Mental health

Montse Venturós: "I even thought it was better to be hit by a truck."

The former CUP mayor of Berga explains in Catalunya Ràdio's 'El Suplemento' how she experienced the depression that removed her from the political frontline.

The mayor of Berga, Montse Venturós, during an interview with ARA in a file image
18/10/2025
2 min

BarcelonaOn July 6, 2021, the mayor of Berga since 2015, Montse Venturós, announced that she was leaving the mayor's office due to the depression she had been suffering from for six months, which had led her to take leave. In a press conference in the capital of Berguedà, the CUP mayor justified her departure by the need to recover and the impossibility of assuming the responsibilities entailed by the position she held until then. Four years later, Venturós has broken her silence and in an interview with The Supplement from Catalunya Ràdio has given details of how she experienced the mental illness that removed her from the political frontline.

The only female mayor of the capital of Bergamo has explained that the pressure from the Proceso (Process), during her first term, and Covid-19 during her second, were decisive factors in causing her to enter a state of decline, to the point of wanting to end her life: "I was very scared when I started, especially when, after a while, I thought that if a truck ran over me, it would all be over." "In the end, the worst thing I've been through these years has been being afraid of myself; that's the hardest thing I've had to face," she added during the interview with journalist Roger Escapa.

During the six years she was mayor, she also suffered physical consequences that she still suffers from: "I lost 27 kilos during my time as mayor and in these four years I haven't been able to regain them." In this sense, the former mayor of the CUP has stated that her only wish is to feel well and be able to live a normal life: "I want to be able to walk in the mountains and not get tired like I do now, I don't have the strength because my body doesn't respond."

Venturós was disqualified from office for six months in 2018 for not having taken down the Estelada (Spanish flag) from the balcony during two elections in 2015 in compliance with the 2012 plenary session agreement not to remove that flag from the façade of the town hall until Catalonia's independence was achieved. Venturós remainedsymbolically as mayorand only exercised political functions, while another CUP councilor assumed the legal role.

"I will never forgive ourselves for not achieving independence."

Beyond her disqualification, the failure of the Process has also taken its toll on her emotionally. "I will never forgive ourselves for not achieving independence," she emphasized in the interview. And she revealed a personal situation that deeply pained her. "I believed it so much that the day the Republic was supposed to be proclaimed, I went to say goodbye to my mother, who was dying. I asked her if she wanted me to stay with her or go down to Barcelona and risk being arrested, and she told me to go there, that it was what she had always fought for. Then I was very powerful, and then I was very powerful," she recounted.

She also resents the way she behaved toward her sister, who suffered from mental illness before her: "I had a lot of prejudices: my sister suffered from depression, and I always thought it was a matter of willpower to get out, and I had to apologize. A person with depression can't; it's not that they don't want to." She knows this firsthand now.

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