The Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez will announce at the beginning of the afternoon a reshuffle of his coalition government which brings together the socialists and the radical left of Podemos, announced this Saturday the presidency of the government.

Pedro Sánchez "is currently at the Zarzuela Palace in order to inform His Majesty the King of the composition of his new government", whose "main objective will be the economic and social recovery of the country", the government said in a statement. message to the media.

The message specifies that Pedro Sánchez was to announce the composition of his new team “from 2:00 pm” at the Moncloa Palace, seat of government.

According to the daily

El País

and the radio Cadena Ser, which revealed this Saturday the imminence of this reshuffle, the five ministers of Podemos will be kept in their posts, the reshuffle therefore only affecting some of the 17 portfolios held by members of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) led by Pedro Sánchez or personalities close to him.

First reshuffle since the investiture of January 2020

The number two in the government, socialist Carmen Calvo, Minister of the Presidency and Relations with Parliament, is expected to leave the government to be replaced as first vice-president by Nadia Calviño, current Minister of the Economy and number three of the executive, said

El País

and Cadena Ser, citing government sources. The daily, which qualifies the reshuffle as "large", also claims that Foreign Minister Arancha González Laya would quit her post.

This reshuffle will be the first since the inauguration of the Sánchez government in January 2020, except for the replacement this year of two resigning ministers.

It comes as the government has been severely weakened in recent months by various setbacks or controversies.

Three months ago, the executive had suffered a terrible snub during the regional elections in Madrid, a historic bastion of the right, where the PSOE and Podemos had suffered a rout against the Popular Party (PP, conservative), which had presented the ballot as a kind of referendum on government policy.

The PSOE in difficulty in the polls

More recently, the government's recent decision at the end of June to pardon the Catalan separatist leaders imprisoned following Catalonia's failed secession attempt in 2017 drew the disapproval of a large part of public opinion, according to several. polls, and supplied ammunition to the right-wing opposition. So much so that certain opinion polls now place the PP ahead of or on a par with the PSOE in the event of early legislative elections.

At the end of January, Pedro Sanchez had replaced his Minister of Health, Salvador Illa, whom he had chosen to lead the socialist campaign in the regional elections in Catalonia.

He then had to proceed at the end of March with a mini-reshuffle imposed by the sudden resignation of the government of the then leader of Podemos, Pablo Iglesias, who had thrown himself into the battle for the regional elections in Madrid, before abandoning the election. political life on the evening of the May 4 elections.

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