Manuela Carmena, former Mayor of Madrid, this Tuesday at the Cadena SER offices in Madrid Jaime Villanueva
Former judge and mayor of Madrid between 2015 and 2019, Manuela Carmena, at the age of 78, presents Suena Carmena (Pódium Podcast), “silent conversations to break stereotypes”. Colon cancer kept her from public activities for several months. Now that she’s recovered, she’s not thinking about a typical retirement: “Now I’m free to do anything I can think of, that’s a lot,” she explains, showing some dolls made by prisoners and pensioners from the Zapatelas project that are sold online and which made them search the internet for sheep’s wool for several days. When I was little I wanted to be a farmer. “When I was preparing for the professional exams, we were allowed to set up a children’s farm in Guadalajara and it was a lot of fun. Maybe now it could be for older people and that way I could develop my passion for farming.” When asked about the people she admires and who have most influenced her existence, she cites judges, lawyers and prisoners. He observes politics with concern and from a safe distance.
Question. The subject of the first podcast is lies. What was the last thing you said and the last thing you heard or they slipped into?
Answer. I’m not one to lie because I’m an extrovert, I like to tell what’s happening to me and when I lie I don’t express what I’m thinking. Hear them I hear them every day because politics is full of lies. The PP gets lost and says many uncertain things with certainty, for example when they claim that the PSOE attacked the Constitutional Court, and in the media they are not always told to listen, that’s not true.
Q What other topics will you address in the podcast?
R We chose them between Oriol Llop, a Catalan journalist who comes from another ideological world that I find very interesting, and myself. Let’s talk about happiness, love, sex…
Q Is this together or separately?
R Basically together. For example, we are talking about the term “cuckolding”, which strikes me as repulsive and simplifies the complex world of sex and love with very negative obsessions.
I didn’t think I wanted to generate the anger it generated in Podemos
Q Much has been said about Skakira’s musical revenge these days. What do you think of the song and the debate it sparked?
R I think it’s very good that she expresses what she wants. I think it suggests that we haven’t prepared our sentimental field well. Denigrating, insulting someone we loved is terrible. It’s accepted as normal that if they turn you green, but deep down these criticisms are against yourself: you haven’t loved this person in a long time.
Q He’s been thinking a lot about what he calls “Caring for Democracy.” How you do that?
R First, to accept that institutions are human creations, instruments of the culture of coexistence and require constant attention and monitoring. You must take care of them like you take care of a friendship, your plants, your pets, your house… because time brings inevitable changes in everything.
Q And how is democracy watered?
R Be very attentive. The first thing you have to do to take care of something is to watch it, to recognize when it is stuck, drying out or moldy. In order for democracy to continue to fulfill its role in each historical moment, it is necessary to see what it needs, what the citizen demands of it, what pattern of growth it needs.
Manuela Carmena, former Mayor of Madrid, this Tuesday at the Cadena SER offices in Madrid Jaime Villanueva
Q The polls show the growing distrust in the political class. What contributed most to this breakup?
R People don’t feel represented by politicians, that connection has been severed, and it has been severed because the basic desire is to gain power. The rudeness I see in institutions hurts me terribly. The President of the Autonomous Community of Madrid says: “Pedro Sánchez and this mob.” It’s not acceptable. Authority requires a good education, which is the way to show respect to others, and if you don’t have it you can’t be an authority, you can’t govern. When she was a prison supervising judge, she would ask the prisoner’s permission before entering a cell and then shake his hand.
Q This language and these forms are successful.
R In the short term. Scandal enlightens and when it comes to voting, some get carried away by the enlightened: they choose who looks familiar, who screams. It works, but this is a party and you have to look at the guests. They eat what they prepare, but every day there are fewer guests: this is restraint, reasonable people who at a certain moment say: “Look, forget me”.
Q Vote excited?
R My generation voted for the first time, so voting seems very important to me. But when I vote, I think, “It’s a shame we can’t vote any other way.” We don’t know what we voted for.
Q Why?
R Since programs are created that do not proceed from previous evaluations, these are letters to the wise.
Q Do you vote against rather than for?
R Yes, and the political discourse itself is an aberration of insults against each other.
Q The year 2022 ended with a serious institutional crisis. Has the Constitutional Court entered the realm of legislation?
R It was embarrasing. The Constitutional Court must be a political court, not a partisan one. That’s because of the constitution. But the PP needed that at that moment and they voted what the PP wanted.
Q On occasion he said he regretted founding Más Madrid. Does Sumar look like you imagined when you entered politics?
R In a way yes. I haven’t spoken to the VP, but the idea of making a platform that doesn’t come exclusively from political labels seems kind of similar. I want it to be a seed so that many political structures can be strengthened tomorrow. I never thought that what I wanted to do would cause the terrible anger it caused in Podemos. For me the most important thing was to involve a lot of people with great skills, but that was misunderstood.
Q When was the last time you spoke to Pablo Iglesias?
R When I was mayor and they wouldn’t accept that the community team could do it from City Hall. These conversations took place in September 2018 and I have not spoken to him since.
Q Would you get involved in politics again, for example with a Yolanda Díaz campaign?
R A person who has been the mayor of a mayor’s office for four years, who is also unique, open-minded and progressive, has a duty to explain what the successes have been, the weak points… and she would like to do that to all groups that she would like some of these elements would reproduce, but only from this perspective.
Q Anything left of 15-M?
R I didn’t feel very connected to 15-M. At that time I was doing a cooperation program in the Congo and saw it from afar. I found it an interesting movement, I was hoping that there would be young people who would want to do something, but it was about changing everything, it was too abstract.
Q Is Podemos similar to the other parties?
R Yes very much.
Q The Equal Opportunities Ministry holds the judges responsible for the sentence cuts for the yes-is-yes law. Is it the judges fault?
R Obviously not. If there is a later law that favors the convicted person, that law applies. That’s out of the question. It’s a shame that this is being done so unintelligently. Making a law is not easy and the proof is that the BOE is full of amendments. If it creates an effect you didn’t want, it will be modified. But there is an attitude of childish arrogance here that cannot be touched. I believe that for certain offenses there needs to be an important penalty area for behavior change to take place, but I am not in favor of very long penalties. But if the aim of the law was to increase penalties, you must correct it because it went wrong.
Q The reform to abolish the crime of incitement to hatred and to modify the crime of embezzlement was also very controversial. Do you think it was necessary?
R. I do not think so. You can’t change the Penal Code without prior evaluation, purely for political reasons, but we have got used to the fact that one way of doing politics is to change laws with purely partisan criteria.
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