Until his last plenary session in the Galician Parliament, just before taking over the leadership of the Spanish PP, Alberto Núñez Feijóo had to resort to the PP’s absolute majority to overturn the opposition’s attempts to open investigations into the contracts awarded during his 13 years at the head of the Xunta and those who consider that there is a shadow of irregularity. And, more than two years later, his party continues to maneuver to prevent the past that haunts Feijóo for his management in the Galician government from reaching him in Madrid. The most recent movement took place this Tuesday at the beginning of the new political course: the people refused to create a commission to analyze the overcost of the construction of the Álvaro Cunqueiro hospital in Vigo, whose contracts of the Xunta with the company is a director, the sister of the leader of the PP and operations with other companies that have links with people from their entourage. In this case, the opposing votes will not be enough to bury the proposal: the BNG will activate the investigation through a point of the regulation that allows it to be promoted alone with 25 deputies, those of the nationalist formation. Of course, this resource is only available once per legislature.
Before forcing the opening of the commission, the BNG promoted the creation through the usual channel, the one that the PP reversed. In this initiative, the nationalist formation assured that it was necessary to investigate “the irregularities, cronyism and nepotism in the hiring of the Xunta”. It distinguished three fronts and in each of them, the fundamental part occurred when Feijóo was in charge. While the current leader of the PP fights for amnesty and the financing system against the central government, the shadows of his leadership are once again at the center of the political debate in Galicia. His own statements on the demands imposed on those close to political positions – he said that if he were president of the government he would prevent his partner from contracting with the administration – also emphasize his environment.
The first of these fronts is the model chosen to build the Álvaro Cunqueiro Hospital in Vigo. The work was financed by a syndicate of private companies, in exchange for the assumption of non-clinical services – such as laundry, cafeteria and others – and a fee of one million dollars that the Xunta will have to continue paying each year until mid-2017. the next decade. These arrears of payment were not an obstacle for Feijóo to affirm, in the middle of the internal campaign for the replacement of Pablo Casado, that when a politician opens a hospital, he must ask if he leaves it paid. He added what the agreement should be if the answer is negative: “Because, if you have to, leave quickly and start paying it. “This medical center has returned to the forefront because in July the Consello de Contas, the body that oversees Galician public administrations, published a report in which it put a figure on the management of Feijóo: 470 million additional costs.
The opposition tried to get the current president of the Xunta, Alfonso Rueda, who has been part of all Feijóo’s governments, to appear before the regional parliament to give explanations. The PP prevented this with its votes. The BNG then presented the proposal to create a commission of inquiry. And the PP also rejected it. The analysis is now pending for the 25 nationalist deputies to force it to do so. The leader of the BNG, Ana Pontón, has already asked the popular members not to block either the request for documentation or the appearances before this commission.
The rewards at Eulen
This is not the only contract that the opposition is asking to review: the PSdeG and the only MP from Democracia Ourensana have given their support to the BNG proposal. The second front is that of the contracts awarded to Eulen, a company of which Micaela Núñez Feijóo, sister of the PP leader, is director for the North-West zone. The PSOE also announced in August that it would take steps to have these contracts reviewed. During the 13 years that the current leader of the Spanish PP has been at the head of the Xunta, the sums have totalled 37 million euros, according to what the newspaper reveals. Public. But the relationship continued later with another 17 million, four of which were awarded by another member of the family. In the final stages of the management of the Santiago and O Barbanza health area, Eloína Núñez Masid, Feijóo’s cousin, awarded Eulen two contracts – one for the security of hospitals and primary care centers and another for a video surveillance system in psychiatry.
Núñez Masid had already held positions of responsibility in another health area, that of Orense, which he entered a few weeks after Alberto Núñez Feijóo took office for the first time as president of the Xunta. In 2017, she was appointed to the health directorate of the Galician capital, where she accumulated complaints from patients, protests from professionals and resignations from department heads. The last episode that called into question her management was the delays in follow-up appointments for oncology patients. After the absolute majority obtained by Alfonso Rueda in February 2024, the Minister of Health changed and, with him, several management positions. Eloína Núñez left the Santiago health area and, after four months without a known destination, the Galician government has just confirmed that she will be deputy director of active development in the Department of Social Policy. He also continues to be part of the PPdeG executive committee.
Contracts during the pandemic
There is a third front that brings together links with several companies following the emergency contracts signed by the Xunta de Feijóo during the pandemic. The opposition in the Galician Parliament cites the contracts with the company Universal Support, responsible for the tasks of monitoring the contagion. In the company dedicated to telemarketing, although it has no previous relationship with the health sector, Ignacio Cárdenas, brother of Feijóo’s partner, is commercial director. As published The jumpUniversal Support has obtained 204,076.18 euros in contractual hiring between 2020 and 2022.
They also focus on Sibucu 360, a company that supplied medical supplies to the Xunta during the COVID crisis. The company is linked to the Compostela businessman José Ramón García, disqualified in 2018 for tax fraud. At the beginning of the year, the BNG demanded all the documentation related to these contracts, but the Xunta responded with a report from the Consello de Contas that did not provide what the nationalist formation requested. Sibucu admitted, in response to the information from Galicia Presswhich had imported “mislabelled” masks during the pandemic, but claimed not to sell them to the Xunta or the Community of Madrid. Another company, Mape Asesores, is also targeting this community. It is another of the companies that sold the Galician government medical supplies needed for the pandemic, in this case with a 37% markup. The name of this company is also linked to Isabel Díaz Ayuso’s partner: in 2020, it paid a commission of 2 million euros to Alberto González Amador.
The PP has repeatedly rejected the investigation into emergency contracts during the pandemic. In 2022, in Feijóo’s last plenary session before resigning as president of the Xunta, it voted to reject the opposition’s request for an external audit. Two years later, the episode repeated itself. On this second occasion, the popular argument was that all these operations had already been supervised by the Consello de Contas. The PP spokesman in the Galician Parliament, Alberto Pazos Couñago, repeated this on Tuesday, who then clarified that the entity “decided to supervise only a part, but that 100%” of the contracts were made available. And, he stressed, there is no trace of illegality. The report contained a list of objections and criticisms of the Xunta’s actions and criticized the verbal and unpublicized relations.
