The Board has already practically closed the teams of the ministries in the absence of covering three positions, two in Industry and one in Agriculture and Livestock. In this way, the regional Executive is made up of 89 senior officials (including the president and without adding the territorial delegates), five more than it had in the previous legislature, when the partners were PP and Citizens. The popular ones, who after the elections of February 13 had to change their travel companion and agree with Vox, have chosen to keep a good part of those responsible with whom they already had in the previous legislature, although in the case of Health, some incorporations, including that of the counselor Alejandro Vázquez, occurred in December 2021, after the rupture of the agreement with Cs.
The rest barely alter their structures, while in the three departments of Vox, with the exception of the Deputy Minister of Agriculture, all are new, although with responsibilities on the Board in other times.
In this way, more than half of the senior officials, 49 of the 89, were already in the previous Executive (some in different positions), which represents 55 percent of the total. For Ministries, Carlos Fernández Carriedo has opted to maintain the same line-up and his ten holders repeat, while in Education there is only one incorporation of the seven general directorates, which corresponds to Isabel Tovar, in Planning, Organization and Educational Equity. In the ministries of Vox, Industry and Culture they are renewed in their entirety, while in Agriculture and Livestock seven of the eight senior positions are new.
The increase in these positions in the regional government has been almost six percent compared to 2019, going from 84 then to 89 now, which represents a rise of 5.95 percent. Fernández Carriedo already acknowledged that there had been an increase in spending on this concept, but he defended that Castilla y León is among the “most austere” communities and accused the PSOE of lying for raising the figure to 8.5%. A growth that has also been evident in the number of deputy ministries, which have gone from eight to nine. The Ministry of the Presidency, led by Jesús Julio Carnero, has two, an unequivocal sign of the strength that is to be given to this department, on which the local administrations depend, with an eye on the municipal elections of 2023.
Thus, only two teams are left without a ‘vice’, curiously two of the three most social such as Education -which did have it in the previous legislature (Universities)- and Family and Equal Opportunities. They are, precisely, two management centers run by women (out of a total of three, since the Minister of Mobility and Digital Transformation, María González Corral, does have one), the only ones that have not considered it necessary to have a ‘number two’ .
By the way, another aspect that has been reduced in this Executive is parity. Of the 89 high positions, in the absence of the three that are yet to be appointed, 27 are women, which represents 30.33 percent. In the previous government, out of 84, 28 were female, 33.33. Once again, it is the departments of Isabel Blanco and Rocío Lucas that have the greatest female presence, with four women in each, with seven and eight senior positions, respectively. And at the expense of the Vice-Ministry of Industrial and Labor Dynamization, there is only one vice-minister, Mar Sancho, a position she occupies in the Ministry of Culture.
And meanwhile, the department of Mariano Veganzones has two unfilled positions out of the eight included in the organization chart, the aforementioned deputy counselor and the regional manager of Employment. The position of general director of Agricultural and Livestock Production of the Ministry directed by Germán Dueñas is also vacant. He himself announced on Friday that this week he will complete his team for which “two or three candidates” are being analyzed.
The truth is that it has been Vox, one of the government partners, the one that is taking the longest to close its cabinets. It is also true that he starts from scratch and that in his search for a technical and experienced profile, and after some other refusal, he has ‘fished’ positions in the ranks of the PP that have already had positions under the blue acronym. Thus he has passed with two of his vice-counselors, Pedro Medina and Mar Sancho; with the heads of Culture, Gonzalo Santonja, and Industry, Mariano Veganzones, and with the general director of Relations with Civil Society, Jesús Enríquez Tauler, attached to the Vice Presidency, who was a councilor and spokesperson in the Valladolid City Council with Javier León of the Rivera. Precisely, the team of the vice president, Juan García-Gallardo, is also newly created and three directors are attached to it.
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