Two former PSOE councilors in A Coruña have filed complaints against Mayor Inés Rey and her deputy for alleged workplace harassment via the party's anti-harassment channel. The accusations relate to events from 2020 to 2022, previously ignored by the federal leadership. Rey dismisses the claims as a spurious use of the mechanism and political score-settling.
The crisis in the Galician PSOE deepens with complaints filed on Wednesday by Eva Martínez Acón and Esther Fontán against A Coruña's mayor, Inés Rey, and her deputy, José Manuel Lage Tuñas. The two former councilors allege workplace harassment during their time in the local government from 2020 to 2022. Acón, former local party secretary general and employment councilor, describes humiliating treatment, shouts, insults, and rudeness after demanding that Rey and Lage contribute part of their public salaries to the party per the statutes.
Fontán, who was environment councilor, recounts pressures, continuous arguments, insults, and the stripping of her duties, causing psychological distress that required emergency care during a plenary session. Both sent complaints to the federal leadership in Ferraz but received no response. Fontán wrote a letter to Santos Cerdán, then organization secretary, requesting action and concluding: “Sincerely, I don't think our party deserves such conduct, which does not reflect its ideas, its ethics, and much less its commitment to women”.
Rey responded in a statement denying they are authentic harassment victims and accusing them of using the anonymous channel with their names for score-settling over not being renominated. “They should go to court, and if they haven't [...], I understand it's because they know perfectly well there is nothing to report, and because they know that in Spain false denunciation is a crime,” the mayor states, attributing the treatment to political disagreements.
Acón and Fontán decided to file now amid indignation at seeing Rey internally criticize the sexual harassment case against José Tomé, a close collaborator of the PSdeG leader, while waving the feminist flag. With these, four Galician leaders have been denounced recently; the first two, Tomé and Xosé Carlos Valcárcel, resigned from the party. The Galician leadership refrains from commenting due to lack of official notice, while the federal side clarifies the channel handles only sexual harassment, referring labor issues to the Ethics Committee.
