A Madrid City Council councilor resigned today after three times touching the face of the mayor’s president, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, during a public meeting, who accused him of violence.
Socialist councilor Daniel Viondi, after speaking in the stands, went to where Martínez-Almeida (Partido Popular, PP) was going to hand him a document and then touched his face.
Tension in the Pleno del Ayuntamiento de Madrid: Socialist Daniel Viondi is expelled from school after touching Almeida’s face. The mayor of Madrid accuses him of being “not violent”: “I can no longer touch my face” https://t.co/RhA6zqdhrn pic.twitter.com/ikTLM6OTRu
– Europa Press (@europapress) September 28, 2023
According to the mayor, the councilor said to him in a defiant tone, “You are making a mistake,” while touching his face with the palm of his hand.
“Mr Viondi touched my face three times in a threatening tone,” he said in the plenary meeting of the municipality of Martínez-Almeida, after asking the president of the meeting to speak.
“You are violent during the plenary sessions, Mr. Viondi, and I will not allow that. Don’t ever touch my face again. Never,” he added, asking the leadership of the Socialist Party (PSOE) to take action because “you cannot touch someone like the councilor did.
Councilor Daniel Viondi continued to feud with the mayor after returning to his seat in the plenary and was eventually expelled from the meeting for disobeying the session chairman.
The spokesman for the Socialist group in the meeting room of the Spanish capital, former minister Reyes Maroto, apologized to Martínez-Almeida before the plenary meeting.
Subsequently, the leader of PSOE Madrid, Juan Lobato, announced on social media Viondi’s departure from the Chamber and also apologized to Martínez-Almeida.
“The party will take decisions accordingly,” he added.
The councilor eventually announced his resignation in a message on the social network X (formerly Twitter) and also apologized to the mayor.
“I apologize to Mr. Almeida for what happened. (…) It was a mistake that I deeply regret,” wrote Daniel Viondi.
The episode took place following an intervention by Viondi in which he argued that a space in a neighborhood in the city should be named after footballer Jenni Hermoso, who accused the former president of the Spanish Federation, Luis Rubiales, of giving him a non-consensual kiss in the World Cup final that the Spanish team won in Australia last August.
Source: DN
