With the polls blowing in favor ahead of July 23, the candidate for the general elections of the Popular Party (PP), Alberto Núñez-Feijóo, does not want to start distributing ministerial portfolios before knowing if he will be able to govern. He does not want to sell the bear’s skin before hunting it, but he is erring on prudence before an appointment in which the voter also seeks to know who will accompany him, what equipment he will have and what an Executive would be like under his command. Certainties, there are, for example, that he will maintain the double-headed Economy and Treasury, or that Juan Bravo will occupy a relevant role at the head of the treasury, he confessed to Aimar Bretos in La Ser.
Feijóo is leaving breadcrumbs in each public appearance before the media, but he deliberately seeks to protect his ministries in the campaign to avoid subjecting them to childish campaigns of the ‘Nadia or nobody’ style. Top secret until the time comes. “Not even the collar of my shirt knows it,” he snapped at Pablo Motos on Antena 3. “What I will tell you is that my goal is to appoint a vice president of the government and a minister of the Economy. And they are good, very good.” . He already knows who they will be.
Nothing is clear here, except that the Galician will look for a coup de effect with some galactic signing that excites the economic world. It is one of the questions that arises with recurrence under the microphone off. This need to change the climate of a legislature in which many businessmen and businesswomen have felt ignored, hated, caricatured and even insulted to varying degrees by different members of the government. Cases of Ferrovial -due to its internationalization plans- or Mercadona -for leading its sector- have left a halo of injustice among those who create jobs and contribute wealth to the Spanish economy.
To carry out the banner of the Ministry of Economy, “someone who knows economics” is needed, as Feijóo himself reminded Carlos Alsina on Onda Cero without being surprised by the platitude. Perhaps it is a subliminal criticism of the current government, which defends that the economic thing goes like a motorcycle for general astonishment. The list of frequent ministers of the PP inevitably leads us to think of those who hold public functions such as Luis de Guindos, vice president of the ECB, or Pablo Hernández de Cos, governor of the Bank of Spain. Even José Ignacio Goirigolzarri, who has dedicated his talent as a banker to public service since 2012 to clean up and resuscitate Bankia until its sale to Caixabank.
The need for a super manager
But for a year and a half there has been a name that has fit into that list that really knows about the economy, the real one, that which consists of producing and selling to pay salaries and taxes to cost the public sector and the Welfare State. It is none other than Pablo Isla, Feijóo’s former government partner during a brief stage 27 years ago in the second line of the first Government of José María Aznar. He was general director of Patrimonio del Estado (1996-1998) while the current leader of the PP was president of the National Institute of Health.
But the relationship of trust between the two has been forged for more than a decade in Galicia between confidences, confessions and friendship, one at the head of the Xunta and the other at Inditex (Zara), an undisputed success story in Spanish business history since its beginnings to its global expansion. Feijóo’s partner, Eva Cárdenas, was also one of the managers of Zara Home, one of the company’s successful business units. Although Isla took the reins of the company that was already listed on the stock market, under his management it became a world benchmark in its sector and an example of digital transformation until it became the largest Spanish e-commerce.
An expert in competitiveness, organization, management and leadership of teams, the Madrid executive would stand out above any other candidate in a selection process. Offers to lead other large multinationals after Inditex have not been lacking, but he has not taken a sabbatical either and has played a leading role in high-level teaching at IE University as president of its governing council. Unknown to the general public, Isla is internationally renowned as one of the best Spanish managers and it is only for this quality that he restores the illusion to anyone in view of how the Spanish public accounts are going.
With Pedro Sánchez, Nadia Calviño and María José Montero, public debt has skyrocketed since 2019 by almost 60,000 million annually, up to 270,000 million estimated for 2023 at the current growth rate. The combination of an unparalleled but still greater increase in income points to the sloppy syndrome.
The Government has also had extra help from European funds (140,000 million) after the request for financial aid raised to pay for the effects of the pandemic. It has also enjoyed the best and cheapest financing conditions in history with the ECB placing rates at 0% and buying Spanish public debt in a massive way. Some say that a government never had it easier from a financial point of view and managed it worse. In 2023, all those extraordinary conditions are disappearing and it will be the next government that has the imbalance fixed with a management expert.
