“To lead is to serve,” says retired Lieutenant General Francisco José Gan Pampols, who this Friday goes from retired high-ranking military officer to second vice president of the Generalitat Valenciana, within the Consell of Carlos Mazón. This is the first time that a military officer has held a position in an autonomous government, which anticipates the way in which the Consell de Mazón intends to undertake reconstruction after the DANA disaster. The decision responds to a simple logic: for a war scenario, the best is a military high command.
Destined for peace missions in former Yugoslavia (Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo) and responsible for the reconstruction of the Qala e Naw region in Afghanistan, he is the only Spanish mountaineer to have reached the three poles: in the 90s, he climbed Everest, went to Antarctica and the North Pole, actions documented in the RTVE program On the verge of the impossible. The Autonomous Executive refers to its experience in rebuilding Afghanistan after the war, a process that was entrusted to private companies. He is good at commanding and coordinating.
A graduate in political science and sociology from UNED and honorary doctor from the Catholic University of Valencia, he is an expert in leadership and regularly collaborates with the media. The lieutenant general believes that communication is essential in any crisis process and that in a democratic state, citizens must be well informed. However, he rejected that his position was linked to politics. In numerous interviews since his proposal was known, he insists on approaching reconstruction with a technical and not political character, although he will sit in the plenary session of the Consell with ten other councilors, all proposed by the PP , who governs in a minority. “I will not accept political directives,” he says, even if he must submit to constant surveillance by the opposition and the media.
Francisco José Gan Pampols maintains an account on But we can see numerous ‘retweets’ of messages from the extreme right and, also, from the regional president of Aragon, the socialist Javier Lambán -Gan Pampols lives in Zaragoza—.
In one of these retweeted messages, former Ciudadanos leader Juan Carlos Girauta called Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro “Zapatero’s boss.” Zabala by Gan Pampols. The message, retweeted on the day of Rodríguez Galindo’s death, read: “A great man died, a civil guard of honor, with his good work he led his men and with blood, sweat and tears they prevented numerous attacks, deaths and injuries. and pain in Spain”.
The leader defines himself as “a normal person, the fruit of a life journey which began within a middle-class family at the end of the fifties and who experienced the change he experienced with absolute naturalness in Spain at that time. Since his retirement, Gan Pampols has focused on leadership courses. your book The art of commanding well: wanting, being able, knowing (published in 2022) indicates the keys to training good managers and anticipates the way in which he will approach the task entrusted by the president of the Valencian PP. For now, his team will have as “number two” another top military commander, Brigadier General Venancio Aguado.
A good leader, according to Gan Pampols
Authority, the soldier believes, comes when your subordinates respect you. A good leader, he affirms, is someone in continuous training, equipped with various skills (technical, human and relational). A good leader “never fears that someone better will emerge from his team.” The leader places particular importance on humanist values, the ability to see beyond the immediate and “to feel a permanent curiosity for everything that happens”. He constantly cites Marcus Aurelius, whose Meditations They are classics in their field and Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Isabella of Castile, Erasmus of Rotterdam and Indira Gandhi stand out as admirable figures.
True leaders must flee egalitarianism which, far from improving and promoting societies, cretinizes them and makes the concepts of merit, capacity, entrepreneurship and individual responsibility disappear.
Gan Pampols
“True leaders must flee egalitarianism which, far from improving and promoting societies, cretinizes them and makes the concepts of merit, capacity, entrepreneurship and individual responsibility disappear. In the same way, they must expel determinism, dogmatism and relativism from the personal and social sphere. If everything is debatable, a common minimum of respect and coexistence cannot be established, maintains the lieutenant general. Gan Pampols advocates the construction of a “new elite” which is a reference for a society of “free and equal” citizens endowed with a “political and informed culture”, an elite “far from mediocrity and short-termism, foreign to the partitocracy”, which “work”. for the common good, reaching agreements and achieving a unity of effort that is transparent and periodically accountable to citizens. “We need a team of statesmen, not televangelists or media products empty of content and tedious, manipulative and meaningless verbiage,” he emphasizes.
Gan Pampols understands leadership as “the art of commanding well”, a personal capacity to create cohesive work teams with enthusiasm aimed at “the achievement of objectives subject to a higher and morally good common goal”. This is, according to him, the most important element: “That it implies improvement, progress and security in the most utilitarian sense of the term, the greatest good for the greatest number with the least harm for the most. small number.”
How to manage a crisis
In his interviews, this military experience is observed: first, he advocates the development of a map of needs, attention to urgency, quantification and planning for the future. Meanwhile, the regional executive is still hesitating three weeks later on emergency measures: there is no solution for housing, nor for schools, nor for the evacuation of vehicles. Everything gives a feeling of interim and daily improvisation.
The military officer places the COVID pandemic and Russia’s war against Ukraine as the main threat to the world today, above climate change, with a detailed analysis of the previous situation of the two countries. Based on these two events, which are still relevant today, it highlights errors in crisis management: lack of foresight (poor identification of the threat and the measures to contain it, he underlines), subordination of the decision-making on the personal or political agenda (recommends the creation of crisis cabinets and technical work), not establishing a unified, direct and transparent public information policy (“freedom of the press must be intact” and “ contradictory information cannot be produced by the government “); territorialize the problem (borders contain neither wars nor epidemics) and security cannot depend on the short term.
According to him, each emergency plan must take into account scenarios, command and control systems, objectives to be achieved, human and material resources and coordination measures. Armed with his own lessons, this will be his plan when he takes office. “In theory, there is or should be a catalog of companies that produce critical resources, professionals and activities of a similar nature” to align them with the civil emergency plan, he emphasizes in the book, where he speaks of the lack of flexibility of the emergency law on public sector contracts and advocates replacing it with a more “agile” mechanism without avoiding future controls. Responsibility for planning cannot fall to organizations outside the government function, he emphasizes.
The army also advocates consensus and unity of action, even if unity does not mean uniformity or the absence of dialogue, he clarifies at one point. But he insists on presenting a negative vision of politics, considered to be dominated by party acronyms: “The representative function limits partisan interests for the benefit of citizens,” he emphasizes.
Mazón’s mission to the lieutenant general, according to the press release sent by the Presidency, consists of “the design of a recovery plan and the coordination of reconstruction work in the affected areas, for which he will also be responsible for chairing the Commission interministerial”. responsible for organizing and coordinating all the departments of the Consell intended for the reconstruction process of the affected regions. In addition, it will assume “the development of a protection plan to deal with possible natural disasters which present risks for the population”.
In his latest interviews, once his appointment is known, the soldier insists on the fact that there will be no “interference of a political nature”, a fundamental condition that he set for the president. The demands of the military high command must adapt to the new organization chart proposed by the PP, the regulations of its department, its powers and its personnel. The lieutenant general is used to working in a hierarchical institution where lower positions obey superiors, but the Autonomous Administration has other means. To begin with, if what is meant by vice-presidency is fulfilled, he will sit in the plenary session of the Consell, a collegial body that deliberates and makes decisions. You will need a budget, an office, staff and resources; These will all be political decisions that you will have to fight against.
