The President of the Plenary, Borja Fanjul, has signed the resolution regulating the activity of Javier Ortega Smith as a non-attached councillor following his expulsion from Vox. He will be able to present one initiative every two plenaries and one every four commissions.
Javier Ortega Smith is now officially a non-attached councillor in the Madrid City Council, after the courts dismissed his precautionary measures against his expulsion from Vox. The President of the Plenary, Borja Fanjul, has signed a resolution detailing the rules that will govern his activity in the City Council for the remainder of the term.
This is not the first time a councillor has left their group in Cibeles. In the 2019-2023 legislature, four councillors from Ciudadanos —Ángel Niño, José Aniorte, Sofía Miranda, and Alberto Serrano— resigned from the party and became non-attached amidst a dispute with then Deputy Mayor Begoña Villacís. However, Ortega Smith will be the first to have specific instructions applied to his new status, as those councillors did so with the 2023 elections just around the corner.
Limited initiatives in the Plenary
According to the resolution, Ortega will be able to present one initiative every two ordinary sessions of the Plenary, compared to the six that each municipal group can present. In the area government commissions, the limit will be one initiative every four sessions. These figures have been calculated using a proportionality criterion: the Plenary has 57 councillors, and each group can present up to six initiatives per plenary.
The non-attached councillor will be able to formulate questions and interpellations, but not appearances, as the Organic Regulation of the Plenary (ROP) reserves them for political groups or one-fifth of the councillors. Regarding speaking times, the Board of Spokespersons will set them in each case, without exceeding the time allocated to a group or being less than one minute.
For the residents of Madrid, this means that Ortega Smith will have less oversight capacity than when he was part of Vox. His questions and motions will be less frequent, although he will be able to participate in the debates that arise. The City Council has sought to prevent a single councillor from blocking the activity of the Plenary with a flood of initiatives.
Weighted voting in commissions
Ortega will be able to request to join as a full member in the commissions of the Plenary that he chooses, with no possibility of being replaced in case of absence. In those commissions, the voting system will be weighted to ensure that the representativeness of the groups remains intact, as stipulated by the Local Administration Law of the Community of Madrid.
In the commissions, the limit of initiatives will be one every four ordinary sessions, and only one of every twelve can be an appearance. The speaking times will be adjusted according to what the Board of Spokespersons or the commission presidency decides, with the same minimum of one minute.
Ortega's vote in the Plenary does not present any special characteristics: it counts the same as any other councillor's. That is, his individual vote carries the same weight as that of a councillor integrated into a group, but as he does not belong to any, he cannot align his vote with party discipline. This could give him some freedom in close votes, although his initiative capacity is limited.
A previous orange case with differences
The four former Ciudadanos councillors who became non-attached in 2021 did so in a context of internal crisis and with municipal elections less than two years away. They were not subjected to such detailed regulation as Ortega is now, because the end of the legislature was near and municipal activity slowed down. In contrast, the current 2023-2027 term still has three years ahead, which has forced the General Secretariat to develop a specific regime.
Of those four councillors, Ángel Niño ended up joining the PP and is now a councillor in the City Council. The other three left municipal politics after the 2023 elections. Ortega Smith, for his part, has announced that he will appeal his expulsion from Vox through the judicial route, but in the meantime, he must comply with the rules for non-attached councillors.
For the citizen, the main practical consequence is that Ortega Smith will have less institutional voice than before. His initiatives will be more spaced out and he will not be able to present appearances of senior officials by himself. However, he retains the right to participate in debates and to vote in all sessions. The City Council has already communicated the resolution to all municipal groups and to the Board of Spokespersons, which will need to specify the speaking times in the coming weeks.
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