Belarra dismisses Enrique Santiago and appoints Lilith Verstrynge as Secretary of State for Agenda 203

From Enrique Santiago’s environment they point out to elDiario.es that “the dismissal occurs by decision of the minister, who asks Enrique that he is going to restructure the ministry team and that he will not have him” and direct Belarra for explanations about dismissal. The same sources “thank” the minister for “the trust placed in her”.

Enrique Santiago himself has explained it in a Twitter thread.

Santiago, who has recently been re-elected general secretary of the PCEis one of the people closest to the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who assumed the leadership of United We Can after the departure of Pablo Iglesias in March 2021. Until then, the communist leader had developed in Congress a deaf work of underground negotiation with the parliamentary groups that support the coalition government.

The dismissed Secretary of State is one of the supporters of the Sumar platform led by Yolanda Díaz and with which he wants to put together an electoral project with which to present himself as a candidate for the Presidency of the Government in the elections scheduled for the end of 2023. The launch de Sumar and the strategy defined by Díaz has caused significant friction with Podemos, which views with suspicion the dilution of the parties in the process launched by the vice president. The dismissal occurs with Díaz on an official trip to the US.

The problems moved this spring to the composition of the electoral lists in Andalusia. Only in the last breath of the deadline to present the candidacies was an agreement reached, but the wounds caused by the tough negotiations have weighed down relations between Podemos and IU, the main forces in the political space. And, specifically, between Podemos and the PCE, a fundamental force in IU, even more so in Andalusia. Just before the elections, with the negotiation already concluded, the Minister of Equality, Irene Montero, dismissed her Chief of Staff, Amanda Meyer, a prominent leader of the PCA.

The resignation of Iglesias in March 2021 led to changes in the Ministry of Social Rights. Ione Belarra, who was the Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda of the then Vice President, assumed the role at the head of the department, in addition to the General Secretariat of Podemos. Enrique Santiago took over the vacancy.

After the fiasco of the Madrid elections in May of that year, Iglesias abandoned politics definitively. The bases of Podemos raised Belarra to the General Secretariat, who placed Lilith Verstrynge as Secretary of Organization of the party.

Now, Santiago will recover his parliamentary job and Verstrynge will assume the Secretary of State with the aim of “reinforcing the feminist and ecological approach of the Sustainable Development Goals and the international profile” of the ministry, according to sources from the Belarra department.

Verstrynge studied in France, where in addition to a degree in International Relations from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, where she also graduated in European Studies and International Relations. In addition, she has a master’s degree in International Relations from the same university, based in Paris.

It was in the French capital where the birth of Podemos took him in 2014. There he joined the movement and, before coming to Spain, he worked for the parliamentary group in Brussels.

The same sources of Social Rights thank Santiago for the “excellent work at the head of the Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda” and point out that now “his role in Congress will be key in the face of the “many laws” that are very important for the Government pending processed in the remainder of the legislature.

This same thesis is endorsed from Enrique Santiago’s environment, from which they defend “his work of cohesion and construction of agreements and consensus within the political space and with the government and legislature partners.” And they conclude that “from now on he will focus on giving impetus to legislative work, from his seat and the deputy spokesperson” in Congress “to help fulfill the maximum of the contents of the government agreement.” Santiago will focus “especially on the work for the repeal of the gag law”.

But, in addition, it will have another objective: “The articulation of the next electoral cycle, which requires that the political space in which the PCE and IU participate is as broad as possible.” That space is Add. Santiago himself has explained it in a thread on his Twitter account.