Valencia deputy removed from assembly over protest t-shirt

A Valencia deputy was expelled from the regional parliament on Wednesday for sporting a t-shirt in protest against corruption.

Mònica Oltra of the Grupo Compromís opposition party, whose habit of wearing self-printed messages against political corruption has gained popularity in the assembly, was ordered by the Popular Party (PP) speaker Juan Cotino to leave for refusing to remove the t-shirt, which read "We're not short of money; we've got too many crooks."

The three opposition groups, Compromís, the Socialists and Esquerra Unida (EUPV), walked out en masse in protest at the decision, which came at the very end of the session as a motion to rebuke former regional premier Francisco Camps over the conditions of a contract he signed to host a Formula 1 Grand Prix in Valencia. Oltra had been wearing the shirt all morning. Camps was recently cleared of a corruption charge connected to the Gürtel scandal engulfing the PP.

The motion against Camps was left unresolved as Cotino noted there were no EUPV deputies left in the chamber to defend it. Camps has not attended the assembly for seven months.