A small-town politician in Spain has offered to resign after making a splash during a recent live-streamed council meeting in which he inadvertently broadcast video of himself taking a shower.
Bernardo Bustillo, a town councillor and swim instructor in Torrelavega, Spain, has offered to step down after the incident during a public video chat earlier in the week.
He said he’s sorry if people were offended, but he’s not sorry about what they saw — and they definitely saw it all.
“I’ve spent half of my life half-naked and have never been ashamed of nudity, whether my own or that of others,” Bustillo said in an open letter. “I can’t help but regret that the end of my political life … has to do with nakedness, which isn’t a big deal.”
The video meeting, which involved councillors and the mayor, was broadcast online for journalists and resident of Torrelavega, a community of about 52,000 people in northern Spain.
The meeting started at 8 a.m. and dragged on past noon, prompting Bustillo to voice concerns that he wouldn’t be able to get the rest of his chores done that day. He told his fellow councillors that he still needed to shower and give his daughter a ride before heading off to his job as a swim instructor.
He eventually tried to have the best of both worlds. He brought his laptop into the bathroom and minimized the meeting screen, mistakenly believing that he could listen to the meeting and that the camera would stop recording. Instead, the camera captured Bustillo in the buff as he climbed into the shower and soaped up behind the frosted glass.
Other councillors watched in dismay and frantically tried to call his cell phone, but Bustillo didn’t hear them over the water.
“Say something to Berni,” the mayor said, according to El Espanol. “Say something quickly.”
“We can’t disconnect him or do something?” another person asked.
The mayor ultimately rescued everyone by ending the meeting.
Bustillo acknowledged that he “screwed up” in a letter released to various Spanish media outlets.
“I am sorry if someone could have been bothered by the images released,” Bustillo wrote in the letter, which was published in Ifomo News. “Personally, I do not feel I have to apologize for them.”
He left his fate in the hands of his party, and seemed to resign himself to becoming the latest victim of the perils of working from home during the coronavirus lockdown.
He even suggested a headline: “This councilman forgot the camera on at the end of the plenary session (what happens next will surprise you),” he wrote.
“If the news also contains a nude, it is logical that it become viral in a matter of hours.”
After seemingly laying bare the inner workings of viral news, Bustillo said he felt “tranquil” about the whole matter, and thanked everyone who had a sense of humour about it.
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