Councilor slaps Madrid mayor in the face and resigns

UA Madrid councilor resigned today after, at a public meeting, he slapped the mayor’s president, José Luis Martínez-Almeida, three times in the face, who accused him of violence.

Socialist councilor Daniel Viondi, after speaking in the gallery, went to the place where Martínez-Almeida (Partido Popular, PP) was to hand him a document and then slapped him three times on the face.

According to the mayor, the councilor said to him the phrase “you’re making a mistake”, in a defiant tone, while touching his face with the palm of his hand.

“Mr Viondi touched my face three times with a threatening tone”said right in the plenary of the municipality Martínez-Almeida, after asking the president of the assembly to speak.

“You are violent in plenary sessions, Mr. Viondi, and I will not allow it. Don’t ever touch my face again. Never”he added, asking the leadership of the Socialist Party (PSOE) for measures because “you cannot touch” a person in the way the councilor did.

Councilor Daniel Viondi continued to argue with the mayor after returning to his seat in the plenary and ended up being expelled from the meeting for disobeying the session president.

The spokesperson for the socialist group in the Spanish capital’s chamber, former minister Reyes Maroto, apologized to Martínez-Almeida, in front of the plenary.

Then, on social media, the leader of PSOE Madrid, Juan Lobato, announced Viondi’s departure from the chamber and also apologized to Martínez-Almeida.

“The party will take corresponding decisions,” he added.

The councilor himself ended up announcing his resignation, in a post 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 greatly regret”, wrote Daniel Viondi.

The episode occurred after 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 having given him a non-consensual kiss. in the World Cup final that the Spanish team won, in Australia, last August.

See the moment above.

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