Zapatero's slimline government
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By Howard Brereton - Apr 7, 2009 - 8:17 PM
A dramatic cabinet reshuffle as recession bites means José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is staking his future on these decisions

The decision of the Spanish Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, to slim down the cabinet, reduce the number of ministries, and to surround himself with Socialist party political heavyweights may be very well in theory, but what about in practice?

One can only be concerned at the change at the Ministry for the Economy. Pedro Solbes may have been tired, as reports would lead us to believe, but he was generally well respected, and a change at such a complicated time has to be questioned. It could be, of course, that the man is simply exhausted.
Quite how long Elena Salgado will take to get up to speed, given the fast-moving economic situation currently is of concern, however efficient a Minister she has so far appeared to be. She says the fight against unemployment is her main concern, but she must know that won’t change until the economy is turned round as a whole.

The space Salgado leaves in Territorial Policy brings in Manuel Chaves from the Junta de Andalucía, and here I only wonder how the electorate in the south will welcome the new Socialist leader for the region, José Antonio Griñán.

This week’s changes obviously reflect an admission of previous bad or poorly made decisions, and now only four ministers remain from the original selection made in 2004, when Zapatero came to power. That’s quite a turnover.

It has proved to have been a bad decision to create the Ministry for Education, Social Policy and Sport, which proved to be impossible for Mercedes Cabrera to run, and it seems Zapatero has now recognised this. Sport no longer has a Ministry, and will be controlled by the Prime Minister himself, we are told. Here he breaks a promise from last November to give Sport its own ministry, but it does give the opportunity for the new Education Minister, Ángel Gabilondo, to concentrate on Education alone. The universities come back under the ministry’s control as they should.

The minister most prone to banana skins, Development Minister, Magdalena Álvarez, finally goes. Despite the high spending in her department and the AVE train line expansion, there have been other rail problems in Barcelona, and a perceived lack of response in Madrid when bad weather hit this winter.

Bernat Soria was only Minister for Health for 20 months. Linked to stem-cell research himself he did little outside his field of excellence, but found himself unable to do so partly as health policy is devolved to most of the regions across the country anyway. The decision to add Social Policy to the Ministry means that Trinidad Jiménez, another PSOE bigwig, makes sense, not least because of the stalled introduction so far of the much taunted Dependency Law. She now has work to do.

Culture Minsiter, César Antonio Molina, pays the price for a failure to develop new legislation to protect the Spanish film industry. The industry has welcomed his replacement, Ángeles González-Sinde, with open arms, although the Internet is already awash with fear as she is known to want to follow the French example and cut the internet connection to those who share music and video files.

But as much as the new slim-line government makes theoretical sense in these complicated times, now the real job has to be done, and time is of the essence. All the new ministers have to hit the ground running, or the baton of Government will be passed to the Partido Popular, who, despite their infighting and the corruption allegations against them, have finally taken a small lead in the polls.

Already PP leader Mariano Rajoy has said the cabinet changes are the ‘explicit recognition of failure’, but he must also realise that the Prime Minister has moved to correct the errors as best he sees fit.

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