The Constitutional Court settled one of the major episodes of identity change in regional politics in the last decade: the case of Raquel Romero, an advisor to the Ríoján government between 2019 and 2023 who was relegated as an unattached deputy in the regional parliament after leaving Podemos, a candidacy she led. The judges explain, as Rioja 2 has learned, what they actually said when they agreed with Teresa Rodríguez and the other Andalusian deputies expelled from the Adelante Andalusia group: a political party cannot be confused with a parliamentary group.
Romero headed the regional list of the Podemos-Equo-Izquierda Unida party in 2019. It is the list that obtained representatives in the Parliament of La Rioja: Raquel Romero (Vamos) and Henar Moreno (IU). The results of that election made this nomination key for Concha Andreu’s PSOE to govern, and a vote against Romero, who claimed three of the eight available ministries, initially eliminated his position.
Podemos quickly distanced itself from Romero and his demands caused the resignation of several senior party officials in the region. Romero was recently appointed Minister of Participation, Cooperation and Human Rights. At parliamentary level, she and Henar Moreno became part of the mixed group in the Regional Chamber. The party ended up expelling Romero from its ranks in March 2022 amid accusations that she refused to donate part of her salary to the party, while those around Rioja’s advisor saw revenge for her communication with Yolanda Diaz, a few months after Somar’s firing.
The decision of the Ione Pelara party was echoed in the La Rioja Parliament: after a warning from Moreno (IU), the chamber council expelled the mixed group’s advisor, leaving her in the position of unattached deputy. With consequences such as, for example, the loss of the right to have advisors and some of the material resources of Parliament. She became officially considered an apostate.
Romero left politics in 2023, when he announced that he would not run again for any nomination in that year’s election. But by then her claims before the Constitutional Court had already begun, and the Second Chamber of the Court of Guarantees, as El Diario newspaper in La Rioja learned, had just agreed with her: the decision that deemed her an unattached deputy violated her right to hold public office, although it had no practical implications. That legislature expired more than two years ago.
The Constitutional Court recalls that it had already resolved a similar case in 2023, coming from another regional parliament: the case of Teresa Rodríguez and the rest of the Andalusian deputies who were expelled from the Adelante Andalusia parliamentary group at the request of Podemos and the International Federation during the pandemic. He now concludes that “conflation between two different political subjects” cannot happen: the party and the parliamentary group.
In the case of Raquel Romero, the Constitutional Court clarified that the internal regulations of the La Rioja Parliament do not specifically include the possibility of expelling a deputy from the mixed group because he left the party whose list he headed. The Court understands that the Council’s regulations do not contain any specific provisions on the internal regulations of parliamentary groups and when it can expel an MP. In this case, La Rioja’s parliament took into account only one thing: that she had been expelled from Podemos.
The Council, which made this decision by voting against the SWP representatives and in favor of the PP and IU, did not check whether she had broken away from the parliamentary group, but was simply expelled from the party. The Constitutional Court now adds that the decision was based on an “unexpected budget”, which is a loss for the party, and that this is “an innovation in parliamentary politics”, as they had previously said in the case of Teresa Rodríguez and Adelante Andalusia.
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