The historic communist leader and former leader of the United Left called for Andalusia Antonio Romero died this Friday at the age of 69 in a hospital in Antequera (Málaga), sources from the IU management confirm to this newspaper. He had lived in his town, Humilladero, since he retired from the political front line after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease.
Romero led IU Andalucía between 1997 and 2000, a turbulent time for the Andalusian left (like almost all of them), but he continued to be a reference for the following leaders of his party until today. He came to politics from the countryside, because he was a day laborer – “agricultural worker”, said his official profile in Congress -, from unionism and the workers’ struggle.
He was a deputy in the lower house for Malaga in the first half of the 90s, when the communists harshly attacked the worn-out Government of Felipe González; He was a senator between 1986 and 1989; and deputy in the Andalusian Parliament in three very different legislatures.
The first saw the Andalusian self-government practically born, between 1982 and 1989; and the second stage was two consecutive terms between 2000 – when he was the headliner of IU to the Andalusians – and 2008. In 2023 he was part of Sumar’s electoral list in his town, and he was seen in the front row of some event campaign. Romero did not stop calling those who came after him to lead IU Andalucía, such as Toni Valero from Malaga, who now holds the position, or Antonio Maíllo, leader of the federal leadership.
His time at the head of IU Andalucía is the interlude between two very different leaders and ways of understanding the left. His predecessor was Luis Carlos Rejón, famous for the “clamp” he made with the PP of Javier Arenas to desperately try to make a dent in the absolute majority of the PSOE of Manuel Chaves; and his successor would be Diego Valderas, who would end up agreeing on the first coalition government between socialists and communists in Andalusia, between 2012 and 2015.
Rejón inherits the party from its founder, Julio Anguita, and in a time of deep crisis and fatigue of the socialist project, he achieves what, to date, are the best electoral results of IU Andalucía, in 1994: more than 19% of the votes. votes and 20 deputies in Parliament. All that political capital collapsed in that short legislature – known as that of the PP-IU clamp – from which Chaves’ PSOE was resurrected with a renewed absolute majority.
IU was punished by its own, relegated to 3.9% of votes and seven fewer parliamentarians. Antonio Romero is the one who takes the reins of the coalition when Rejón resigns, and after many of the parties that made up IU (and many independent leaders) slammed the door on their way out. He lived in a time very similar, in emotional terms, to the current one.
The Malaga leader soon wiped the slate clean with the strategy of winking at the PP, he ignored Anguita’s theory of “the two shores”, and sought a rapprochement with the PSOE, offering IU as a leftist ally against the alternative of the Andalusian Party (PA), which the socialists would end up embracing. “Your knuckles are going to break from knocking on our doors so much,” Chaves even told Romero during the electoral debate televised by Canal Sur in 2000.
That strategy also provoked a heated internal debate on the left, especially within the PCA, which has always been and is the driving force of IU. The coalition led by Romero falls to 8% of votes and is left with six deputies, its worst result until then. Antonio Maíllo would surpass him at the lowest point in the Andalusian elections of 2015 – with five deputies, the minimum to have a parliamentary group -, with the emergence of Podemos on the scene and given the strength that Susana Díaz had then.
Antonio Romero had to lead a broken and disheartened IU, with an internal exodus that bled the organization of significant parties and leaders. No one challenged him for leadership then because no one else dared to take the reins of a coalition that knew it was on the verge of a journey through the desert.
He defended a left-wing proposal that was more dialogic and moderate, less moralistic and haughty, friendlier to other formations in the progressive space and more self-critical. “We have made the mistake of thinking that we were in possession of the entire truth and that is never possible,” he told his people at the doors of a regional assembly, asking them “not to renounce utopias,” but being able to present himself as an “effective and publicly managed party.”
The current regional coordinator of IU and deputy of Sumar in Congress, Tonio Valero, remembered his predecessor this Friday with these words: “Antonio Romero was a reference in the struggle of the Andalusian people from the conquest of democracy to the struggles of our days. He was an unwavering and generous man who rebelled against an unjust system. Of humble origins, he was always loyal to the working class. A communist dies from head to toe.”
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