Pedro Sanchez On Monday he defined his new Executive as «a Government with a high political profile for a legislature with a high political profile, with leaders capable of managing, but also of reaching agreements and explaining them. Apart from serving as a justification for the discretionary decisions of the President of the Government, his words do not seem to adjust to the reality of his actions: the political weight of his components does not seem neither greater nor less than that of the previous Cabinet. And in the recomposition of skills of the faces that repeat there have not been notable changes either, beyond recognition of the role of Félix Bolaños. Although Sánchez does not formally reserve one of the vice-presidencies for him, in practice the accumulation of springs left in your hands (Justice, with the processing and execution of the amnesty on the horizon, Presidency and Relations with the Cortes) make him something more than a minister.
It is also striking the loss of presence of the PSC At the same time, the investiture pacts have given Junts and ERC a role that they lost at the polls. While waiting to know how the second levels of each department are defined and what happens in a more than possible future remodeling, the reduction of the institutional presence of Catalan socialism may be in line with the need to “reach agreements” but in the current terms would not precisely reinforce the political role of the new Government in what was the great breadbasket of socialist votes in the last elections.
Speaking of relative weights, it doesn’t seem clear the distribution of responsibilities between 22 ministries, some of them with a portfolio of no little relevance but not excessive competence burden, such as Childhood and Youth or Digital Transformation. Although this department may have an ad personam explanation, that of keeping a minister who has opposed the pension reform as José Luis Escrivá in a situation of availability before the possible European horizons that open to the vice presidents Nadia Calviño or Teresa Ribera.
After the announcement of the composition of the new cabinet, yesterday came the time for the formal acts of swearing in, inauguration and handover of ministerial portfolios. Transfer that had little of pure formality and yes, quite a bit of ill will in the case of the two Podemos ministers, Irene Montero and Ione Belarra. The replacement at the head of the Ministry of Equality had a relevant element, the contrast between Irene Montero’s farewell speech and the tone of her successor, Ana Redondo, with a spirit oriented towards the difficult task of mending the tears in the field of feminism. . But Montero got the attention with her “today Sánchez is throwing us out of this Government”, a complaint that is somewhat imprecise. (Vice President Yolanda Díaz was no less interested in his departure) and a tone that does not match that of the new policy that sought not to remain in power forever. The personal reproaches in the Sumar-Vamos universe would be nothing more than one more episode of the congenital self-destructive impulses of a left that was extraparliamentary and seems to long to be so again if they did not entail a factor of obvious instability for the tight majority that has allowed the investiture. by Pedro Sánchez. Among the “four-year legislature” that he promises and the present and future divisions that are exhibited or glimpsed, there is also a notable distance between what is proclaimed on a lectern and what happens in reality.