Madrid Assembly - Leadership

Leadership

The Madrid Assembly's Leadership resides in the Bureau of the Assembly made out of a President (Speaker), three Vice Presidents who chair debate when the President is absent, and three Secretaries, elected in the first session of each newly elected Assembly. The Bureau is tasked with managing the Assembly schedule and interpreting its rules of order, even with the power to expel disrupting members from the sessions. Currently all parties are represented in the Bureau, which as of 2009 is dominated by the ruling People's Party.

There is also a second, consultative body, the Spokespersons' Council (Spanish: Junta de Portavoces), which is made up of the leaders and spokespersons from each parliamentary group in the Assembly and has the right to be "heard" before the Bureau takes some decisions such as scheduling debates and votes. In the Spanish system, however, ruling parties usually do not hold a tight grip over the Parliament's schedule, nor do they use it to turn down the opposition proposals without debate: they are just voted down in committee or by the full house after the shortest debate allowed by the rules of order. Thus, while control of the Bureau and the Spokespersons' Council is definitely important, it is not a critical matter as it sometimes becomes in other systems.