life, death, resurrection and ecstasy of the man from Rubalcaba who becomes minister of Sánchez

At first he was a friend of the current president of the government, both as young aspiring socialist leaders. Then he supported him in some primaries and abandoned him in the following ones. Pedro Sanchez He took him on to become his right-hand man and main collaborator at Moncloa.

In this way, the personal relationship between the two has gone through almost all possible states, and now Sánchez fulfills a personal commitment and appoints him Minister of Digital Transformation and Civil Service.

Sánchez gives Oscar Lopez the slip to find his own political projection, after years of ostracism first and a discreet role as chief of staff in the shadow of the president later. Those who were young companions of excursion enter a new phase of relationship: they distance themselves from the intense daily life of Moncloa, but they continue to be part of the same team.

“Pedro Sánchez was a guy who knew how to interpret the times, who knew how to interpret the new politics, the speed, the vertigo. I remember, and someone who was one of the best friends of Alfredo Perez Rubalcabathat Alfredo was a guy more used to old politics. It was difficult for him to make decisions, he went back and forth, but Pedro is a quick guy who sees them coming. That’s why I’m talking about the right person at the right time,” López said last July in EL ESPAÑOL about the current president of the government, in one of the few occasions when the current minister broke his silence in recent years.

Efficient, hardworking, with practical bases of political communication, media and investigations based on daily work and with a deep knowledge of the structure of the PSOE as a member of the deviceÓscar López obtained his doctorate in party activity from Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba. With him, he learned the fundamental principles of traditional politics until he became his trusted person in Ferraz, alongside Elena Valenciano.

Rubalcaba was his mentor, with Jose Blanco. In fact, in the PSOE of the early 2000s, with José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero At the head of the party, López was part of what was called “the boys in white,” which was essentially him, Pedro Sánchez and Antonio Hernando.

One of them is now president of the government, another will take office this Thursday as a minister and the third is part of Sánchez’s cabinet and circle of trust, awaiting his own leap to a ministry.

And at one point, especially during the second primaries, López and Hernando abandoned Sánchez to support respectively Patxi Lopez Already Susana DiazThe group split up and it took them a while to talk to each other, then they started working side by side again at Moncloa, but now with Sánchez as the undisputed leader.

And Óscar López was the first to stand out in the group and, in fact, he became first the General Secretariat of the PSOE of Castilla y León and then within the powerful Organizational Secretariat of the PSOE, while Sánchez and Hernando were barely known. He held this position between 2012 and 2014, always in the shadow of Rubalcaba in the worst moments of the game, after the departure of Zapatero.

He even chose his own adventure and tried to take over the presidency of the Junta de Castilla y León in 2011, but failed in the regional elections. Moreover, his right-hand man in the regional assembly was Ana Redondothen a member of his team in Ferraz and today Minister of Equality thanks to the influence of López.

Strong team

In 2014, everything changed. Primaries were called to replace Rubalcaba as secretary general of the PSOE and all sectors of the party looked for candidates.

Blanco considered Antonio Hernando more suitable as an important part of the team. plumbing of the party as a leader; I also did not consider Óscar López because he was responsible for organizing the PSOE and because he was then exhausted by the mismanagement of a conflicting motion of censure in Ponferrada (León); and about Sánchez, he said, at first, that he did not see him capable of winning the elections.

But in the end, everything aligned for the current president to be a candidate in the primaries against Eduardo Madina And Jose Antonio Perez Tapias. Lopez and Hernando supported him and were rewarded by the spokesmen of Congress and the Senate when he won the internal elections.

They formed a solid team until in October 2016 a sort of internal coup d’état took place, with the abstention of the investiture of Mariano Rajoy as a backdrop. This resulted in the dismissal of Sánchez as head of the PSOE.

Lopez and Hernando did not defend their friend and the latter intervened as a socialist spokesman in the debate in Congress to justify the abstention that fractured the party.

And when there were new primaries against Susana Díaz, both changed sides and abandoned the current president of the government. Then there was talk of betrayal, linked to the few options that Sánchez seemed to have in these primaries.

This is how both men had to leave the top tier of politics. Hernando took refuge in José Blanco’s consulting firm, and Óscar López continued to take refuge as a discreet senator until July 2018, when Sánchez won the motion of censure and showed signs of not holding a grudge against his friend and appointed him president of Paradores, a public company dependent on the Treasury.

The relationship was strengthened again in July 2021, when Sánchez surprised everyone by appointing López as chief of staff, the most trusted position of any government president. Changed to professional-consultant without political affiliation Ivan Redondofor one apparatchik socialist from the old politics. He also recovered Hernando for this closest team.

Now, Sánchez is once again taking a radical turn in this position and appointing Diego Rubioan academic with extensive training and a different profile from Redondo and López.

For the future, the fact that Lopez is a man of device The party and the PSOE will hold a congress in November with the expectation of a strategic turning point and a change of faces to give the image of a new era.