After getting just the majority he needed in parliament last week to form a government, Spain’s Prime Minister President Pedro Sánchez has been sworn into office along with his 22 cabinet members.
The new government has shaped into a more drastic reiteration of Sánchez’s last governmental monster, only with its deformations of liberal democracy more pronounced.
This is Sánchez’s third stint in the Spanish presidency. After the very short-lived government of 2018—which he formed taking advantage of the ousting of center-right Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy—Sánchez won snap elections a year later. Politically weak, Sánchez formed the first post-Franco coalition government. The Spanish media dubbed the amalgamation of his socialist party and the far-left Unidas Podemos in the executive branch supported in parliament by Catalan and Basque separatist parties “the Frankenstein government.” It also made history as the largest executive ever with no less than 22 cabinet members and their accompanying ministries.
For this government, Sánchez has maintained 22 ministries and most of the same ministers, reserving four cabinet posts for his political associates in Sumar, the latest iteration of the Spanish Communist Party. He has kept the four vice presidencies from his last executive—economy minister Nadia Calviño, employment minister Yolanda Díaz, environment minister Teresa Ribera, and tax minister María Jesús Montero, though other ministries have been slightly reconfigured and ministers shifted.
Jobs for his ‘fixer‘
Most notably, Sánchez has given several important jobs to one man, Félix Bolaños. Something of a ‘fixer’ for Sánchez, Bolaños was key in negotiating the support of separatists to form a new government. He has also been the prime minister’s liaison and envoy to Brussels over the question of amnesty for the organizers of the 2017 illegal Catalan independence referendum. In the last government, Bolaños held the ministry of the presidency and relations with parliament, a post charged with coordinating between the prime minister’s office and parliament. With this title, the country’s intelligence services also answer to him and he sets the agenda for cabinet business.
To this portfolio, Sánchez has added the Ministry of Justice. Bolaños then holds the keys to wield all three parts of government in one office.
Keeping the regions on side
Bolaños does lose the competency of ‘democratic memory,’ the issue of how the Franco regime is remembered in Spain and one which socialists have wasted no time in politicizing.
This competency is now in the hands of a Canary Islander, Ángel Víctor Torres. The former president of the islands is a new addition to the government with the dual post of Minister of Territorial Policy and Democratic Memory. With the question of Catalan and Basque nationalism intensifying, the socialist holds a significant post and Sánchez is hoping his origins far from Castille, the inner territorial heart of Spain, will make him more acceptable to regional governors.
He was also one of the socialist governors who, like the center-right Partido Popular, won the popular vote in the July election, but was outmaneuvered in parliament and couldn’t form a government.
Isabel Rodríguez, spokesperson for the cabinet in the last legislature, is taking over the Housing and Urban Agenda portfolio that was once part of the Ministry of Territorial Policy.
Student activist gets the boot
One of the ministries that had aroused the most expectation was ‘women’s rights,’ or the Ministry of Equality. It went without saying that the current minister, Irene Montero, would not remain in the government. In place of Montero, a communist who ran her ministry like a university activist club, Sánchez chose Ana Redondo García.
The new minister couldn’t be more different from the last. García has held various offices both within the party and in the regional government of Castilla y León for nearly twenty years. She also holds a Ph.D. in Law from the University of Valladolid and was a professor of Constitutional Law between 1990 and 2009. For Sánchez, just her image as a more mature woman and her curriculum vitae are a step in granting some respectability to the disgraced ministry.
Soccer diplomacy
Pilar Alegría maintains the Education and Vocational Training portfolio, but also gets sports and the role of cabinet spokesperson. Sports, normally part of the Ministry of Culture, is no minor position for this government as Spain is hosting the Soccer World Cup in 2030 together with Portugal and Morocco and preparations are already underway. Spain has also been hit by football scandals, from the unwanted kiss of a female soccer player by a male football federation official to alleged corruption among referees and coaches in the Spanish Football Federation.
Communists in charge of health and childhood
The other most notable change is the creation of the Ministry of Childhood and Youth, headed by the communist Sira Rego. Rego, whose Palestinian father lives on the West Bank, publicly opined on October 7th that Palestinians have “the right to resist after decades of occupation” and referred to Israel’s response to Hamas’ terror attack as “genocide.” The NGO Fighting Online Antisemitism has already called for Sánchez to oust Rego “due to her support for terrorism.”
Sumar politician Mónica Gárcia is taking over the ministry of health. In this move, Gárcia, a doctor and mother, jumps from the regional parliament of Madrid where she fiercely opposed center-right regional president Isabel Diaz Ayuso to a role where she is expected to push for the legalization of marijuana and expanded coverage of contraception in the health system.
The opposition fights on
The opposition to Sánchez is strong. Protests continue nightly outside the headquarters of the socialist party, and the Partido Popular has promised to organize another large rally against the amnesty law in December.
Voices have also arisen from the judiciary, denouncing the appointment of Bolaños as liaison for all three branches of government.
Sources within the judiciary told Libertad Digital that it is
an aberration that the Minister of the Presidency also brings together the Justice portfolio. It is a declaration of war on the Judiciary and a declaration of intentions. In this way, Bolaños will be Minister of the Presidency (Executive Branch), the relationship with parliament (Legislative Branch) and Justice (Judicial Branch). The three powers of the State merged into a single person. A new era of absolute transformation begins, a new regime. It is also an indication of how important it is for Sánchez to control justice.
Indeed, similar to his last government, by adding new ministries to make room for the coalition government and divvying up competencies normally held by one ministry into several, Sánchez has constructed another made-to-fit, bespoke government to accomplish his principal purpose—remaining in power. Its superficial weakness as a Frankenstein coalition is also its strength. The individual parts depend on one another to get what they want. If one falls, they all fall. No one will be the part to break the cohesion, even if that cohesion threatens to implode Spanish society.
