Alberto Casero: the deputy who was left "destroyed" by his erroneous vote on labor reform

BarcelonaHis departure from active politics was not agreed upon, but rather forced. Alberto Casero (Trujillo, 1978), former PP deputy, left his seat in Congress on March 3, 2023, after being prosecuted for the crimes of prevarication and embezzlement for five contracts awarded in 2017 and 2018 when he was the mayor of the Extremaduran town where he was born. In exchange for not going to trial, he ended up accepting one year and nine months in prison, six years of disqualification, and an indemnity of 70,000 euros. This put an end to a long political career, in which his name will surely be remembered for a mistake: the vote in favor of the labor reform of the then second vice president and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, which allowed her to move forward with the rule in 2022. "I was devastated, crushed. I will always be the one who made the vote," he tells ARA.

Casero admits that that mistake has haunted him – he also made a mistake months later when he voted in favor of creating an investigation committee on Operation Catalonia in Congress – especially when looking for a job, but also in the media. He now works in legal consulting, after a lifetime in politics: he started in Noves Generacions (the youth wing of the PP); he continued as a councilor and mayor of Trujillo, he was a deputy in the Extremaduran Parliament; he served in the Senate and ended up in Congress. In between, he was also secretary of organization of Pablo Casado's leadership, meaning he was the number three in the party and the one who dealt with internal battles in the territory. He now says he has turned the page on his "traumatic" departure and is grateful not to be part of the current political scene, which he sees as too "tense".