Two Junts deputies accuse their party of harassment based on gender
The internal crisis of the Junts per Catalunya parliamentary group is worsening by the moment. Two deputies from this party, Cristina Casol and Aurora Madaula, have filed complaints with the Parliamentary Equality Office against their party for gender-based harassment. Both have also reported the situation to the corresponding party body, but have not received a satisfactory response. Casol and Madaula have felt marginalized and pressured by their group mates, who have withdrawn confidence in them and have asked for their expulsion.
The president of Parliament commissions a legal report to improve the harassment protocol
Faced with this situation, the President of Parliament, Anna Erra, has decided to intervene and has requested a legal report to “review” how the harassment protocol has been applied in the Casol case, which was archived by the Parliament’s Equality Office for “gender-based harassment.” According to sources in her office, Erra believes that there have been “shortcomings” in the first time the protocol was applied, especially with regard to confidentiality. The legal report has to analyze, on the one hand, how the protocol has been applied and “look at what went wrong” and, on the other hand, it has to determine whether the protocol has to be suspended while it undergoes a possible review. Erra proposed at Tuesday’s Board meeting to suspend the protocol “so as not to create legal insecurities,” but the proposal was rejected.
Sources from the Table defend the actions of the Catalan chamber and ask for collective responsibility
For their part, sources from the Table assure that the action of the Catalan chamber in the application of the protocol has been “correct” at all times, but they recognize that they do not have the tools to act if one of the “interested parties” leaks the content of the report. The same sources also believe that it is an ethical question for the people involved in these cases of violation of confidentiality and, in this sense, they limit themselves to calling for “collective responsibility” to not damage the camera image.
The battle for the Casol case is still open and Madaula joins the complaint
The battle over the Casol case remains open, since some of the deputies and party leadership are in favor of expelling her, while the Madaula case is ongoing. The second secretary denounced, within the framework of the Women’s Parliament, held at the end of November, “silent sexist violence” by party colleagues, and now she has gone one step further and has brought the facts to the attention of the Equality Office of Parliament. Madaula has been on leave since last December 5 as a result of the controversy generated by an intervention that led to Anna Erra withdrawing confidence in her and about twenty party deputies promoting a letter against her for having denounced “silent violence by her colleagues” in the Women’s Plenary.
All this only increases the noise around the Junts parliamentary group after the party’s Permanent Secretariat discussed the Casol issue in a meeting a week ago and asked the Lleida representative to hand over the minutes and leave the parliamentary group. Given the deputy’s refusal to give in to the party’s request, everything suggested that this week’s group meeting had to be used to make a decision on the matter, but no action was taken. Even so, more than twenty Junts deputies have signed in favor of expelling Cristina Casol from the group, but, today, the deputy has attended this week’s plenary session as a member of the Junts parliamentary group. In any case, Casol, who was the number two of Junts for Lleida in the last elections, has no intention of renouncing her record and if she ends up being expelled from the group, she will become a non-attached deputy.
Borràs tries to have mediation between the parties
For her part, the president of Junts, Laura Borràs, is trying to redirect the matter and prevent the blood from reaching the river. In fact, at the last meeting of the National Council and at the executive meeting, he requested mediation between the two opposing parties, the party leadership and Casol, considered to be from the Borràs sector, with the argument that this crisis harms the party in his set. The step taken by Madaula and Erra’s proposal only add fuel to the fire of the internal crisis within the Junts parliamentary group.
