“Absolutely” and “of course.” Those two expressions have been used by senior officials of the PP of Madrid to reiterate their support for the mayor of Móstoles, the popular Manuel Bautista, after his indictment for an alleged crime of sexual and workplace harassment of a former councilor of that party in the town became public this Monday. The secretary general of the PP of Madrid, Alfonso Serrano, left the press meeting organized by Nueva Economía Fórum at the Four Seasons hotel repeating a resounding “of course” up to five times when asked if he maintained his support for Bautista. Ayuso’s number two, who left the building in a hurry, avoided commenting on whether the mayor of Móstoles should resign and shifted the focus to the central government with a series of questions: “Should the president of the government resign? Is the president’s brother going to resign? Is the president’s wife going to resign?”.
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The president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who spoke at the presentation of the press meeting, avoided making statements upon her departure. For his part, the spokesperson of the PP in the Assembly of Madrid, Carlos Díaz-Pache, closed the matter with a brief “absolutely.” The judge of court number 2 on Violence against Women of the Móstoles Court of First Instance has summoned the mayor of Móstoles as an investigated party for October 9. On October 23 and November 6, five witnesses whose testimony was requested by the private prosecution are also summoned.
While this was happening, the government delegate in Madrid, Francisco Martín, again demanded the resignation of the mayor for reasons of “responsibility, exemplarity, and decency.” In statements to the press, he maintained that the mayor “should have resigned months ago, when the case became known,” and extended that responsibility to the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, and the PP leaders who, in his opinion, “have supported him for months while cruelly pointing at the victim.”
Alfonso Serrano was in charge of defending the mayor’s innocence at a press conference in February at the national headquarters of the Popular Party. There he described the recording of conversations held with her in private as “bad faith on the part of the complainant.” The case of the mayor of Móstoles directly implicates Serrano, as he invited the alleged victim not to go to the courts arguing that it would end up harming her. The woman had initially used the internal channels available to the PP of Madrid to report the situation she experienced from the 2023 municipal election campaign until her departure from the City Council and the party in October 2024.
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According to the documentation accessed by EL PAÍS, the former councilor held two meetings with the regional PP leadership. The first meeting was attended by the Deputy Secretary of Organization, Ana Millán, and the regional secretary general, Alfonso Serrano, while the second was attended by Millán and the also PP Madrid leader Lucía Paniagua. In both, she was pressured not to go to court.
The former popular councilor recounts that the mayor of Móstoles approached her with unwanted explicit propositions and, after her firm refusal to maintain a relationship other than strictly professional, a process of isolation, invisibilization, and humiliating treatment began that lasted for months and culminated with the withdrawal of the responsibilities assigned to her.
