This Saturday, June 10, marks the 20th anniversary of the darkest chapter of Madrid politics in democracy, the so-called tamayazo, the betrayal of two elected deputies, Eduardo Tamayo and MarÃa Teresa Sáez, to the socialist Rafael Simancas in what was to be his inauguration , which led to the repetition of elections that Esperanza Aguirre won by an absolute majority.
Rivers of ink have flowed over those events, also collected in books, from the last published -No a todo, a novel by Guillermo Zapata-, to those written by Simancas himself or the journalist Felipe Serrano, but it remains unclear whether the desertion It was due to political reasons or there were considerations involved.
For Simancas, currently Secretary of State for Relations with the Courts and Constitutional Affairs, “there are no political reasons” that justify the “indignity” incurred by Tamayo and Sáez, and he trusts that the “crap” behind it will come out to the light.
In the elections of May 25, 2003, the PP obtained 55 deputies compared to the 56 that PSOE (47) and IU (9) obtained together, and these two parties began negotiations for a possible coalition government.
However, the voluntary defection of Tamayo and MarÃa Teresa Sáez on the same day of the constitutive session of the Madrid Assembly led to an unprecedented institutional crisis.
The plan left the Presidency of the Assembly to the popular Concepción Dancausa, who received the support of the 56 seats in her group, making the union of PSOE and IU votes unsuccessful (54). Months later the elections were repeated and Esperanza Aguirre came to power.
The case marked a before and after in the history of the Madrid socialists, who have never managed to govern in the Community of Madrid.
On September 18, 2018, in a face-to-face between Simancas and former Prime Minister José MarÃa Aznar, in the congressional investigation commission into the alleged illegal financing of the PP, the socialist deputy accused him of giving instructions to the Minister of Justice , the State Attorney General and the Government delegate to “avoid any investigation into the theft of that government.”
“I am not interested in talking about anything that is not my current life. It is a settled issue for me and I have nothing to say about it,” Eduardo Tamayo, 64, told EFE by telephone.
In his opinion, “there are so many important things in Spain today that we should dedicate ourselves to the present.”
After being expelled from the Socialist Party of Madrid, Tamayo founded the New Socialism formation to attend the repetition of the regional elections of 2003, in which he barely garnered 6,000 votes, and continued in the political arena until 2008.
His real estate business took him to Equatorial Guinea. There he had problems with the law and left the country, according to ‘eldiario.es’.
Little else is known since then. In November 2019, the Supreme Court rejected a complaint by Tamayo against Simancas, considering that the statements made by the socialist leader about the ‘tamayazo’ are protected by freedom of expression.
Tamayo accused Simancas of making “seriously slanderous and insulting statements” against him in public and in his book ‘Allegation Against Resignation. Fifteen years of Madrid politics that explain the tamayazo’.
In his order, the Supreme Court recalls that Simancas, according to his statements, continues to affirm that, “although nothing could be proven”, the then regional deputies “were bought”.
Tamayo’s classmate, MarÃa Teresa Sáez, 74 years old and already retired, ran with Nuevo Socialismo in the second elections of 2003 but, after her electoral failure, she returned to anonymity, continuing to live on the same floor in the Usera district and she returned to her administrative position at the 12 de Octubre hospital.
José Luis Balbás, head of the internal socialist current Renovadores por la Base who helped elevate José Luis RodrÃguez Zapatero to the head of the PSOE General Secretariat, was expelled from the party for his “obvious complicity” with Tamayo and Sáez.
The reason given by the two defectors for their desertion was the “pact” between PSOE and IU in the regional government and Simancas’s failure to comply with an alleged agreement with the socialist current led by Balbás.
Balbás, who has always denied his participation in the events, blamed Tamayo’s actions on his “confrontation” with the recently deceased Ruth Porta, ‘number 2’ of Simancas, due to the repeated complaints made by her husband, Enrique Mamblona, ​​against Tamayo. before the Ethics Commission of the PSOE, and for real estate businesses.
To write the book ‘El tamayazo, crónica de una traición’, the journalist Felipe Serrano could not speak with Tamayo, but he could speak with Sáez, whom he describes as a person “overtaken” by events and with a feeling of “having been used”. .
“It is difficult to imagine that there was not some consideration, although it has not been possible to demonstrate,” Serrano highlighted in statements to EFE.
In the book, Simancas reveals how RodrÃguez Zapatero got away from the matter when he arrived at La Moncloa.
“It is striking to see that neither the PP nor the PSOE, at least the national leaderships, have not been too interested in getting to the bottom of the issue,” concludes Serrano.
