The last word will be Pedro Sánchez, as always. But in Moncloa and in the leadership of the PSOE they do not contemplate, at least for now, that the planned remodeling of the Government goes beyond replacing the ministers Reyes Maroto and Carolina Darias, who will jump into the electoral arena of the municipal elections in May 2023.
It would therefore be two specific relays, rather than a full-fledged government crisis. And that Sánchez is not expected to attack immediately, since in Moncloa they point out that the remodeling will not take place until shortly before the electoral campaign begins. Although regarding the exact date and scope of the changes, they use the same prevention as always: "Only the president knows that."
There is one circumstance, however, that members of the Executive allege to consider that Sánchez will only face the replacements of Maroto and Darias, without addressing a broader remodeling of the Council of Ministers. The point is that Spain will assume the rotating presidency of the European Union on July 1, barely a month after the municipal elections on May 28 are held. And it does not seem appropriate that many ministers are newly landed, when they will have to host their counterparts from the community club in the meetings that will be held during the European semester.
This Monday the primary process begins to designate the PSOE candidates in many large capitals. And the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, already starred yesterday in an act in which she kicked off her career to run for mayor of the city where she was born in 1965, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria.
“I want to start a very beautiful project. If I am anything, I owe it to this city and its people. It all started here and it all comes back here”, highlighted a very emotional Darias, in the presence of the Minister of Finance and Deputy Secretary General of the PSOE, María Jesús Montero; the Canarian president, Ángel Víctor Torres, or the mayor of Las Palmas, Augusto Hidalgo. The head of Health announced her candidacy for the primaries for mayor of Las Palmas. “To give the city everything the city has given me. Here I am!" she assured.
Darias jumped in January 2020 from the Ministry of Economy of the Government of the Canary Islands to the Ministry of Territorial Policy. And barely a year later, in January 2021, she replaced Salvador Illa as Minister of Health, in the middle of the third wave of the coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday she expressed her "infinite gratitude" to Sánchez, and her "great pride" for being part of a Government "that stops at nothing, always with determination, commitment and courage."
She thus became the second socialist minister to announce her leap into the electoral arena before the May municipal elections, after the head of Industry, Reyes Maroto, confirmed last Monday that she will be the PSOE candidate for mayor of Madrid.
Electoral expectations, however, are very different for both. Darias will choose to take over, without major complications, the socialist mayor who has governed Las Palmas since 2015, Augusto Hidalgo, who will now be the candidate to preside over the Cabildo de Gran Canaria. Maroto, on the other hand, has much more difficult prospects in the face of Mayor José Luis Martínez Almeida, of the Popular Party.
The PSOE obtained with Pepu Hernández in 2019 its worst historical record in Madrid, with 13.7% of the votes, sinking to fourth position, behind Más Madrid, PP and Cs. Four years ago, on the other hand, the PSOE remained the leading force in Las Palmas, with 31.7% of the vote.
