There are dozens of names. Many unknown, although there are not a few who hold, or have held, high positions of responsibility. There are advisors from regional governments, general directors, mayors, former secretaries of state, deputies, senators, and a long etcetera. Almost all of them with a public salary, because their new responsibilities in the organization chart of the PP are not paid. Last Monday, the National Executive Committee of the party led by Alberto Núñez Feijóo approved the latest additions that complete the staff of the organization and whose job is not to make decisions or direct teams, but to provide documentation or information from the area that corresponds to them when the secretaries and deputy secretaries request it.
The deputy minister that Ayuso put in charge of the COVID leaves the Community of Madrid to occupy a position in the Feijóo PP
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They are charges that on other occasions go unnoticed, but which brings together some well-known names. Two of them have been very mediatic in recent years. One is Elena Collado, the one who was responsible for buying the masks from Medina and Luceño that became a millionaire scam for the Madrid City Council. Feijóo has placed her in charge of Public Efficiency. The other, Antonio Zapatero. The strong man of Isabel Díaz Ayuso in the fight against Covid and who has had to choose between continuing as head of the Deputy Ministry of Health or making the leap to national politics.
The latter has been his choice, yes, imposed. As confirmed by regional government sources, Zapatero’s appointment was agreed upon by Ayuso and Feijóo along with other senior regional officials. But, unlike these, it was considered that his position in the regional government was incompatible with directing the area of Health Care and Public Health within the Vice-Secretariat for Social Policies led by Carmen Navarro. So he “voluntarily ceased.”
This is not the case of another of those incorporated, Alejo Miranda de Larra, who says of himself that he is “proud” of having “raised the Zendal in 100 days”. In reality, he was the general director of Health Infrastructures during the pandemic. He is now Investments and Local Development. And although his position within the organization chart of the PP will be that of Secretary of Analysis and Strategic Planning, dependent on the general coordinator and Number Three of the match, Elías Bendodo, has not had to choose between serving Ayuso or Feijóo.
In the “third level” of the organization chart of the PP there will be a majority presence of people from the Madrid PP, approximately a third of the total of this batch of appointments, which contrasts with its little presence in higher levels of the party, where Feijóo has chosen to distribute the weight mainly between Galicia and Andalusia.
In addition to Zapatero, Collado or Miranda, another name of the Madrid PP that stands out is that of the MEP Isabel Benjumea at the head of European Funds. Benjumea has received quite a few scoldings from the European Commission over the years in Brussels. The last one, on account of the request of her head of ranks to lower the VAT. The Commissioner for the Economy, Paolo Gentiloni, responded that “it may be more useful to give support to families and companies.” Or José Enrique Núñez Guijarro, who was part of the Government of Ana Botella in the Madrid City Council that sold thousands of public flats at a bargain price to a vulture fund. He was convicted, along with the rest, and later acquitted. Or María Delgado, advisor to a rising figure in the team of José Luis Martínez Almeida and in the organization chart of the PP de Ayuso, the municipal spokesperson, Inmaculada Sanz. Or Silvia Valmaña, general director of Childhood, Family and Promotion of Fertility who will be responsible for Equality. None have been pushed to choose between positions.
Edurne Uriarte returns to the organization chart, also from Madrid, although without the stripes that Pablo Casado gave her. In the same situation is the Valencian Belén Hoyo, who was president of the powerful Electoral Committee with the previous leadership and one of the first defections in the Casado team when her situation was almost unsustainable. She now assumes the responsibility of Affiliations.
Paula Gómez-Angulo also enters, adviser to the Minister of Health who was once the General Director of Women and in 2021, for a week, of Humanization and Patient Care. Despite an outstanding public career of her, in the Government team of the municipality of Las Rozas or in the Assembly of Madrid, there is little trace of her on the Internet. She had positions in the NGO linked to the PP Women in Equality, from which the new head of Party Participation, Carmen Díaz de Bustamante, comes out.
Landing of councilors
After Madrid, Galicia is the second community that contributes the most new positions, a total of nine. Among them, several first-level members of the Government chaired by Alfonso Rueda after Feijóo himself left. For example, the First Vice President and Minister of Economy, Industry and Innovation, Francisco Conde, closely linked to the Francisco de Vitoria or CEU-San Pablo private universities; the Regional Minister for Rural Affairs, José González; that of the Sea, Rosa Quintana; that of Health, Julio García Comesaña; or that of Infrastructures and Mobility, Ethel Vázquez.
But perhaps one of the names that can sound the most is that of Marta Fernández Currás, who was Secretary of State for Budgets and Expenditures between 2011 and 2016. Reporting to the Ministry of Finance, she was directly responsible for the billionaire cuts launched by the Government of Mariano Rajoy.
Before, Fernández Currás was Minister of Finance in the first Executive of Feijóo in Galicia. Although she was there for a little over two and a half years, she gave her time to pilot the merger of the Galician savings banks, which once reorganized ended up in the hands of Venezuelan investors as a bank. The National Court investigates that merger, which was promoted knowing that the entities were bankrupt. Contrary to the Parliament of Galicia, unable to investigate the blockade of the Xunta de Feijóo, which she was sentenced for it.
Sagrario Pérez is also from Galicia, who will be in charge of the Environment and who was general director of the Basic Portfolio of Services of the National Health and Pharmacy System with Ana Mato as minister. It was when the pharmaceutical copayment was introduced as part of Rajoy’s social cuts.
There is a third very relevant reincorporation of the Government of who has been pointed out by Feijóo himself as his political reference. It is Tomás Burgos, who was Secretary of State for Social Security. A firm defender of the privatization of pensions, critical of the indexing of benefits to the CPI and that introduced the sustainability factor that raised pensioners against the Rajoy Executive. He was even splashed in some scandal of trips paid on behalf of the public treasury.
Pilar Más Rodríguez, general director of Macroeconomic Analysis and International Economy and Executive Advisor at the General Secretariat of the Treasury and Financial Policy with Luis de Guindos at the head of Economy, also emerges from the economic area of the Rajoy Government. Nadia Calviño kept her from 2018 to 2020 in her position, eminently technical, and then went to BBVA.
Another incorporation of the Xunta is that of the delegate of the Galician Government in Argentina, Alejando López Dobarro, as representative of the PP in Latin America. A new collusion of interests between the public function abroad and that of the party, as has happened with the General Secretary of Emigration of the Xunta since 2012, Antonio Rodríguez Miranda, responsible in the Galician PP for Foreign Action of the Galician PP, first, and of the PP now.
