Juanma Lamet Madrid

Madrid

Updated Sunday, February 18, 2024-22:55

  • 18-F Results of the Galicia elections 2024

  • Politics The PP sweeps Galicia and Sánchez leads the PSOE to disaster

Alfonso Rueda is a calm man, beyond political topics or cinematic word games. When the campaign went against him, with a storm of negative information for the PP, he became the

PPdeG

's hold on calm . “He has been very calm the entire time,” he says in his team. He received "pressure and messages of all kinds every day", both from outside and from within his party. But he avoided them like Don Tancredo avoids crooks. It's not that he has "elephant skin" like Merkel told his friend Rajoy, but in the

Xunta

his cachaça is legendary.

Born in

Pontevedra

in 1968, Alfonso Rueda has gone from being Alberto Núñez Feijóo's eternal

number two

to displaying his own profile without fanfare, under the radar of controversies and aware that his political wealth was pending endorsement by the Galicians in the urns. Little by little, he has been clearing his own profile. His maxim has been to shore up the inertia received and grease the powerful "electoral machinery" of the PPdeG. Not to change what works.

A PPdeG official who knows him well explains it like this: «In May 2022, when he succeeded Feijóo as president of the Xunta de Galicia, he was taking over the baton of a Government of which he was vice president and, therefore, he could not do so. a great amendment. He didn't even want to. But now he is expected to imprint his own style and sediment the change "in brush strokes." “He will enhance his own profile, as he has done so far, but more,” his team adds.

Biker and cyclist, on a personal level his maxim is the same as that of

Salvador Dalí

: "Everything modifies me, but nothing changes me." It is what the

popular

Galicians have baptized as the "Rueda style", which consists of "not doing anything that he did not do when he was not president, and continuing to do what he did before becoming president." The difficult normality of today's politicians is a bit like the difficult ease of the bullfighters of yesteryear. It was Rueda, by the way, who pushed Feijóo to turn the bullrings into a campaign fort. Above all, that of

Pontevedra

.

The 'Rueda style': "Not doing anything I didn't do when I wasn't president"

In addition to Rajoy, with whom he can be seen walking briskly through Pontevedra on the morning of the first day of each year, two of his best friends in politics are the mayors with whom he worked the most as local secretary:

José Manuel Cores Tourís

, from

Cambados

, and

César Mera

, from

A Cañiza

.

It was precisely at the local level where Rueda cut his political career. Local Administration Official, with national qualification and higher category, he was also secretary of

Cervantes

, and intervening secretary of the Commonwealth of

A Paradanta

. "That was a great school of politics," he said.

«It will enhance its own profile, as until now, but more»

The first professional responsibility he held in the field of the autonomous Administration was that of head of the cabinet of the Ministry of Justice, Interior and Labor Relations. In 2000 he was appointed general director of Local Administration of the Xunta de Galicia, a position he held until, in 2006, he was elected general secretary of the Popular Party of Galicia. In 2009 he debuted as a deputy of the Galician Parliament after running in the regional elections as a candidate for the province of Pontevedra. In March of that same year, he was appointed Minister of the Presidency, Public Administrations and Justice. Since then, he remained in the regional government.

In December 2012, he renewed his position as head of the same department and was named regional vice president. On May 14, 2022, he took office as president of the Xunta de Galicia.

His extensive career in the Xunta has given him great knowledge of how the regional administration works," they add. It is something that they always boast of in the PP: «As an expert in Public Administration, he was capable of anticipating problems that other parties did not see. His specialty is the gear of the Xunta: almost no one knows it like he does," they add.