The government will appoint Óscar López as José Luis Escriva’s replacement at the head of the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service, as reported by El Páis and government sources confirmed to elDiario.es, after the latter’s appointment as the new governor of the Bank of Spain. López has been Pedro Sánchez’s chief of staff since 2021.
The appointment of López as minister is a new chapter in the return to the political front of this historic member of the PSOE who was ousted by Sánchez himself in 2017, after promoting the candidacy of Patxi López in the socialist primaries.
López was first punished by the party director by removing him from the post of Senate speaker in 2016 for remaining loyal to Sánchez during the turbulent October 1 Federal Commission, although he distanced himself from the Sanchism immediately after by not sharing the roadmap undertaken by the former secretary general who was then thrown out of the window.
López never completely dissociated himself from the party despite these divisions. In June 2018, after the motion of censure, he was appointed president of the Paradores, where he spent three years until his signing at Moncloa.
He will now lead the Ministry of Digital Transformation and Civil Service, whose main challenge is the modernization of the public administration to make it more “agile and efficient”, as Sánchez himself promised a few months ago when Escriva assumed these powers.
The total investment is estimated at 6,526.5 million euros in the objectives of digitalization of the administration and its processes, reduction of temporary work of public agents and improvement of their training and energy transition of the administration, through the rehabilitation of its buildings and the use of renewable energy.
