper described the cases as “the Socialists’ MeToo”. The leader of the conservative People’s Party (PP), Alberto Núnez Feijóo, said the Socialists were “a dangerous party for women”.
The political right has also pointed to what it says is hypocrisy on the part of a party whose own statutes have described it as “feminist” since 2021.
However, there are signs of unease within Socialist ranks at the cases, adding to the government’s many problems, which include the apparent collapse of its parliamentary majority. Two former secretaries of the Socialist Party and close allies of Sánchez, José Luis Ábalos and Santos Cerdán, are due to go on trial accused of overseeing a massive kickback scheme.
Cerdán has resigned from office but has insisted on his innocence. Ábalos has also said he is innocent.
In an open letter published in El País newspaper, three high-profile female Socialist politicians, including the party’s spokeswoman for equality, Andrea Fernández, expressed deep concern. While they highlighted the party’s achievements over the decades in furthering feminist causes, they also said it needed to introduce “greater control over processes against harassment and other types of violence” and to “introduce measures to help repair the damage caused” by such cases.
