Alejandra Jacinto, during the regional election campaign last May in Madrid.Claudio Álvarez
Another farewell in Podemos. Alejandra Jacinto, the star signing of Pablo Iglesias for the 2021 regional elections and who presented herself as a candidate for the presidency of the Community of Madrid last May, announced this Monday her departure from Podemos. “After a very intense parliamentary activity as a member of Unidas Podemos in the Madrid Assembly,” Jacinto wrote in a statement sent through her social networks, “and after the electoral processes in May and July of this year: “I have… the decision to change my professional To resume work as a lawyer in the field of the right to housing in the context of the defense of human rights.” Jacinto received 158,831 votes in the last regional elections – 4.73%. In Madrid it is necessary to exceed the 5% threshold in order to enter the regional parliament. In the last parliamentary elections in July, Jacinto was housing spokesman for Sumar, Yolanda Díaz’s party. Sources close to him assure that he will return exclusively to the legal profession “for now”.
“The current political situation contains elements of great complexity and difficult balance between the different identities involved in the vocation for social change,” Jacinto has written. “In the near future, Podemos will carry out organizational and programmatic renewal processes that seem timely and necessary to me. Leaving aside the logical and necessary discrepancies that must exist in any organization, I believe that Podemos and all its employees (fighters, valued colleagues who work every day for a better society) remain one of the essential ingredients to achieve this “to enable democratic progress in Spain”.
As the daughter of a radio journalist and a civil servant, she ventured into politics with Unidas Podemos in May 2021. Madrileña, 33 years old and mother of a three-year-old daughter, was the big surprise in the Telemadrid debate. Jacinto studied law and political science at the Autonomous University; a double degree, which he completed in 2012 and which enabled him to immediately enter the world of work. “He told me he was looking for an office to start with,” lawyer Javier Rubio, his first boss, told EL PAÍS two years ago. Jacinto had met him a few months earlier at a demonstration against Bankia’s favored companies.
No one around him knows for sure where Jacinto’s housing activism comes from. The Podemos candidate did not suffer a narrow defeat. According to his circle of trust, he lived for rent in Lavapiés, Legazpi and Atocha. When he became independent ten years ago, he naturally had to return to his parents’ house because his landlord suddenly increased the rent.
Those who know Jacinto well cite 15-M as the start date of his activism. His parents are residents of the El Retiro park area. However, there has been little debate about rents and mortgages in this neighborhood. There were circles, but on different topics. Jacinto, who was 20 at the time, showed up one morning in 2011 in the Usera neighborhood where he had been told that housing problems were a daily debate between neighbors and university students.
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Upon arrival, the group began questioning the then-law student as if she were a customer service phone number. “What is an unfair clause?” “My mother received this letter, what should I do?” All doubts have been dispelled. Nobody teaches the bureaucracy of housing.
In the Telemadrid debate, Jacinto played in the golden minute. In the health section, Jacinto showed the camera the book by Alberto Reyero, the former Minister of Social Policy, which, under the title They will die in an unworthy way (KO Books), describes the evasiveness and coldness of the popular side in the Ayuso government in the face of the death of 7,291 elderly people in nursing homes during the pandemic. At this moment in the debate, Jacinto shows the book to the camera and leaves his lectern.
“Since I don’t want her to continue hiding from the truth, I want to give her the book,” he said, referring to the president of Madrid. Ayuso, visibly nervous, expected. “No, I’m not begging you, don’t bring him near me. Don’t invade my space. Thank you very much.” Jacinto replied: “You’re the one who needs to read it.” And the picture immediately went viral.
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