Ana Millán has an Excel sheet that she divides into two columns. In one, she places news about PSOE scandals. In the other, those affecting her party. The deputy secretary of the PP of Madrid believes she can empirically demonstrate that every time uncomfortable information about President Pedro Sánchez is published, it only takes a few days for some newspapers to try to hide it with an attack on the Génova party. Those who have dealt with her closely assure that Millán believes in that spreadsheet like devout Catholics believe in Marian apparitions.
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Last year, she was tasked with investigating a complaint of sexual and workplace harassment against the mayor of Móstoles, Manuel Bautista. A councilwoman affiliated with the PP since 2010 filed it through the party’s official channels in Madrid, overwhelmed by the situation she was experiencing. The woman had been the number 2 in that City Council by the mayor’s express will, but within weeks she was ostracized, just after he proposed sexual relations to her —Bautista has never denied it— and she rejected him. The situation became so unbearable that she resigned from her position and sought psychological treatment. She never wanted to make it public, only that she wanted people like Isabel Díaz Ayuso, whom she admired, to mediate.
Initially, the general secretary, Alfonso Serrano, was supposed to handle the investigation, but Millán took the initiative. The conflict of interest she incurred due to her close friendship and political camaraderie with Bautista, whom she had promoted within the party, was obvious. Millán herself verbalized this in the first meeting she had with the woman on March 11, 2024. However, she did not step aside and continued to control the case. “Not only Millán gave veracity to this issue, but everyone around her. It’s just that the party is above everything. Nothing and no one can harm the PP, especially from within,” says someone who closely witnessed the development of that investigation, which ended up being shelved. In recordings revealed by EL PAÍS, Millán even tells the victim that she is convinced that what she describes constitutes a “textbook” case of harassment, but that it benefits no one to go to court. Especially not herself.
The case was stillborn from the start, according to two other party sources. (Now, a court specializing in violence against women has admitted the harassment complaint filed by the former councilwoman of Móstoles against the mayor and the party). Millán leads one of the most powerful factions within the PP of Madrid, that of Los Pancetas, as those who coincided with Isabel Díaz Ayuso when the president was Esperanza Aguirre’s communication strategist call themselves. Since then, they have been loyal to her, and she reciprocates their loyalty: she has placed almost all of them in positions of great responsibility. Though not as much as they would have liked. When the president took control of the party in May 2022, Los Pancetas wanted Millán to occupy the general secretariat, but the president chose Serrano, a move that does not surprise those who know her well. Skillful and very knowledgeable about how the party works, Ayuso is convinced that no one should concentrate too much power.
To compensate her colleagues, she made Millán number three. She told her privately that in practice she would exercise the same role as Serrano; it was a bicephaly. In fact, the president consults with both, as if they were on the same rung of the ladder. (There is something of a mirage in that, as Serrano has more capacity for command and control, partly because he is someone who works 24 hours a day). In any case, the Móstoles case fell into the hands of Los Pancetas, and that was the fundamental error. “They were going to close it no matter what. For Millán, the party is everything. She doesn’t want anyone to harm it. She has blind loyalty,” they say from within.
There is no “bacon slice” membership card, but if there were, it wouldn’t be easy to get. It is a very closed group of friends who defend each other in an environment as hostile as politics. They view any external element with absolute distrust. The rise of one benefits all, as from that newly conquered position, others can be promoted. It is evident that Bautista was one of their own, and his downfall due to a scandal would be a stain on this clan. That was not going to happen then, nor now. In Sol, the thesis of Los Pancetas has been established: Bautista is a nice guy who made a blunder by trying to get involved with a colleague. Nothing more than that.
Millán delayed the process involving her friend, as those around her could confirm. The victim elevated it to the National PP’s Committee of Rights and Guarantees, without better results. That distinction between one structure and another is very diffuse at the Génova headquarters, where the two organizations, national and local, work in the same building, separated by only one floor. Although they have different accesses in the hall, upstairs the doors connect. The investigation, according to three consulted sources, had something of a farce about it. The concept of right and wrong is filtered by loyalty to the PP in cases like Millán’s. The same skepticism Millán holds for journalism, she holds for justice. This year, a corruption case against her, which she had been dragging for 10 years, was archived. Throughout this time, she believed that investigation remained open because it had fallen into the hands of a “very red” judge.
Los Pancetas represent the new PP of Madrid that has buried the previous one, which was tainted by corruption scandals during the eras of Esperanza Aguirre and Cristina Cifuentes. When the last lists were formed, a deep remodeling was carried out in their parliamentary group in the Assembly. Ayuso verified firsthand, when she was a deputy, that many of the old deputies were part of the scenery and renewed their positions from one legislature to another without contributing anything. She fired almost all of them. Millán asked her to cut even more heads, but the president also didn’t want to overdo it. In addition to people she trusted from the party, Ayuso wanted to include outsiders as deputies, young people she knew and held in high esteem. Those who accepted to join the Assembly found a panorama in which Los Pancetas have absolute control. It is their regime. The president deals with the major issues of her Government and does not scrutinize the Assembly’s bench. Los Pancetas take care of that.
There is another character who acts as a glue between Bautista and Millán, the two protagonists of this story: the Director of the Mayor’s Office and Institutional Relations of the Móstoles City Council, Jorge Leal. In practice, he serves as Bautista’s number two. In every organization, there is someone like him, a keymaster, a defender of the cause to the point of self-sacrifice. Without university studies, he has also held four other positions in the Community of Madrid. The same loyalty he professes to Bautista, he extends to Millán, his patron, on whom his political future depends. Leal does not hide this on his Instagram account. She went to his birthday in 2024, and they appear together in a collage of images where he holds a cake. In case anyone had any doubts, Leal is someone with contacts in the party at the highest level.
In March of this year, he uploaded another photo with Millán and wrote: “Always is always.” He set the song La suerte de mi vida by Dani Martín as the background. A love song. Bautista, Leal, and Millán formed and still form a triangle of friendship and crossed interests. Asking one of them to supervise the conduct of another was to bury any investigation from the very beginning. The Móstoles case never existed within the PP of Madrid.
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