López hires Antonio Hernando, his collaborator in Moncloa, as Secretary of State for Telecommunications

September 23 () –

The Minister for Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, has chosen Antonio Hernando, until now deputy director of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government and his closest collaborator during his time in La Moncloa, as the new Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructures, who will replace María González Veracruz in the position, according to sources familiar with the matter confirmed to Europa Press.

According to ‘El Diario’, Veracruz will also be appointed as the new Secretary of State for Digitalisation and Artificial Intelligence, a position held until now by Maite Ledo, as confirmed by the same sources.

These changes, which are expected to be approved tomorrow by the Council of Ministers, come after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, appointed Óscar López as the new Minister of Digital Transformation a few weeks ago, replacing José Luis Escrivá, who left his post to take up the position of Governor of the Bank of Spain.

López, who before his appointment as minister was Pedro Sánchez’s chief of staff, has thus recruited his ‘right-hand man’ in Moncloa, where they both ended up after a distancing from Pedro Sánchez, to his department.

Hernando, until now deputy director of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government, has been a member of the PSOE since 1995 and was spokesman for the Socialist Parliamentary Group with Pedro Sánchez already as secretary general of the party.

Between 2001 and 2004 he worked as an advisor to the Federal Executive Committee of the PSOE, first in the Secretariat of Social and Migration Policies and then in the Secretariat of Organization headed by José Blanco. At the XXXVII Federal Congress of the PSOE he joined the Federal Executive Committee of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as Secretary of Municipal Policy.

At the following PSOE Congress, he served as Secretary of Institutional Relations and Regional Policy in the Executive headed by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, and in 2004 he was elected deputy for Madrid, remaining in the Congress of Deputies until May 2019.

As a member of parliament, he was a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the 11-M Attacks. He also served as spokesperson for the socialist parliamentary group in the Committees on Immigration and Emigration, Interior and National Security.