• Politics Lobato's number two leaves Madrid to return to Moncloa in the Ministry of Housing

In the last year, the square metre of housing for sale in the Community of Madrid has risen by 3.1%. In the last two, 9.8%. Faced with this situation, the regional government has baptized this as "the housing legislature" and the PSOE of Madrid has also focused on the same problem following the slipstream of the Housing Law, approved in May, days before the regional elections of 28-M, and Moncloa's plans for Operation Camp. with the intention of building just over 10,000 homes on those lands.

The secretary general of the Madrid Socialists, Juan Lobato, has also found precisely in this matter an element of political impetus for the future. As EL MUNDO has been able to confirm, the leader of the PSOE-M has held talks over the last week with the Minister of Housing, Isabel Rodríguez, to ask that members of his team be included in the senior positions of his department. One of the names that was put on the table was that of Llanos Castellanos, number two in the Assembly and a profile of confidence of Pedro Sánchez, whom the Council of Ministers appointed yesterday as Undersecretary of State for Housing.

That was not the only profile that Lobato tried to include in the Ministry of Housing, but the Undersecretaries of State, unlike the Secretariats, require that the person appointed be an A1 level official. "Having these profiles of maximum confidence in politics is not easy at all," say PSOE-M sources, who stress that Housing should be "the ministry of the PSOE in Madrid" because this matter is "a total priority" for the capital during the current legislature.

In fact, Lobato's entourage highlights the influence of Madrid's socialists. In addition to the appointment of Llanos Castellanos, David Lucas, former mayor of Móstoles, who was already in the Moncloa dynamic and since yesterday has served as Secretary of State for Housing, and Iñaqui Carnicero, a childhood friend of Pedro Sánchez, at the head of the General Secretariat for Urban Agenda, Housing and Architecture, are included.

The inclusion of these PSOE-M positions has a double political purpose for Juan Lobato. First, to have close interlocutors that allow the leader of the Madrid socialists to press on major developments such as Operation Camp, which on the one hand mean moving forward with greater urgency these housing projects and having a management milestone as an electoral boost for the 2027 elections. And a second is to try to wear down the president of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso, in an issue where the regional government also seeks to move forward with plans such as Vive or Mi Primera Vivienda.

In exchange for this boost, the PSOE-M loses its deputy spokesperson in the Madrid Assembly just 11 months after its arrival in regional politics. Because Llanos Castellanos was appointed at the beginning of last January number two on the list of Juan Lobato's 28-M elections. And in recent months she has become one of the driving forces behind the political action of the leader of the Madrid socialists. In fact, she was in charge of directing the electoral campaign and organically formed the nucleus of power together with the Secretary of Organization, Marta Bernardo, and the also deputy speaker in Parliament, Jesús Celada.

Castellanos will thus return to the governmental dynamic she already held between 2018 and 2021 as secretary general of Territorial Coordination, president of Patrimonio Nacional - the first woman in the position - and deputy director of the Presidential Cabinet. After her departure, she was chosen by Ferraz as Secretary of Justice and Institutional Relations.

  • Juan Lobato
  • Isabel Rodriguez Garcia
  • Housing