"I am on maternal leave breastfeeding my son": Ortega Smith's sexist dismissal of a female worker

BarcelonaThe former leader of Vox at the Madrid City Council and now an expelled dissenter, Javier Ortega Smith, carried out a highly controversial dismissal of the municipal group's head of communications just after her maternity leave on December 9th of last year. The politician reproached her for not having made "any visits" to the group and for showing "zero interest" during her leave. The woman responded forcefully: "I am on maternity leave, I am breastfeeding a small child," she snapped back in a conversation that was made public this Monday by El País. Ortega Smith displayed "sexist" conduct, according to the judge who ruled on the plaintiff's complaint, but archived the case because it was "improper conduct but not criminally punishable."

The judicial resolution details the harshness with which Ortega addressed the plaintiff, Alba Moreno, thanks to a conversation she recorded during the meeting where she was fired. "Do you want me to explain the reports made by someone who just became a father?" the city councillor of the Spanish capital went so far as to say, referring to a certain Carlos who had had a child shortly before, in a situation that the plaintiff asserts is not "comparable," among other reasons because she is breastfeeding and taking full care of the baby. "Carlos, right?" Ortega asked, in turn, and insisted: "And since you are on leave, you don't go for visits? [...] You haven't gone on any visits to see friends, have you?"

All the reproaches Ortega levels stem from the fact that it "bothers" him that she had not been involved in the group: "I have perceived that you have not shown much interest [...]. Not a single visit [...]. You haven't come to any plenary session," he declares. Although she repeatedly defends that she is taking care of her "newborn" son at home. "I am not laying you off, I am not renewing your position," Ortega concludes. And he elaborates by saying that "it is what is said about a freely appointed position, that at any moment, whether there is leave or not, or during or after or without," one can dispense with the services of anyone like her. It should be remembered that the woman, Alba Moreno, was relocated to the national communications department of Vox, at the headquarters on Bambú street, which intervened in the umpteenth clash with Ortega, in this case of a labor nature.

An episode of high intensity

The judge believes that "more substance" is needed for a criminal horizon to open, and comments that, "aside from the reproach of the words and phrases uttered by the defendant, however unfortunate or inappropriate," he points out that "there is no reiteration of conduct, nor a specific act that implies a special intensity in the affectation of human dignity." The episode that stung particularly and that Ortega used to control his rebel core in Madrid even more. Ortega Smith, former secretary general of Vox, moved away progressively from the party leader, Santiago Abascal, since 2022, and began losing responsibilities until the total war started in 2023 and ended with the total expulsion in February 2026.