Óscar Puente (Valladolid, 1968), as Minister of Transport in the new Government of Pedro Sánchez, will be in charge of negotiating the complex transfer of the Rodalies network to the Generalitat during this legislature. The Valladolid native inherits part of the powers that the Catalan Raquel Sánchez had, who is leaving the Executive and whose ministry is divided into Transport on the one hand and Housing and Urban Agenda that Isabel Rodríguez will direct.

Puente became known to the general public in September when, as a socialist deputy, he was asked by Pedro Sánchez to respond to the president of the PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, in his failed investiture debate with a mordacity that surprised and outraged the populars. “Most of his activity has consisted of encouraging a rebellion in the PSOE and a new Tamayazo, this time in this chamber,” he blurted out in Congress. “Lose all hope of breaking this PSOE. To this PSOE that bothers you so much,” he warned the PP.

His choice for that debate was justified because after the local elections on May 28, Puente lost the mayoralty of Valladolid that he had held since 2015 thanks to a PP-Vox pact, having been the most voted candidate, the same situation in which Feijóo found himself. that he did not have enough support in Congress to be invested. “From winner to winner,” Puente sarcastically reminded Feijóo.

However, Óscar Puente, a member of the PSOE since 1990, became mayor of Valladolid in 2015, obtaining the lowest number of votes in the history of the PSOE in the Castilian-Leonese capital and in second position behind the PP in his second attempt after agreeing with We can and IU. In 2019, the people of Valladolid endorsed his government, once again giving victory to the PSOE in the municipal elections, something that had not happened since 1987.

As an anecdote, Puente faced the last municipal campaign in poor conditions. Two weeks after starting, he suffered a fall while visiting the works in the Parquesol neighborhood that he himself had promoted and broke his quadriceps femoris, which is why he had to undergo surgery.

After losing the mayoralty despite winning, he had no qualms about accepting it although he left a sentence that sounded like exculpation. “The national dynamic has overwhelmed governments like ours, which I believe were well valued by citizens. “It is a very good result, but it is insufficient.” Feijóo reminded him of this in his reply, seeing in the phrase an indictment of Sánchez.

Puente has a biting verb. Spokesman for Pedro Sánchez’s candidacy for the general secretary of the PSOE in 2017, he declared that the party had to look to the left, stating that the PSOE was then “with its ass hanging to the right.” On Tuesday he warned Feijóo not to waste time looking for deserters among the socialists because this PSOE “shielded itself” years ago against any external interference and “consequently”, in an apparent attack on the former president of the government Felipe González, “it is no longer of its leaders, neither current nor historical, but of its militants, of the people”.

After the departure from the PSOE of Soraya Rodríguez, her predecessor at the head of the PSOE in Valladolid who is now an MEP for Ciudadanos, in March 2019, Puente stated that “we are not going to miss her”, adding that “the real socialists, only in the PSOE, never outside the PSOE”.