Manuela Carmena: Madrid mayor drops herself in it by saying she hates the job

Hindsight in politics is a wonderful thing, especially when you have been unexpectedly swept into office only to discover that you don’t really fancy it after all.

In February, Manuela Carmena, a former human rights judge, was enjoying “the paradise” of retirement. Her first instinct when asked to stand for mayor of Madrid was politely to decline. But Pablo Iglesias of the Podemos party eventually persuaded Ms Carmena to change her mind. In May she was elected on a wave of discontent with Spain’s established political classes.

“If I could rewind to last February, I would reassert my initial refusal to run for mayor,” she says in a new book written by Maruja Torres, a journalist. “[The job of Mayor] is absolutely excessive. I am overwhelmed. I am not happy now, and that’s not good.”

The 71-year-old Ms Carmena, who represents the Ahora Madrid party – a left-wing alliance that includes Podemos – had never run for political office before but it seems that she has developed a nose for political survival.

When the book’s contents, first reported by the El País newspaper this week, were published, Ms Carmena put out a statement to persuade the 3.2 million Madrileños that she is content being their Mayor.

“I’m not a professional policy maker, and I don’t like the climate of artificial confrontation that we inhabit in politics,” she said. “I agreed to participate in a citizen project, which persuaded me [that becoming Mayor was] a real opportunity to improve this city, and I took the decision, knowing what I could lose. Of course sometimes I miss the paradise of my retirement, and some times have been tough, but the balance is positive.”

She added that her comments in the book “reflect thoughts I had last summer, when my family holiday was subjected to public scrutiny”. She has two adult children with her husband, Eduardo Leira, an architect.

Opposition politicians have called for her to quit. Percival Manglano, a PP councillor in Madrid, said that Ms Carmena should step down if she values “her own happiness over her responsibility”.

“You end up being less in control of yourself, and become a little more controlled by others,” the Mayor said in the book, entitled Manuela Carmena on Maruja Torres’ Couch, which went on sale earlier this week. She said that the only part of the job she enjoyed was “improving Madrid” and “the quality of life of Madrileños”.

Despite her reticence, and a couple of high-profile initial gaffes, Ms Carmena is generally considered to be doing a good job. She drew the ire of the press after launching a website that “corrected” the media’s mistakes and was told that her economic policies, which included opening a municipal bank, were nonsensical by the tax authorities.

She has, however, won praise for welcoming refugees and by refusing many of the trappings of office: she still travels to work on the Metro.