The Minister of Digital Transformation and Public Service, Óscar López, has chosen Antonio Hernandountil now deputy director of the Office of the Presidency of the Government and his closest collaborator during his stay in La Moncloa, as the new Secretary of State for Telecommunications and Digital Infrastructure, who will replace María González Veracruz in this position, as confirmed to Europe Press by well-informed sources.
Veracruz, according to ‘El Diario’, will in turn be named new Secretary of State for Digitization and artificial intelligenceposition held until now by Maite Ledo, as confirmed by the same sources.
These changes, which are expected to be approved tomorrow in the Council of Ministers, come after the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez, appointed Óscar López a few weeks ago as the new Minister of Digital Transformation, replacing Jose Luis Escriváwho left his post to become governor of the Bank of Spain.
Lopez, who before his appointment as minister was director of Pedro Sánchez’s cabinet, thus hires his “right-hand man” for his department in Moncloa, where they both found themselves after distancing themselves from Pedro Sánchez.
Hernando, until now deputy director of the Office of the Presidency of the Government, is PSOE activist since 1995 and he was spokesman for the Socialist Parliamentary Group with Pedro Sánchez already as secretary general of the party.
Between 2001 and 2004 he worked as an advisor to the Federal Executive Commission of the PSOE, first in the Secretariat of Social and Migration Policies and later in the Secretariat of the Organization headed by José Blanco. At the XXXVII Federal Congress of the PSOE he joined the Federal Executive Commission of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero as Secretary of Municipal Policy.
At the following PSOE congress he was secretary of the Institutional relations and autonomous policy in the Executive led by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, and in 2004 he was elected deputy of Madrid, remaining in the Congress of Deputies until May 2019.
As a member of parliament, he was a member of the Commission of Inquiry into the 9/11 AttacksHe was also spokesman for the socialist parliamentary group in the committees on immigration and emigration, the interior and national security.
