The former senator Ruth Porta, deputy and historical councilor of the Madrid PSOE who was the right-hand man of Rafael Simancas in the legislature after which the “Tamayazo” prevented the Government of the socialists in the Community of Madrid, has died at the age of 66, as her colleagues have lamented today game.
The official account of PSOE of the Retiro districta group he presided over, informed this Sunday of the death of Porta, whom colleagues have remembered on Twitter such as Eduardo Madina, Elena Valenciano, Pilar Sánchez Acera, José Cepeda or Rafael Simancas.
“How much pain in your departure, Ruth. And how much gratitude for so much shared full life. my friend, companion“, the latter has written on social networks about the former senator, who joined the PSOE in 1977.
Porta was appointed deputy spokesperson for the socialist group in the Madrid Assembly after the elections of May 25, 2003in which he ranked number four in the candidacy headed by Simancas.
PSOE-IU coalition
In these elections, the PP obtained 55 deputies compared to the 56 who obtained the sum of PSOE (47) and IU (9). These two parties began negotiations for a possible government coalition, however, the voluntary desertion of two socialist elected deputies, Eduardo Tamayo and Maite Saez, during the constitutive session on June 10 of that year, of the Madrid Assembly led to an unprecedented institutional crisis.
The reason given by the two defectors was the “pact” between PSOE and IU in the regional government and Simancas’ breach of an alleged agreement with a minority socialist current led by José Luis Balbás.
Balbás blamed the actions of the defector Tamayo to his “confrontation” with Ruth Porta for the repeated complaints made by her husband, Enrique Benedicto Mamblona, against Tamayo before the Ethics Commission of the PSOE, and for alleged real estate business.
Before making the leap to the Assembly, Porta had been Socialist mayor in the Madrid City Council (1995-2003), spokesman of his Municipal Group in the Finance and Economy Commission, spokesperson in the Special Accounts Commission and member of the Regional Executive Commission of the PSM.
Member of the Madrid Assembly and Senator
Since 2003 she was a deputy in the Madrid Assembly and in 2007 she was appointed Senator representing the Community of Madrid and in 2008 general secretary of the socialist group in the Senate.
Ruth Porta left the institutional activity in 2015 assuring that the worst frustration it was that those responsible for the “Tamayazo” had not been sentenced. After that case, the popular Esperanza Aguirre was elected presidentto the Community of Madrid.
She herself recalled today the figure of the socialist: “It is with deep sadness that I learned the news of the death of Ruth Porta. We went opponents in difficult times, but we always respect each other”, said the former Madrid president.
Born in Palma de Mallorca on April 22, 1957, she graduated in Right from the Complutense University of Madrid in 1979 and was an auditor of Local Administration.
She was the daughter of the Mallorcan cardiologist Ramón Porta, a militant republicanand Ruth Cantoni, an Argentine of Italian origin who was aide to Argentine President Juan Domingo Perón. Her parents died within two months of each other in 1995, the year Ruth Porta first held public office.
