Ruiz-Mateos Group

Party of Labor and Employment—Ruiz-Mateos Group Partido del Trabajo y Empleo-Agrupación Ruiz-Mateos
Leader	José María Ruiz-Mateos
Secretary-General	Carmen Lovelle Alen
Founded	1989
Dissolved	1995
Headquarters	C/ Velázquez, 19 - 4. D, Madrid
Ideology	Populism
Politics of Spain Political parties Elections

The Party of Labor and Employment—Ruiz-Mateos Group (Spanish: Partido del Trabajo y Empleo-Agrupación Ruiz-Mateos), better known as Ruiz-Mateos Group (Spanish: Agrupación Ruiz-Mateos), was a Spanish political party founded by businessman José María Ruiz-Mateos following the expropriation of Rumasa holding company. It was enrolled in the register of political parties in the Ministry of the Interior on August 30, 1989.

The main leaders of this party were Ruiz-Mateos himself, Carlos Perrau of Pinninck (vicepresident) and Carmen Lovelle Alen (general secretary).^[1]

History

In February 1983 the government of Spain ordered the expropriation of Rumasa group of companies led by José María Ruiz-Mateos, for unpaid social security and accounting situation of bankrupty. Although Ruiz-Mateos was convicted for his management, the employer had a long legal battle with the Spanish State and the then Minister of Economy, Miguel Boyer, to reclaim companies and payment of fair compensation.

Ruiz-Mateos raised then to enter politics for the Rumasa case be tried in the Supreme Court. On March 21, 1986 created the Social Action party (Acción Social),^[2] publicly presented on May 7, 1987, with whom he attended the European Parliament elections of 1987. At that time he got 116,761 votes, not enough to win a seat.^[3]

Two years later, Ruiz-Mateos was presented to the European Parliament elections of 1989 under the "Ruiz-Mateos Group", an electoral list with a center-right populist discourse against the socialist government of Felipe González. A month before the election, the businessman had assaulted Miguel Boyer in the corridors of a courthouse, so did all his electoral campaign under a warrant of arrest. In the end, Ruiz-Mateos Group was the sixth most voted with 608,000 votes and 2 MEPs: Ruiz-Mateos himself and his son-in-law, Carlos Perreau de Pinninck. Thanks to that seat, Ruiz-Mateos won immunity and achieved its purpose, although the Supreme Court ruled in 1991 in favor of the Spanish government.

During his five years of MEP, Ruiz-Mateos was vice president of the European Democratic Alliance (EDA-RDE) and delegate for relations with Switzerland.^[4]

Following the success in Europe, the Ruiz-Mateos Group was registered as a political party on August 30, 1989 and presented to the elections to the Congress of Deputies. However, he got no seat nor obtained representation in the municipal elections of 1991 or the 1993 general election. In 1994 the party was outside the European Parliament, and in 1995 resigned to attend municipal elections, according to the candidate himself "to not subtract votes" from the People's Party.^[5] While there has not been present since then, the party is still entered in the register of political parties in the Ministry of Interior.

References