The former deputy of Junts per Catalunya Edward Pujol will bring to trial two women whom he accuses of insultsin one case, and insults and threats, in the other one. The party removed Pujol and suspended him from militancy in the fall of 2020, days after these two women told one of the organization’s managers how she had treated them – without filing a complaint. The politician, who was then the spokesman for the parliamentary group, counterattacked and yes he denounced them. When both complaints have passed the investigation phase, JxCat has apologized to Pujol and has readmitted as a militant.
To date, however, no one has heard the version of the two women about what happened. EL PERIÓDICO has interviewed both of them and also four others who explain how Pujol used his charges to get close to them. The former deputy, through a spokeswoman, has denied the accusations.
“Is a predator”
“I only knew him by sight. One day I commented on a photo he had posted on Instagram and he replied to me. He began to write to me and send me hundreds of messages. He did not stop. He is a very insistent person,” explains the first testimony to this diary. The woman finally agreed to meet him and, since then, Pujol established a relationship based on sex and highly erotic conversations over the phone. The latter has been decisive for the fate that to date has followed the judicial path of the former deputy’s complaint, who began to appear at the woman’s house – where her daughter also lives – often without warning and at night. : “He opened the door, pounced and he forced me to do what he wanted“.
This testimony underlines that Pujol was a popular politician among the pro-independence sector and that he used that power to seduce. “he was the politician. And me it was nobody. A speck of dust. And when he had free time, he had to be there for him. The phone smoked if he was in Parliament and, if he wasn’t interested in who was speaking, he spent time chatting with me: sending photos of how the hemicycle looks from his seat, of his speech, of the microphone. He waved me off. It was a way of saying: ‘I am more powerful than you and you have to do what i want‘” she reasons. This woman felt “abused” in some of those meetings: “It’s a predator, a patient who only thinks about sex. He came, undressed in the hall, covered my mouth, and come on. He treated me like a blow up doll“. “And then he left,” he adds.
Through the lawsuit, Pujol accuses this first woman of being behind the insults he received from anonymous profiles on Twitter. After her relationship with Pujol, which lasted several months, she required a psychological treatment and states that he has suffered emotional aftermath aggravated by the judicial pressure of the litigation initiated by him.
“He just wants to abuse your body”
“He makes you believe that you are the most important person in the world. That he has a real interest in you. But he only has one goal: abuse your body. Use your physical strengthwhich has it, and overwhelms you, also psychologically, until you cancel. It doesn’t let you breathe, it doesn’t let you think. She sends you one message after another and calls you continuously. Have 75 calls in a week. They are conversations that always end up taking on a sexual aspect”. This second testimony belongs to a woman who is Pujol’s party partner.
According to what she relates, Pujol became interested in her during the month of October 2019. That a relevant leader was interested in knowing her opinions about the party and that he asked her for advice on the content of his speeches before delivering them, at a time of so much political importance for Catalonia –the sentence against the leaders of the ‘procés’ had just been announced–, made her feel highly valued as a politician. But he discovered that, deep down, Pujol only wanted sex.
“Was a authority abuse and an invasion of my privacy. manipulated me to do what he wanted with me, and then I ceased to exist for him. I felt like a garbage bag. It was all a lie. Every day I regret having met him & rdquor ;, he regrets.
This second woman has also had to undergo psychological treatment to understand and overcome what had happened to Pujol. In her case, in addition to the judicial pressure she suffers, her political trajectory and her training have been seriously affected, she even considered expelling her. Neither she nor the first woman have wanted to present a police complaint against Pujol for the moment following the advice of their respective lawyers, despite the fact that Junts asked them to do so before reinstating him as a militant.
torrent of calls and messages
This newspaper has interviewed two other testimonies, a woman from the orbit of JxCat and another completely unrelated to politics, who agree in the way they describe how Pujol acted when he tried to seduce: calling or texting incessantly, they remark. EITHER showing up at your house unannouncedconfirms one of them. The third testimony affirms that it is still not digested why Pujol pretended so insistently that he was in love with her when he only wanted sex.
The fourth testimony, that of a woman who assures that Pujol also tried to sleep with her repeatedly -unsuccessfully-, underlines that when it was made public that Junts was separating him in 2020, the politician contacted her a few days later to ask for “forgiveness” if had “felt harassed” by him, and also offered him a monetary help that previously, when she had asked him when going through financial difficulties, this had refused to grant.
Precedents in the work environment
The journalist and humorist Ana Polo coincided with Pujol in RAC1 when he ran the radio station and she had 25 years. “So it was a dream to be in RAC1”, she admits in a meeting with this newspaper, adding that this “illusion” also made her someone “vulnerable”, who felt the pressure to prove that she deserved such an opportunity. “It was the first job that she got in the world of communication and with Pujol there were several very uncomfortable situations that should not have occurred between a director and an employee who was twice her age,” she recalls.
“Pujol said that he was Francois Hollande and that I was ‘his’ Segolene Royal. But Hollande and Royal were a couple. He was making that analogy and I was forced to put on a brave face. He also called me ‘polito’ and I remember that one day, in front of everyone, he asked me to tell him how handsome he was. I didn’t feel like telling him, but I was afraid they wouldn’t renew me if he didn’t like me. Another day it went a little further: I was walking down a corridor and I heard someone behind me grunted like a pig. I turned around and saw Pujol, the director, who told me: ‘just kidding, huh?’ I still don’t understand what joke that was”, he recalls, reflecting, looking back, about how often it is that in the work environment is men with power sexually exploiting women they just want to be valued for their work.
The sixth testimony belongs to the same period. the journalist Nuria Casas to the 24 years worked at the station RAC105. There he coincided with Pujol, and suffered situations similar to those described by Polo. Casas, contacted by this newspaper, refuses to make any further statements about her experience because she claims to have suffered too much from this matter. She does want to make it clear, instead, that she ratifies what she told at the end of 2020 through an article – titled ‘Letter to a stalker’which he published in the digital The National.cat– and from an interview in BE Catalonia. According to what he denounced at the time in the two media outlets –in which he continues to work today–, with Pujol he had to endure several unpleasant episodes: “How can it be shown that They have tried to touch your breast in the newsroom when you’re all alone? Or do they wait for you crouched at the entrance and tell you it’s to look at the underwear you wear?”.
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Houses, which has also needed Psychological Support to overcome this experience, and Polo made their testimony public after Junts announced that Pujol had been expelled for harassment. Junts has not contacted either of them before making the decision to rehabilitate Pujol as a militant. This newspaper has also contacted some women journalists from RAC1 who affirm that they have not seen or suffered any episode of harassment by Pujol.
Pujol denies the accusations
Edward Pujol, whose political career was cut short by this matter, has refused to give this newspaper his version of the events, advised by his lawyers. Through a spokeswoman, the former deputy has denied the accusations of the journalists Nuria Casas –who claims not to remember– and Ana Polo –which he accuses of decontextualizing the comments–. Over the first two testimonials with which this report begins, the spokeswoman recalls that both women wanted continue their respective relationships with Pujol when he considered them finished. And he also stresses that two different judges have found evidence that they would have committed “insults“by “telling the party that Pujol sexually harassed them” or that –one of them– “sexually assaulted her”.