Unexpected and nothing furtive tears foreshadowed, last Tuesday, the monumental mess that we can find today in La Rioja : at the apex of a possible schism, with its paintings entangled in a fratricidal war of positions, reproaches and even opposing logos ( We can La Rioja versus En La Rioja Podemos, as if it were ' La vida de Brian ').
A sort of schoolyard conflict, apparently, if the Government of a community of 315,000 inhabitants and several tens of millions of euros in budget (38 allocated from Madrid ) were not at stake.
While the second vote was taking place to invest the socialist Concha Andreu as president, thus ending with 24 uninterrupted years of PP executives, a fundamental part of that operation began to mourn in her seat and left by legs of the chamber before the general pass .
Raquel Romero , the only deputy of the purple formation and key piece for the PSOE-IU-Podemos block to be imposed, by a single vote (that is, his), to the PP-Cs-Vox, returned shortly after to his seat, with teary eyes, muttering a "nothing happens", obviously surrounded by rumors: "You have received a message that has moved her," they tried to cover nearby sources. The war of the two Podemite sectors, rather, intensified in those hours, and exploded in subsequent ones.
Against the regional apparatus
We can, that in exchange for his vote in the investiture of Andreu had gone from asking three councils and a vice presidency to settle for a single counselor, he had to choose the cadre that was to represent the party in the Executive. And the mess was already mounted.
Romero wanted to compete, while the device propagated otherwise, whispering that he was not interested, and looking for someone close to the regional leadership. "I never said that I was not interested in being a counselor, there is a profile where I can fit in," Romero declared the next day, last Wednesday, on TV, while the regional management was finally running for candidate: Nazareth Martin , secretary of Podemos Logroño , would be a counselor. .. and nothing less than Francisco Garrido's couple.
Garrido's long tug of war with Raquel Romero lived a new chapter. Garrido was the leader of Podemos in La Rioja last March when, 'dedazo' through, because "there has been no time to make primary", the purple national leadership appointed Romero candidate, relegating Garrido to number 2 organic.
From Berlin, with Irene Montero, to Logroño
Who was it and where had Raquel Romero come from? Born in 1982, graduated in Journalism from the University of the Basque Country and after passing through the Rioja edition of 'El Correo', Romero returned to Spain after 10 years living off-work in Berlin ("customer service, logistics and online writing" according to your resume) In the German distance he had come into contact with Podemos, participating in Podemos Exterior, in the first foreign forum of the party in 2015, and even coinciding with Irene Montero in Berlin in 2017.
From there, in a flash, to lead Podemos in La Rioja , and almost to prevent the first non-popular Executive in 24 years: last June, she was the one who most vehemently defended the petition to the PSOE of three councils and a vice-presidency in exchange for a Only seat for most of the left block. An excessive request for the Socialists, and even for Pablo Iglesias himself, who came to invite the Rioja leadership to lower his expectations by declaring that "one cannot ask for more than the votes give him."
Already in the most earthly strategy of asking for a single counseling, Romero found on Wednesday that the Technical Team of Podemos in La Rioja (a kind of manager before the reality that they never became primary) appointed Nazareth Martin, future partner, as a future advisor at the time of Kiko Garrido . Criticism from the Moreno sector did not wait for the cry of "nepotism."
Frantic hours
Martin was not slow to step aside, without enduring the pressure, and resigned on Wednesday claiming family problems, and the so-called Technical Team called a new meeting just before the inauguration of Andreu , last Thursday morning, to Appoint new candidate. Romero followed her own, running before the media - "the decision is up to Concha Andreu and she will do what she deems appropriate" - and exerting her pressure through her paintings, many of them from Castilla La Mancha .
The purple address in Rioja brandished the regional statutes against its only act of deputy in the regional Chamber : according to those, it is forbidden to accumulate parliamentary office and responsibility in the Executive. The Technical Team elected Amalia Revuelta to be appointed as an advisor by Andreu, but this, in an unforeseen turn, divided even more We can in the region: it would not be Revuelta its adviser, but Romero , announced the new regional president to her inauguration . Andreu was accused of attacking them from the purple ranks. The PSOE responds: who has the minutes and guarantees the majority, and therefore stability, is Romero. Who would they have to negotiate with if not?
Romero, Participation Counselor
The wound continues to bleed in the early hours of this Friday, already following the inauguration of Romero as Minister of Citizen Participation, Cooperation and Human Rights . On Thursday afternoon, conflicting communiqués reached the media from two different senders: from In La Rioja Podemos , the Romero faction, the election of Amalia Revuelta was considered irregular due to the alleged null summons of the Technical Team. From Podemos La Rioja another note was sent with the word "official" written in capital letters, ensuring that the formation has only two official emails and that everything that did not come from there was apocryphal.
These last sources slipped that, if Romero continued grouping the deputy and poltrona counsel act, it could happen that she herself asks the regional government from the seat and answers her own question from the rostrum, as if the same player threw the corner and top it off, in Kafkiano football simile. Kafka , in any case, seems to have been flying for days since we can La Rioja.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
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