Alberto Núñez Feijóo continues to set the pace in the Xunta a year after his departure. His signings for the 23-J lists have forced his successor at the head of the Galician Government, Alfonso Rueda, to carry out a remodeling of his cabinet. Feijóo takes two of his ministers of trust: the until now economic vice president, Francisco Conde, and the person in charge of Mar, Rosa Quintana, the only one along with Rueda who has continued to be part of the regional Executive since 2009, the year in which the now national president of the party made his debut at the command of the Xunta.
Conde, Feijóo’s economic adviser since before he was appointed councilor in 2012, he will headline Congress for Lugo, while Quintana will do so in second place for Ourense, the territory where the power of the Baltar family is faltering. The changes forced from Genoa extend to the Galician Parliament. The spokesman for the popular, Pedro Puy Fraga, nephew of the founder of the PP and another person who has always been very close to the candidate for the Presidency of the Government, will go from number three to Congress for Pontevedra. At the moment, it is not known who will replace him in the Chamber.
The departure of Conde and Quintana marks the entry into the Galician Government of two new faces. Elena Riva, until now vice-chancellor of the Ourense university campus, will be Minister for the Promotion of Employment and Equality, while Alfonso Villares, mayor of Cervo (Lugo) who revalidated the position on 28-M with an absolute majority, will take the reins of the fisheries policy. The signings of Feijóo in Galicia have led Rueda to promote some of the ministers that his predecessor left him. This is the case of the person in charge of the Environment, Ángeles Vázquez, who will be second vice president, the first woman to reach the second echelon of the Galician Executive.
The man who occupied the position that Vázquez will now have, Diego Calvo, rises to the first vice presidency. Calvo made his debut in the Xunta after the departure of Feijóo, by virtue of the internal pact that avoided a fight for the succession. The also provincial president of the PP in A Coruña threatened to dispute Rueda’s scepter, but finally settled for entering the Executive and will now be number two. The economic and industrial policy will fall to María Jesús Lorenzana, who until now was Minister of Employment and Equality.
The opposition interprets the changes in the Xunta as a demonstration of the weakness of Rueda, a politician who has always been in the shadow of Feijóo and who will be released at the polls in a year at the latest. The leader of the BNG, Ana Pontón, has criticized this Wednesday in the Galician Parliament the little political weight of the Galician president, who “they change the Government from Madrid”. The parliamentary spokesman of the PSdeG-PSOE, Luis Álvarez, has asked Rueda if it would not “be better” for the Galicians to advance the regional elections after this remodeling of his team forced by 23-J.
The electoral advance was, in fact, on the table of the president of the Xunta and the Galician PP on May 29, when Pedro Sánchez announced the general elections. Finally, Rueda decided not to make the regional appointment coincide with the state one, a strategy debated internally by the popular Galicians to try to take advantage of Feijóo’s electoral pull. The Galician president alleged that “the electoral urgency of the PSOE is not that of Galicia” and that he would not allow the community he presides to “catch instability.” He now has had to remodel his government by drawing up the PP lists.
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Farewell with criticism of Sánchez
This Wednesday’s plenary session in the Galician Parliament has allowed the councilor outgoing Francisco Conde to say goodbye after more than a decade at the helm of Galicia’s economic and industrial policy. He has done it with criticism of the central government. He has assured that the Galician community “did very badly with Pedro Sánchez”, has demanded a change in the state policy of European funds and has censured that the socialist president reserved “100%” of the management of the aid destined to the industry: “Let’s hope it’s a PP government that makes that rectification.” “It was an honor to work for and for Galicia during these 14 years”, he added.
For her part, the councilor Outgoing Rosa Quintana has been moved in her last plenary session as a member of the Xunta after 14 years with the portfolio of Mar. She has attributed her march to the capital of Spain on the Feijóo lists to an “enormous generosity of President Rueda”: “[Rueda] He wants Madrid to continue talking about fishing”. The number two of the PP for Ourense has promised to give “all the best” to the fishing sector from the position that the polls give her on 23-J.
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