Pablo Iglesias and Irene Montero have described in court the harassment to which the far-right Miguel Frontera subjected them for months in 2020 at their home in Galapagar. “It was a permanent nervous situation, I walked around the perimeter of our house again and again,” said the former Minister of Equality. “I don’t wish anyone to experience what we have experienced,” added the former vice president.
Frontera, one of the visible faces of the concentrations on Ferraz Street last November, has denied the harassment and has justified the massive concentrations at the door of the home: “It was their democratic syrup.” Both Iglesias and Montero have been rebuked and insulted at the courthouse door.
The trial took place this Monday in a criminal court in Madrid with the Prosecutor’s Office defending its request for three years in prison for him. A trial in which several civil guards have certified that Frontera recorded the interior of the property with his mobile phone in addition to having participated almost daily in the rallies.
Iglesias and Montero have recounted what it meant to live in that situation for several months during the pandemic and with three small children. “It was a distressing situation, very difficult to live with, even taking the dogs out was complicated,” Iglesias described. “Of course we were afraid, it was an indescribable situation. It was difficult for the little ones to sleep, they began to have the perception of something strange.”
Irene Montero has spoken in a similar sense, stating that through social networks they were aware daily that Frontera boasted that it knew its entire security perimeter and also that it did not plan to stop. “He could come at any moment, he would stand there, it was a permanent nervous situation, you never knew what could be next.”
The two have reported that on Iglesias’s birthday, when they were returning from a walk with their children, they were approached by Frontera, who blurted out: “Happy birthday, son of a bitch.” Montero explained: “he scared me, he was invasive, I was with my little children.” Frontera, according to the former minister, “had the intention, and achieved it, that there would be a permanent noise situation in my family.” “It was obvious that he was capable of anything.”
Frontera: “It was their democratic syrup”
Miguel Frontera, one of the protagonists of the demonstrations in front of Ferraz Street and the PSOE headquarters last November, has presented himself as the victim of the case defended by Poland Castellanos, president of Christian Lawyers. “The one who received real harassment, dramatic harassment, was me,” Frontera said after acknowledging that he went practically daily for months to the door of Iglesias and Montero’s house to shout with a megaphone and play music.
Frontera, who at that time recorded all these gatherings on video, boasted that he knew the security perimeter of the house and announced that his objective was to expel the couple from the country, has stated in his statement that his objective was to protest and give a a lesson to Iglesias and Montero for having promoted escraches against the monarchy in the past. “The ideologue was Pablo Iglesias, the one who asked for a cacerolada against the king was Pablo Iglesias,” she explained.
According to his version, those who were actually making a fuss at the door of the home were the Podemos supporters putting up the International. “They had several speakers, sometimes they spat at us.” He has even gone so far as to state that they were considered “for the protest so as not to make so much noise.”
The objective, although he stated on the internet and in his songs that it was to expel them from Spain, was “political protest, in mockery, ridicule, due to the contradictions of Mr. Iglesias.” “It was a political protest, its democratic syrup,” he said to justify the episodes of harassment for which the Prosecutor’s Office is asking for up to three years in prison for him.
Iglesias and Montero have been scolded by half a dozen people upon their arrival at the criminal courts on Julián Camarillo Street in Madrid. The two entered the building amid insults and threats and then left again and approached one of the women who were harassing them, at which point the woman left shouting: “Don’t harass me, don’t harass me.” Inside the court there was also Francisco Zugastiknown for going to court with “Stop Feminazis” banners and convicted of insulting and attacking a civil guard precisely at the door of Galapagar’s house in December 2020, although he has not entered the courtroom.
Inside the court, the magistrate has stopped Poland Castellanos, Miguel Frontera’s lawyer and president of Christian Lawyers, on several occasions. Especially when she has asked Iglesias and Montero several times that, if they were so afraid, why they didn’t hire private security, since they already had police custody due to their positions in the Government. “Were you bothered by the Spanish anthem but not by the Socialist International? “Does she have selective hearing?” she asked before being cut off by the judge.
“Weren’t you in favor of the escraches, of the democratic syrup, didn’t you try to decriminalize insults to the Crown?” Frontera’s lawyer also asked.
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