The leader of the PP and candidate for the Presidency of the Government, Alberto Núñez Feijóo, has brought together 15 infrastructure experts this week to analyze the situation of the railway network after the accidents in Adamuz and Urda. He does so while taking on the challenge of choosing a profile with “management, rigor and experience” and his maximum confidence to lead the Ministry of Public Works if he arrives at La Moncloa after the November 29 elections.
The election of the future head of Development generates uncertainty even in the circle closest to Feijóo, where they recognize the difficulties in finding a candidate who has the experience and confidence necessary to manage one of the departments with the highest volume of public investment in the State, according to the sources consulted by Servimedia.
Feijóo flatly rejects the pools and on Friday he already warned that whoever "starts appointing ministers" before the elections "is making a mistake." He did so before several of the members of the group of experts that he has established to analyze the possible causes of the Toledo accident and offer his own response. After the 2023 general elections, he received criticism for anticipating decisions on the composition of a possible Government before the electoral result was known.
On Friday he summoned said team to Genoa, the party's national headquarters, and they held a closed-door meeting. After the meeting, a photograph was taken in which only eight people appeared, apart from the national deputy secretaries. Some did not allow themselves to be seen by journalists for fear of reprisals, since they currently have a position of responsibility in public companies such as Renfe or Adif. Others because they simply wanted to maintain their anonymity. The PP refused to provide the press with a list of attendees.
At the end of the meeting, the PP projected behind Feijóo the words “management, rigor and experience” on a black background, the main requirements that the candidate for the Presidency of the Government wants the Ministry of Development to carry as its banner in its eventual Executive.
The missing word, according to sources close to him, was “trust”, which Feijóo considers essential to entrust one of the departments with the highest volume of public investment in the State, on which companies and organizations such as Aena, Adif, Renfe and State Ports depend. And even more so after two legislatures marked by cases of alleged corruption under the management of José Luis Ábalos in which it is urgent to “recover the trust” of citizens in the institutions, in the words of Feijóo.
All the positions consulted in the PP agree that Pablo Vázquez, former president of Renfe and Ineco and one of Feijóo's closest collaborators, was the ideal profile to occupy that responsibility. But died in the summer at the age of 60 due to an illness, leaving a professional and personal void for the Galician, who considered him a friend.
Vázquez had accumulated experience as president of Ineco and Renfe and enjoyed the utmost trust of Feijóo, with whom he founded the Reformismo 21 Foundation. In addition, he maintained an excellent relationship with Vox, as confirmed by authorized sources from both parties consulted by Servimedia, to the point of acting as a link between the two formations.
After the Adamuz accident, Feijóo called a follow-up meeting headed by Pablo Vázquez himself. Berta Barrero, Vázquez's 'number two' at Renfe, attended with him. Civil engineer and railway and mobility manager, today she is the General Business Director of Eysa after working at Ineco and Indra, among other companies, although it is unknown if she wants to return to public management.
Génova does not confirm or deny whether he attended Friday's meeting. That same day he defended in an article in 'Expansión' that "the debate should not focus on questioning the model", but "on reflecting on how we have accompanied the development of our infrastructures with planning, management, operation and maintenance models capable of evolving at the same pace as the infrastructures themselves and the mobility needs of our society."
The national deputy secretary of infrastructure, Juan Bravo, also participated in that 'crisis cabinet', who is the visible face of the party in this area, as well as in housing and finance. However, unlike the rest of the profiles, he is specialized in the tax field -he is a Treasury inspector-. In Genoa they assume that you will have a portfolio, but it does not have to be Development.
The one who has remained away from the political foreground for several years is the former minister Íñigo de la Serna, who led the Ministry during the last stage of Mariano Rajoy's Government. Feijóo recovered him for the PP Electoral Committee in 2022 and put him in charge of the electoral program in 2023. He was one of the people he telephoned when Adamuz's misfortune occurred. But, like Barrero, he did not appear in Friday's photo, taken over by professionals and politicians with experience in infrastructure.
Among the profiles with the greatest political experience is Ethel Vázquez. Civil Engineer, she was Infrastructure Advisor of the Xunta de Galicia with Feijóo between 2014 and 2022 - then she spent two more years with Alfonso Rueda. The woman from A Coruña has more than 20 years in the Galician administration, where she has directed Aguas de Galicia, the Galician Infrastructure Agency and the Public Investment Company.
Another prominent name is Carlos Novillo, until this week Minister of Environment, Agriculture and Interior of the Community of Madrid. Feijóo has signed him as 'number seven' on the list for Madrid to, as he said, face the possible "crises" to come. An agricultural engineer and firefighter by profession, his career has developed mainly in the field of emergencies and civil protection. He was director of the Madrid 112 Security and Emergency Agency, in charge of managing the pandemic and the Filomena storm.
Regarding more specialized profiles in railway management, there are Juan Tébar Molinero and José María Rivera Zafra, both Civil Engineers. The first has been Director of Railway Operations for Metro de Madrid since 2020 and has more than two decades of experience in the sector, with previous responsibilities at Adif and Ayesa engineering.
Rivera Zafra has been managing director of the Public Works Agency of the Junta de Andalucía since November 2023. He began his professional career in the construction of the Antequera-Granada high-speed line. Since then he has participated in railway and airport projects in Mexico and worked on the infrastructure of the Granada, Malaga and Seville subways, as well as the Bay of Cádiz tram.
Ignacio Ayres Janeiro, another civil engineer and former advisor to Íñigo de la Serna, also stands out. He was part of the board of directors of Ineco and worked as a technical advisor at Adif, before joining the Government of the Community of Madrid. He currently directs the Social Services and Integration area of the Isabel Díaz Ayuso Executive.
The meeting was attended by three parliamentarians. The most specialized of this last group is the head of the list for Ávila, Héctor Palencia, technical engineer for Public Works and spokesperson for Transportation of the PP in Congress during the last legislature. Before arriving at the Lower House, he worked in the coordination of health and safety works for the Ministry of Public Works and the Madrid Metro.
Juan José Sanz Vitorio, PP Transport spokesperson in the Senate during the last legislature, also intervened. He was part of the commission of inquiry into the state of the railway network.
Finally, the Ibizan José Vicente Marí Bosó, national coordinator of Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of the PP, and former Minister of Finance and Budgets of the Balearic Government between 2013 and 2015, appeared in the photo. The deputy has earned stripes in the PP, but, like Bravo, his career has developed mainly in the economic and budgetary field.
Feijóo could count on any of them for the future structure of the Ministry of Development, a portfolio from which he wants to deploy an infrastructure plan estimated at 300,000 million euros of public-private investment, another of 12,000 million euros for the recovery of the areas affected by the Valencia dana and a third in terms of water.
Feijóo's entourage recognizes that several of these profiles are "ministerable", although they warn that the chosen one may not be among them. The leader of the PP keeps his plans under wraps and will not reveal his appointments before the elections, although the same sources suggest that everything remains open.
