Paradox "postcasadist" in Galicia. The most relevant position of the PPdeG supporter in his day of Pablo Casado, the provincial president from A Coruña, Diego Calvo Pouso, has achieved his goal of joining the Xunta, after six years in the waiting room, thanks precisely to the fall of his old reference , from which he distanced himself a little before his defenestration, in those February days of fury and betrayal.
Calvo will be second vice president, with the areas of Presidency and Justice that he inherits from the now president of the Xunta Alfonso Rueda. It constitutes the only novelty, together with the promotion to first vice president and coordinator of the economic area of Francisco Conde, of the Galician Government who took office this morning. Continuity with the Alberto Núñez Feijóo era is practically complete.
However, the factual reality, the one that has worked in Galicia for the last thirteen years, is different from that of the decree signed yesterday by Rueda and published today by the Official Gazette of Galicia, DOG, with only minor adjustments regarding the composition of the Executive . And it is that in reality Feijóo has taken his true “government” to Madrid, his praetorian guard of faithful advisers, with more influence than that of the vast majority of the conselleiros. They were the fruit of his hyper-presidential style and his taste for controlling everything, which he already put into practice as number two of the Ministry of Health in the 90s.
There he coincided precisely with the head of this circle, Mar Sánchez Sierra, now director of Image and Projection of the PP. In the Xunta Sánchez he came to accumulate more power, no matter how vicar he was, than Rueda himself. He is the only person who has accompanied Feijóo throughout his political career, which, in practice, regardless of his position, has made her his number two. The journalists Marta Varela, Feijóo's chief of staff on Génova Street, and Marcos Román, together with the jurist Álvaro Perez, are other advisers who move from Galicia to Madrid, as well as the party's press officer in Galicia until now, Luis de la Matta, who has become so in Spain.
So the real vacancies that Rueda has are in the area of communication, starting with the chief strategist himself, Feijóo, trained in the 1990s by the former regional minister and ex-minister José Manuel Romay, who was a disciple of Franco's most genuine information minister, Manuel Fraga. This was later, between 2003 and 2005, direct boss of Feijóo in the Xunta. In what is the structure of the Government, the entry of Diego Calvo from Ferrol was sung, already announced by Rueda from Pontevedra in his internal campaign. He responds to the balance between the two strongest provincial organizations, even after some Calvo Pouso succession threat.
This economist born in San Sadurniño in 1975 and former president of New Generations of Galicia, entered the Galician Parliament for the first time in 2003. He presided over the A Coruña Provincial Council for four years and since 2016 he was vice president of the Galician Legislative Chamber, waiting of an entrance in the Xunta that with Feijóo did not take place. In recent years, he was not helped much by having been the first member of the Galician leadership of the party to support Pablo Casado, whose team he was part of as territorial secretary.
When, staggering in its suicidal pulse with the Madrilenian president Díaz Ayuso, the Casadismo tried to unleash a wave of support on Twitter, on February 17 Calvo was the only Galician provincial president who joined, although, unlike what was usual in that campaign, without a photo of the leader or with the leader, only with text. It was a subtle gesture of beginning to mark from a distance. And, like so many other PP leaders throughout Spain, he took a short time to turn around. On February 22, again on the social network, he was already asking for "urgent changes" and spreading a manifesto demanding an extraordinary congress. Calvo immediately aligned himself with the candidacy of Feijóo, for whom he was already one of his mainstays in the PPdeG during the stage in the opposition in Galicia, between 2005 and 2009. He is now president of the National Electoral Committee.
Apart from some adjustment of powers, the other change in the Xunta that today took the traditional photo in the Raxoi manor consists of the promotion to first vice president of the hitherto second vice president and Minister of Economy and Industry, Francisco Conde, whom it is now granted coordination powers over the entire economic area. It must be taken into account that Feijóo had already remodeled his Government in 2020, after the elections, and that the sudden death of a heart attack in his office in 2021 of the Minister of Finance, Valeriano Martínez, had forced him to carry out another replacement.
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