Oscar Lopez and Antonio Hernando, at the Congress in 2016.Luis Sevillano

Antonio Hernando leaves La Moncloa and joins Óscar López’s team. The deputy director of the Cabinet of the Presidency of the Government for the last three years will be the new Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure. The intention is for the Council of Ministers on Tuesday to approve his appointment. The election of José Luis Escrivá as governor of the Bank of Spain has brought about a restructuring that has as its epicentre the heart of the Palacio de La Moncloa and the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Pedro Sánchez executed the first phase two weeks ago by awarding the ministerial portfolio to Óscar López, who replaced Iván Redondo as chief of staff in July 2021, and the promotion in his place of Diego Rubio, an academic who directed the document from the Government’s National Office of Prospective and Strategy Spain 2050 and without organic life in the PSOE.

The next phase now comes with the fitting of the middle management positions and with Hernando as the main protagonist. His signing, just after the celebration of the 40th Federal Congress of the PSOE in October 2021 in Valencia, confirmed the internal reconciliation in the socialist ranks after the crisis that shook the PSOE between the supporters and detractors of facilitating the investiture of Mariano Rajoy in 2016. Sánchez, López and Hernando also took different paths, so their alignment again on the same side was a message in itself. Their destinies were once again intertwined, this time in La Moncloa. The three colleagues worked at Ferraz under the tutelage of José Blanco in his time as secretary of organization (2000-2008) and deputy general secretary of the socialists (2008-2012). López and Hernando took advantage of Sánchez and rose earlier in the PSOE ranks, but it has been the president who has gone further.

Hernando went from being one of the public defenders of the “no is no” stance on Rajoy’s investiture to defending the PSOE’s abstention in Congress. Spokesman in Congress since September 2014 —Sánchez was elected leader of the PSOE in primaries for the first time in July of that year—, the management that led the party after the resignation of the general secretary in the federal committee on October 1, 2016 kept him until he himself resigned after Sánchez’s victory in the primaries of May 2017. López stood out for the candidacy of Patxi López; Sánchez appointed him president of Paradores, a position he held from June 2018 to July 2021. Three months after rehiring him as chief of staff —to the enthusiasm of the PSOE, which always saw Redondo as an upstart—, Sánchez opened the doors of La Moncloa to Hernando.

Antonio Hernando with Pedro Sánchez at the Moncloca Palace, in July 2022.Samuel Sánchez

Escrivá takes his team to the Bank of Spain

His appointment as Secretary of State with López in the Ministry of Digital Transformation had been taken for granted for weeks, but first María Teresa Ledo had to be accommodated in the reorganization. A process that was clarified this Monday. Hernando will replace María González Veracruz in the Secretariat of State for Telecommunications – the Murcian was a national deputy between 2011 and 2019, and has been in office since October 2022 – and she will become the Secretary of State for Digitalization and Artificial Intelligence, instead of Ledo. The latter’s career in the Government is linked to the former minister Escrivá and she will once again be part of his team, this time at the Bank of Spain, government sources share. Ledo has been the new governor’s director of staff since 2021 in the Ministry of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration and since last year in the Ministry of Digital Transformation. Last January, she was appointed Secretary of State after the resignation of Carme Artigas. During the Spanish Presidency of the EU, the Catalan achieved the political agreement that gave the green light to the European Regulation on Artificial Intelligence.

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A graduate in Economics from the University of Valladolid, with postgraduate studies at the Centre for Monetary and Financial Studies (CEMFI) and doctoral courses in Economic Analysis at the Complutense University of Madrid, Ledo was responsible for costs and investments at BBVA and held various positions of responsibility in the financial area of ​​the bank. She also worked at BBVA Research as chief economist for economic and financial scenarios and for the analysis of regulatory trends following the financial crisis.

Last week’s Council of Ministers already approved the appointment of Julia Gracia as López’s chief of staff at the Ministry. Pilar Sánchez Acera, who held that position at La Moncloa, will also be part of the minister’s team. Gracia served as head of Hernando’s cabinet at La Moncloa, which gives an idea of ​​the harmony and complicity between the two socialist leaders. López will need all the help possible to face the challenges ahead: from rejuvenating the public workforce to managing the recently created public technology company, with 20 billion under management. The Spanish Society for Technological Transformation (SETT) will integrate the powers of Perte Chip, the largest of the Government’s 13 strategic projects. Another mission in which Blanco’s boys will once again go hand in hand.