Irene Montero, current Minister of Equality, and Pablo Iglesias, former Vice President of the Government, have declared this Wednesday as witnesses in the trial held against Alejandro Entrambasaguas, an editor of the
Okdiario
website who sits on the bench accused of harassing two of the three the couple's children when they were babies, at the end of 2019. Podemos politicians have narrated how the defendant went for days to the house of the woman who took care of the little ones, who suffer from a respiratory disease after being born prematurely.
Entrambasaguas also showed up at the house when the children were inside.
"We were afraid," the parents have said.
The prosecutor asks for a sentence of one year in prison.
The oral hearing, whose start was set for 9:30 a.m., began a few minutes late after the defense tried to hold it behind closed doors, due to the number of journalists and cameras that had come to the room, according to legal sources.
The editor's lawyer has argued that this was intended to protect the privacy of minors, who were never present.
Entrambasaguas began to go to the house at the end of 2019, shortly after the couple hired the services of the caregiver.
According to the woman, she and the neighbors saw him around the building and the urbanization.
In addition, on one occasion she went up to the door of the house and rang the bell when the minors were inside — “she asked if it was a daycare center and I told her I couldn't help her” —.
Also, according to her account, one day she went with cameras and more people to the building.
And he called her "insistently" on the mobile — "two or three times during three days" -.
“He touched my
goalkeeper
many times.
Like 10 or 15 times.
I was upstairs with my family, the children [of Iglesias and Montero] had just left”, the woman narrated, referring to a different day.
"I didn't want to talk to him," the caregiver pointed out during the trial.
"After a month of harassment, she told us that she couldn't take the situation anymore," Montero explained.
“My older children are extremely premature.
They suffer from a respiratory disease that makes them more vulnerable.
The doctors recommended that, although socialization was important, we should try to avoid [in that year] being in a school with 10 or 15 children, which could further complicate their health”, added Iglesias.
But, as a result of these incidents, they were transferred to the Congress nursery school: "There they were going to be with more children, but there was the National Police," the former vice president justified.
Entrambasaguas, with his back turned, sitting on the defendants' bench this Wednesday. VICTOR LERENA (EFE)
During his statement as a defendant, the
Okdiario worker
He has denied that he committed any illegality and has claimed that he was developing a "journalistic investigation" into an alleged "illegal nursery".
The political couple took two of their children, who were less than two years old, to a caretaker.
"The interest has never been minors," Entrambasaguas has alleged, who has recognized that, on two occasions, she hid her identity and his profession.
According to his own account, he told a neighbor that she was there to look for a nursery for her niece and, on another occasion, he told a police officer that she was a law student.
“It is that if I go around saying that I am an investigative journalist and that I am going to see if an illegality is committed, they close in band”, the defendant has defended in the hearing held this Wednesday.
Despite the defendant's version, the nanny has stated that no inspection process has ever been opened and that she continues to care for minors to this day.
According to Entrambasaguas, she did not publish any information on the subject.
The investigating judge stressed that, due to the editor's presence, the caretaker "restricted the outings to the playgrounds in the common areas of the urbanization with the children she cared for, thus limiting her daily activity and that of minors”.
“Knowing that you were leaving the children in a place and that a person was getting so close... The caregiver did not dare to take them out on the street.
It was a distressing situation because there were two children in the middle”, Iglesias insisted: “There were many calls, it was continuous.
She once went inside and knocked on the door.
She said that she didn't open the door for him because she was scared, because she was with four children inside her.
She was terrified,” she added.
“The caregiver was nervous and anxious.
This journalist comes to ask children from the urbanization”, has riveted Irene Montero.
The political couple denounced in 2020 that they suffered daily harassment for months.
Also at their home in Galapagar (Madrid), where they live with their three children.
In fact, several procedures have been opened in this situation.
A Madrid court sentenced a man to seven months in prison for beating a civil guard who had asked him to leave the security perimeter deployed around the house in a protest.
Another court sentenced two women to pay a fine for a crime of disobedience to authority for refusing to leave that same perimeter.
And, in another case, the Prosecutor's Office asks for three years in prison for another alleged stalker of the family.