If last year around this time Irene Montero surprised with her coated tour and posed in the purest Preysler style, she says goodbye to the summer with a new installment of images and Twitter, this time bucolic in nature, taken by his head photographer, Dani Gago.
In slightly flared, wide-leg ankle jeans and a cardigan, the minister looks carefree and feeling the freedom that nature exudes in idyllic Châteauneuf-sur-Isère, a French commune on the banks of the Rhône. She missed playing the flute for a pastoral poetry.
In this picturesque place, the far-left movement La Francia Insoumise has gathered, during the last days of August, some 4,500 activists and some international political figures. Among them, the Minister of Equality. The leader, Jean-Luc Mélenchon, candidate for the Elysee for the third time, warms up ahead of the 2022 elections.
The images show that the two are having a relaxed conversation next to Lake Aiguille, in the midst of lush vegetation, far away of the noise that is experienced at that time in the Kabul airport, where medical personnel are counting victims in the attack perpetrated a few hours earlier by the Islamic State.
It is not fortuitous that on her return to Spain the minister delighted us with an ineffable comparison of the oppression that Afghan women experience with the rest of the societies and cultures, including ours.
It comes with the polished ideology after these days together with figures such as Sandrine Rousseau, the environmental candidate who is looking for international alliances for his pilgrim government of “inclusive rock and roll.”
An ecofeminist activist who defines with expressions such as “I prefer women who cast spells on men who build reactors”, she declares that the world is dying of rationality. Like Montero, she has also thrown her particular outburst on the Afghan crisis by applauding the possible arrival of terrorists: “Better to have them in France to monitor them.”
Radical, polemicist and anti-capitalist, Rousseau enunciates the three depredations of capitalism: the body of blacks, women and nature. Her crazy ideas are a source of mockery in the networks, muddying those who dance the water. This time, the Minister of Equality.
She posed with her and on her Twitter account she passed for one more young girl. “How to ruin the career of a Spanish girl by putting her in the photo without telling her the nonsense that we have been dragging for a few days,” says one user. “The poor Spanish girl probably had no idea who she was photographing with,” replies another.
Different attitude
The “poor girl” did know and in her intervention, together with Rousseau, she took the position of power. Less a minister and more activist than ever, Montero sat with one leg above the knee, appropriating that very masculine habit of sprawling, taking up more space than it should.
At the shrill tone of her tablemate’s voice, her intimidating gesture was more than justified. The image contrasts, however, with the position he maintained in front of the líder Mélenchon. Her crossed legs, this time close together, revealed insecurity, according to the theories of researcher Paul Ekman.
Without the consort who generously distributed power with her using the call power couple, the minister looks for a new liturgy that enlarges it. Activism is a booming and effective tool, but its rhetoric is becoming tiresome, even within government.
She also seeks feminist alliances in her resistance projects. Is the insubordinate leader the best company for their goal? Mélenchon is a reviled figure for a good part of the French. She founded La Francia Insumisa in 2016 in a context of disappointment that made him gain popularity, especially among young people, but now that discontent has come from Marine Le Pen.
She boasts of radicalism and age. She boasts that she knows his country well. “65 million grumpies, each with two different opinions on each topic,” and that’s on their good days. A confessed Marxist, he is a man of long speeches and impious attacks. To Macron, to Merkel, to the media.
Despite the fact that she takes her time when speaking, she responds with rapture when asked about her youth activism in the Trotskyism of Pierre Lambert, leader of a sectarian, violent and misogynistic current. Her imaginary VI Republic would bring a new Constitution, legalization of cannabis use, historic tax hike for the rich and multinationals, more State intervention, retirement at 60 and a reduction in working time.
The link with Montero comes through Iglesias. Although Mélenchon has more magnet, she looked for alliances in him. One of their dates occurred a few hours before Montero, also present, prematurely gave birth to her twins.
She handles Spanish very well, since one of her grandparents was born in Mula (Murcia) and another in Valencia. It is the language she used in her meeting with Montero, despite the fact that some absent-minded people have taken the opportunity to exalt the minister’s command of languages.