Ruiz-Mateos Group
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Party of Labor and Employment–Ruiz-Mateos Group
Partido del Trabajo y Empleo-Agrupación Ruiz-Mateos |
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| Leader | José María Ruiz-Mateos |
| Secretary-General | Carmen Lovelle Alen |
| Founded | 1989 |
| Dissolved | 1995 |
| Headquarters | C/ Velázquez, 19 - 4. D, Madrid |
| Ideology | Populism |
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 the Rumasa holding company. It was enrolled in the register of political parties with the Spanish Ministry of the Interior on August 30, 1989.
The leaders of the party were Ruiz-Mateos, Carlos Perrau of Pinninck (vice president) and Carmen Lovelle Alen (general secretary).
In February 1983, the government of Spain ordered the expropriation of the Rumasa group of companies led by José María Ruiz-Mateos, for unpaid social security taxes and accounting irregularities. Although Ruiz-Mateos was convicted of mismanagement of corporate finances, the employer had a long legal battle with the Spanish state and the then Minister of Economy, Miguel Boyer, to reclaim his companies and obtain compensation.
Ruiz-Mateos entered politics to get the Rumasa case tried before the Supreme Court. On March 21, 1986, he founded the Social Action party (Acción Social), publicly presented on May 7, 1987, as a candidate of which he ran for a seat in the European Parliament elections of 1987. He got only 116,761 votes, not enough to win a seat.
Two years later, Ruiz-Mateos was nominated to run in the European Parliament elections of 1989 as a candidate of the "Ruiz-Mateos Group", a political party with a center-right populist platform opposed to the socialist government of Felipe González. A month before the election, the businessman had assaulted Miguel Boyer in the corridors of a courthouse, and consequently conducted his entire electoral campaign under a warrant of arrest. In the final tally, Ruiz-Mateos Group placed sixth, accruing 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 judicial immunity and achieved his purpose of taking his case to the Supreme Court, although it ruled in 1991 in favor of the Spanish government.
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