On a Tuesday afternoon in late June, the upper floors of the Mucem in Marseille erupted in what staff described to Le Figaro as “manifestations de joie.” The museum’s president, Pierre-Olivier Costa, had just been suspended for four months by the French culture ministry. For the employees who had spent years filing alerts about a “toxic management” style, the moment was less a celebration of a downfall than a collective exhale. Costa, appointed in 2022 and known for his closeness to Emmanuel and Brigitte Macron, had been reconfirmed in his post as recently as November 2025, even as a criminal investigation into sexual and moral harassment and an administrative inquiry gathered pace. His suspension, announced on 30 June 2026, came just days after he had summoned staff to declare he would not resign.

A thousand kilometres southwest, in a faculty corridor at Madrid’s Complutense University, a different kind of testimony had been accumulating. Former students of Juan Carlos Monedero, the political scientist and co-founder of the left-wing party Podemos, recalled a professor who would give “little kicks, touch our shoulders, massage us” during lectures, according to accounts gathered by the influencer Sindy Takanashi. One anonymous witness said Monedero called female students “zorras” and “vacas lecheras” when they spoke of wanting to become mothers. The university opened a confidential investigation in January 2025 after a student filed a sexual harassment complaint. The public prosecutor later archived the criminal case, finding no offence against moral integrity but describing the behaviour as “improper” and “morally reprehensible.” The university’s own disciplinary process, however, concluded with a one-year suspension—six months of which had already been served preventively, meaning the founder of Podemos will be away from the classroom for only half that time.

In Brazil’s Mato Grosso state, the sequence was swifter but no less charged. On 26 June, the Public Defender’s Office exonerated special adviser Bruno Proença, who had worked for the former first sub-defender-general Rogério Borges Freitas. Borges himself was removed from his management post the same day, having been under investigation since May after two female employees reported sexual and moral harassment. One alleged he tried to kiss her by force inside a car; another described nearly a decade of humiliation and unwanted physical contact. A recording of an internal meeting in March captured Borges criticising a servant for having a “faccioso spirit” and “rebellious” behaviour. Proença, meanwhile, is suspected of using his access to internal systems to act as a lawyer for Borges while still holding his official post. The Public Defender’s Office stressed that the formal complaints remain under review by its internal affairs body, and the civil police confirmed two investigations are ongoing at the women’s defence unit in Cuiabá.

Viewed together, the three episodes sketch a transnational moment in which institutional machinery—university disciplinary panels, ministry decrees, internal affairs divisions—is being activated by the persistence of internal complainants and union pressure. At the Mucem, the CGT union had demanded Costa’s suspension as early as April, denouncing “toxic management, strong suspicions of union discrimination, and administrative decisions not in conformity with ministry practice.” In Madrid, the campus feminist collective Punto Violeta publicly questioned the prosecutor’s decision to archive the case and pushed for administrative sanctions. In Mato Grosso, a dedicated commission for preventing and confronting harassment, established in 2023, continues to offer “qualified listening and humanised reception.” The suspensions and exonerations do not close the cases—criminal and administrative inquiries continue in all three countries—but they mark a shift in the speed and visibility of institutional response. As Anne-Marie Le Guével, the inspector general of cultural affairs, prepared to assume interim leadership of the Mucem on 1 July, the empty president’s office overlooking the Mediterranean became a quiet emblem of a process that, for the staff who had long demanded it, had finally begun to move.