The current members of the Minister council They posed this Tuesday for a family photo It will be the last. With the reelection of Pedro Sanchez as President of the Government within two days, in the first vote and by an absolute majority of the Congress of Deputies, closes a stage. Many of those who attended the meeting this morning will not sit again next week in the Moncloa palace. The PSOE has not yet revealed the new signings and the calls to repeat, beyond the fact that the continuity of the PSOE is taken for granted. Teresa Ribera, María Jesús Montero and Felix Bolaños. In Sumar, on the other hand, the pieces are already practically fitted together, both the portfolios and the chosen ones to direct them.
As EL PERIÓDICO has learned, the minority partner of the Executive will have five departments, the same ones I had United We Can. But the figure now has more significance. The coalition of Yolanda Diaz On July 23, he obtained a worse result than the one he achieved Pablo Iglesias in 2019, while the PSOE improved its brand. At the same time, Sánchez wants the number of departments, 22 currently, be lower in this legislature.
Equality will once again be led by the PSOE while Podemos is left in principle without ministries
However, in a sign of harmony and good will to face the new period, Sumar will maintain the quota. Five ministries: Work, Health, Culture, Social Rights and Youth and Children. The distribution of portfolios partly coincides with that of the previous legislature: the minority partner retains Labor and Social Rights. But in the section of the ministers the renewal will be deeper. In principle, only Díaz will remain. and there will not be no one from Podemos. Sources close to the second vice president, meanwhile, point out that the distribution is not completely closed, because it depends on the structure that Sánchez chooses and the number of Executive ministries that will be launched shortly. Díaz and the president plan meet after the investiture debate to finish outlining the portfolios.
Díaz will continue in Labor and continue as vice president. In Health, as EL PERIÓDICO advanced at the beginning of October, the call to direct the portfolio is Monica Garcia, the leader of the opposition to Isabel Diaz Ayuso in the Madrid Assembly. The leader of Más Madrid strongly supported Díaz during the launch of Sumar and is medical by profession, but your department will not have easy management. Health has most of the transferred powers to the communities, and after the regional elections on May 28, the PP governs in 11 of the 17, as well as in Ceuta and Melilla.
The common ones gain weight
Ernest Urtasun He is considered almost certain as the new head of Culture. MEP, spokesperson for Sumar and member of Catalunya en Comú, Urtasun already refused to be minister in 2019. With his appointment, the commons will gain political weight within the coalition, after Manuel Castells and Joan Subirats, both with a more technical profile, in Universities.
In Social Rights, a department now headed by Ione Belarra, general secretary of Podemos, the chosen one is Pablo Bustinduy, deputy from 2016 to 2019 and specialist in international politics. After a few years focused on research, Bustinduy returned to politics this summer, joining Sumar’s campaign team.
Except for a last-minute surprise, Podemos will not hold any ministry. Sánchez had been clear for a long time, not only as a result of the internal confrontation over the law of ‘only yes means yes’ and the reduction of sentences for sexual offenders, which the PSOE had to recover Equality, now led by Irene Montero. Díaz’s coalition will not manage matters of Living place, as intended after the general elections.
But it will have a new department: Youth to Childhood. Here it is not clear who will be the owner, but in principle it will be a leader of Izquierda Unida, with the MEP Sira Rego as main favorite.
Ribera, Montero and Bolaños
In the socialist wing, the cards are handled with greater secrecy. Several acting ministers explain that they do not know if they will repeat within the new coalition Government, in which the third vice president and Minister of Ecological Transition are confirmed, Teresa Ribera the head of the Treasury, María Jesús Montero, and the Minister of the Presidency, Felix Bolaños. The first is one of the great pillars of the Executive and has managed to have enormous international prominence, thanks to initiatives such as the so-called “Iberian exception”, the mechanism that limits gas prices to generate electricity in Spain and Portugal. Montero and Bolaños, for their part, have been, together with Santos Cerdán, Secretary of Organization of the PSOE, the main negotiators of Sánchez with the groups that will support him in the investiture vote this Thursday: Sumar, ERC, Junts, EH Bildu, the PNV, the BNG and the Canary Coalition.
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The repetition of Jose Manuel Albares The head of Foreign Affairs is also considered probable, given that Spain holds the position until the end of the year. rotating presidency of the EU. One of Sánchez’s main dilemmas lies in Nadia Calvino. The first vice president and Minister of Economy is also a candidate to preside over the European Investment Bank (EIB), but this position will not be decided until Ecofin of December 8, so the socialist leader has to choose between reappointing her to the Government and then replacing her if she is elected or directly appointing a substitute.
All those consulted anticipate that the next Executive will have a greater political weight, before a legislature that is expected to be even more tense than the previous one, with the PP calling for demonstrations against the amnesty of the ‘procés’ and protests, riots and graffiti by the extreme right at the PSOE headquarters. The mandate that now begins will also be more complicated for the Government due to the arithmetic in Congress of the Deputies. There is no longer a majority on the left and all initiatives must have Junts per Catalunya. The socialists, in this sense, anticipate that many fewer laws will be approved than in the previous legislature.