• More Madrid Mónica García hands over the spokesperson to Manuela Bergerot and takes Javier Padilla as Secretary of State
  • Profile Mónica García, the Minister of Health who rose through the political ladder by agitating the streets of Madrid against the PP

"If he doesn't want to tell you about a negotiation, you're never going to find out." What might seem like a casual anecdote about a personality trait is the pillar on which the political career of Manuela Bergerot (Buenos Aires, 1976) has been built. "Silent negotiator" of Más Madrid at the national level with Sumar, secretary of Organization with absolute control in the inner workings of the party, will now be the one who assumes, as "person of maximum confidence" of Mónica García, the Spokesperson in the Assembly of Madrid that its leader has vacated, after the national leap carried out as Minister of Health.

The political journey of this daughter of Argentine exiles due to the Videla dictatorship, who arrived in Madrid in the 70s with a daughter who was barely two years old, has always taken place behind the scenes, where public eyes are not placed, but where decisions are made. It was in those tasks as an advisor to the Podemos Parliamentary Group between 2015 and 2019, as an expert in Democratic Memory, that her union with Mónica García, at that time a rank-and-file deputy in the purple formation, arrived. "They were probably hooked by humour, but they also have very similar ways of working. If they're interested in something, they go crazy and they're not going to let go until they get it under control," says a colleague from that time.

Thus arose a friendship that was maintained despite the passage of Manuela Bergerot to the Madrid City Council as an advisor on Social Policies, again in the middle of municipal politics. Until the reconfiguration of the left-wing space, with the appearance of Más Madrid at the regional level, opened a door to the front line, where she was included as number three on the list for the regional elections of May 4, 2021, which was already headed by Mónica García, and won her first seat as a deputy. That step forward was again accompanied by internal work in the party.

"Without Manuela's work, we would never have had the growth of these years," Más Madrid sources say about the work of the Secretary of Organization in recent years. A function for which, according to members of the party itself, it has always had "absolute powers" and "the ability to make decisions" internally. "She has Monica's absolute confidence because she has earned it in these two years." In fact, under his leadership Más Madrid has obtained representation in 58 municipalities in the Community of Madrid, has entered eight municipal governments -Getafe, Rivas...- and has quintupled the number of councillors it has in the region since 2019.

All this with "a low profile", which is also the one he has maintained in the national negotiations with Sumar. Because Bergerot was the person appointed to address the role that Más Madrid would have, as one of the main partners of Yolanda Díaz's party in the current legislature and, therefore, also in the central government. She was the voice of the Madrid party with Ernest Urtasun, Díaz's strong man, and, according to Mónica García's team, she was a "key" piece for her to end up being Minister of Health. "Without making noise", "showing absolute loyalty to the project" and delivering a Spokesperson in the Congress of Deputies in exchange for a greater purpose, according to the same sources consulted by this newspaper.

Now, this graduate in Information and Documentation and expert in Democratic Memory will have to put aside that work in the shadows to lead the opposition against Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the Assembly of Madrid, after having been appointed spokesperson in the Madrid Parliament before the departure of both Mónica García and her deputy spokesperson. Javier Padilla, who will be Secretary of State for Health.

Yesterday, in her farewell video to regional politics, Mónica García herself referred to Manuela Bergerot as "a brave woman", "committed" and who "knows this region inch by inch". "She will be accompanied by a parliamentary group that is brilliant, that is hardworking, that is wonderful and that I want to thank for the work of all these years," he remarked about the closed nucleus that both had built in Más Madrid and that already last Saturday at the congress of the formation they were in charge of claiming, At the same time, he issued a warning to Sumar that his intention, despite the national leap, was to maintain his "autonomy" and not to favor integration into Yolanda Díaz's space.

  • Monica Garcia
  • More Madrid