Alfonso Rueda Valenzuela took office this morning as the sixth president of the Xunta, the result of having followed the “example” of his father, the late former senator José Antonio Rueda, and ignoring his “advice”, alluding to his exhortation that not enter politics, from which his father was scalded. Despite the institutional nature and sobriety of the speech, Rueda stressed his Achilles’ heel, that of his lack of knowledge, the result of work of “less public relevance”, focused on collaborating with his predecessor, from “the engine room”. Against this he contrasted his great political experience, already as a high position in the times of Manuel Fraga and with the last 13 years in the Galician Government, 10 of them as vice president.
Without Fraga, who died in 2012, but with the other popular former Galician president, Mariano Rajoy, and the current one, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, from Ourense, the PP completed yesterday in Galicia the last step of this long week of transition in power, the result of that the investiture debate takes place over two days, with 48 hours in between. They were days without great novelties, due to the logic and even forced continuation of the new president with respect to the legacy of his predecessor, of which he was an essential part.
But there are still the last milestones of the process, with the appointment of the new Government, scheduled for tomorrow, and the election of Núñez Feijóo and his faithful squire Miguel Tellado, deputy secretary of organization of the PP, as senators representing the Xunta. The Senate will serve as a political platform, as well as a source of income and will ensure their appraisal before the Supreme Court.
In the absence of the only progressive president of the Xunta elected with full popular legitimacy, the socialist Emilio Pérez Touriño, his colleague González Laxe was present, who came to power in 1987 thanks to PP turncoats. Rueda was flanked by the second vice president of the central government, Yolanda Díaz from Ferrol, deputy for Pontevedra of United We Can. And the popular presidents of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso; from Castilla y León, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco, and from Murcia, Alejandro López Miras, in addition to the leaders of the opposition forces in Galicia, Ana Pontón, from the BNG, and Valentín González Formoso, from the PSdeG.
After his many years in the engine room, the time has come, remarked Rueda, to “go up to the command bridge”. There, in the cockpit, he promised that he will not exercise “Adanism”, in a veiled criticism that he has insisted on these days, everything indicates that he was directed at the Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez. “I vindicate our past, with illusion and confidence in the future”, he affirmed, to insist on presenting himself as heir to the popular presidents Xerardo Fernández Albor, Fraga and Feijóo and also to the socialists Laxe and Touriño. This is a way of defending the system in force since 1981, in which the BNG has never held the presidency, now that the nationalist Pontón heads the hypothetical alternative to the PP.
After six years as president of the PP of Pontevedra, in which he has collided again and again against the rock of the invincible Vigo socialist mayor Abel Caballero, with two thirds of the votes, Rueda dedicated another implicit message to him, condemning the “ myopia of localism”. Thus, he defended a single Galicia, for which he cited all its geographical extremes, Buenos Aires included. Without his father, but surrounded by his wife, his mother and his teenage daughters, Rueda unfolded naturally, but without ceasing to show that he is a leader in construction.
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