The international agenda of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, favors that the announced remodeling of his Executive to relieve the Ministers of Health and Industry is next week.
After confirming that the head of Industry, Reyes Maroto, would be a candidate for mayor of Madrid and the Minister of Health, Carolina Darias, would choose to head the Las Palmas de Gran Canaria City Council, Sánchez has already advanced his intention that his substitutions be made effective close to the campaign for the municipal and regional elections on May 28.
A campaign that will begin on May 12, although all the parties are already in the middle of the pre-campaign and socialist sources point out that it was not convenient to rush the presence of Darias and Maroto in the Government until then, as was done when the former Minister of Health Salvador Illa left the Executive to be a PSC candidate for the elections in Catalonia in January 2021.
Illa ceased to be minister on January 26 and the Catalan campaign began three days later.
What Sánchez did guarantee after learning that there would be changes at the head of the Health and Industry ministries is that he would make a “mini-crisis” and limit the changes to those two departments.
Faced with the rumors that he would bring the relays forward quite a bit and that he could have done them already in February, the chief executive announced that they would be in March and on the 15th he specified that he would undertake them after the debate on the motion of censure presented by Vox and debated this week in Congress.
Therefore, to meet the forecast that Darias and Maroto will be replaced in March, Sánchez has less than a week.
After participating this Thursday and Friday in the meetings of the European Council in Brussels, the President of the Government traveled directly to the Dominican Republic to attend the XXVIII Ibero-American Summit together with the King.
He will be in Santo Domingo until this Sunday since, once the summit is over, he has planned activity in the Dominican capital as president of the Socialist International.
The forecast is that he will be back in Madrid first thing in the morning on Monday the 27th and that he will get back on the plane on Wednesday to travel to China, where, in addition to participating in an economic forum, he will meet with the country’s main authorities. including its president, Xi Jinping.
His schedule in China will be on March 30 and 31, and he will return to Spain on Saturday, April 1.
Therefore, if you keep your intention for the changes to be in March, you only have two days to announce them: Monday and Tuesday of the coming week.
The first option is that it was Monday when, after returning from Santo Domingo, he made the changes and revealed the names of the people chosen to head the ministries of Health and Industry, Commerce and Tourism.
In that case, they could promise their position before the king in the Palacio de la Zarzuela early on Tuesday after publishing their respective appointments in the Official State Gazette (BOE) and already join the usual Tuesday meeting of the Council of Ministers .
In between, however, the usual acts of transfer of portfolios would be missing, which would have to be done very early or would force the Council meeting to start later than usual, at 9:30 am.
For this reason, it cannot be ruled out that Sánchez will preside over the last meeting of his current government next Tuesday, that it will be later when he makes the changes and that the promise of the new ministers in Zarzuela will be on Wednesday before he begins his trip to China.
That is what happened, for example, when Illa left the Government, since she attended the Council of Ministers on January 26, 2021 and that same afternoon Sánchez announced that the replacement would be Carolina Darias.
Sources from Moncloa insist to EFE that “although logic points to these forecasts”, the moment chosen for the renewal is the exclusive power of the president and they do not rule out any option.
