José Manuel Miñones Conde (A Coruña, 1972) will be the new Minister of Health. This was announced this morning by Pedro Sánchez in a brief appearance without questions and without the press from La Moncloa, where he announced the replacement of Carolina Darias at the head of the Health portfolio.
After two years as a Government delegate in Galicia, Miñones arrives at Health with training in the health field that will facilitate his work in his new portfolio and with experience at a political level.
Thus, in addition to being the highest representative of the Executive in the community since March 2021, he is also very knowledgeable about the operation of the administration thanks to his six years as mayor and another six as councilor in the Ames town of Coruña and his time as a member of the Mobility and Accessibility Commission of the Spanish Federation of Municipalities (FEMP).
The new Minister of Health is a party man. Member of the PSdeG Executive and executive head of municipal policy of the Galician National Committee in the province of A Coruña since October 2017, he enjoys the support of the current leader of the Galician socialists, Valentín González Formoso, whom he has supported to the detriment of his predecessor, Gonzalo Caballero.
He enjoys the utmost confidence of Pedro Sánchez, who chose him to replace the previous Government delegate in Galicia, Javier Losada, and in just two years at the head of the Government Delegation, he has become a firm defender of the policies of the Executive coalition in the region, with a profile halfway between manager and politician. During this stage he has received the support of ministers and the president himself in constant visits to the region.
Rare has been an intervention or public act in these two years in which it has not glossed the virtues of the Government and has shown a conciliatory character both in the party and with the rest of the Administrations. In spite of everything, he has not hesitated to make ugly the confrontational strategy of the PP against the central Executive from the Xunta de Galicia.
Thus, he has reproached the president, Alfonso Rueda, for his “daily speech” based “simply on the confrontation with the central government” and has blamed him for the fact that the Xunta “only generates noise and confrontation” on issues such as infrastructures or the Law on Costas and that “it tries to sell the government’s own initiatives, implement measures that have no support and make noise for electoral profitability.”
In any case, his personal relationship with Alfonso Rueda has always been cordial and in various appearances he has stressed that “there is an institutional relationship” between the Xunta and the Government and that his relationship with the Galician president “is good.”
Miñones has a degree in Pharmacy from the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC), where he obtained a doctorate in the same specialty with an extraordinary award. He has been a researcher of the regional program “Parga Pondal” from 2005 to 2011, as well as a contracted professor in the Department of Chemistry and Physics with teaching at the Faculty of Pharmacy of the USC.
At the University of Santiago he has been part of the Research Group on Physical Chemistry of surfaces, biointerfaces and colloidal systems of pharmaceutical interest. As a researcher, he is the author of 84 scientific publications.
The new minister entered active politics in October 2009 as a councilor in Ames, he was spokesman for the municipality’s socialist group between February 2012 and the 2015 municipal elections and that year he was a candidate for mayor and elected councilor.
The Galician PSOE, beyond its municipal roots, is devoid of leadership. Miñones has already shown himself to be a potential PSG strongman as a government delegate in a community where first the tides and now the BNG have displaced the Socialists to third position.
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