- Senior officials Calviño's husband signed his resignation hours after pressure on his wife in Parliament and the request for his file
- Paradores The Government assures that it acted under "the principle of merit" when it tried to sign Calviño's husband
Ignacio Manrique de Lara, husband of the first vice president of the Government, Nadia Calviño, has chosen to settle on his own after his failed attempt to become a director of the public company Patrimonio Nacional. "I have personal news, I start my new job as a digital strategy consultant," he reveals in his personal Linkedin profile.
He assures that he will work from as an "independent professional" in "consulting services for SaaS, Digital Marketing, Cloud, IaaS, CDN, Cybersecurity, online education and Digital Transformation". Becoming self-employed contrasts with the version he gave in writing to the president of National Heritage and former subordinate of Calviño, Ana de la Cueva, to resign from her controversial position. "I have decided to opt for other professional offers."
He now hopes to work for several companies and as a reference to get some to hire his consulting services points out this: "My solid background, knowledge and management experience in various digital markets, including the successful transformation of Bee Digital, provides me with an unparalleled ability and practical skills to support companies to succeed in developing and implementing winning digital strategies for their business." This formula of offering yourself as a freelancer can make it easier for companies that want to avoid controversy to hire, because a commercial contract with an external collaborator goes much more unnoticed than a signing on staff. It is a more discreet route.
Bee Digital is the company in which Manrique de Lara has worked as Marketing Director for the last five years, but he had been trying to leave it for some time to opt for public positions. He tried, for example, in 2021 to stop at the School of Industrial Organization, under the Ministry of Industry and, above all, last year at Patrimonio Nacional, where its president, Ana de la Cueva, came to award him a senior management contract as this newspaper reported on December 6.
As De la Cueva had previously been directly subordinate to Calviño in the Ministry of Economic Affairs, the signing aroused enormous controversy and strong criticism from the opposition. Calviño initially resisted criticism — "I have nothing to add," but eventually threw in the towel. Within three weeks of his official appointment, Manrique de Lara ended up resigning. On December 23, he communicated by letter to De la Cueva that he preferred not to enter National Heritage, for this aforementioned official reason of "opting for other professional offers".
However, January and February passed without him announcing that he had chosen any of those offers he claimed to have and, finally, he has now announced that he becomes a "freelancer".
Nor has it continued in BEE Digital where sources of the company told this newspaper that it had been relegated and removed from all contact with the Administration to avoid any problem of conflict of interest. It had become uncomfortable for this company controlled by Anglo-Saxon funds with no interest in being involved in scandals. "Our policy is that politically exposed people like him do not take key responsibilities," they told EL MUNDO in the company.
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- THE WORLD
- Nadia Calviño
- Carmen Calvo