They were close friends, with almost parallel lives, since they met at the beginning of their political careers as advisers in Brussels. Then they stopped talking for years, after the drama of the Pedro Sanchez's dismissal in 2016 and the 2017 primaries, in which they opposed each other, and in 2021, as if nothing had happened, the president called Óscar López to his side again and they collaborated again as always. And now, according to various government sources, Sánchez is rewarding López's efforts during these three years in which he worked hard in one of the most difficult positions in La Moncloa, that of chief of staff, by giving him the gift that every politician hopes to be able to reach that level one day: being a minister.
In doing so, Sánchez also raises the political profile of the government. López is a veteran, seasoned in clashes with the PP, and it is likely that now that he is a minister, he will occupy much more space in the press to send messages and engage in political combat with the opposition, as Sánchez's trusted person. Different sources consulted estimate that, even if he leaves the day-to-day management of La Moncloa and does not lead the Cabinet, López will continue to be in the hard core of Sanchism and could become another unofficial spokesman who leads the political battle , as Óscar Puente does without having this position.
López is a black leg of the PSOE, who has occupied almost every possible position, from regional leader of Castilla y León to secretary of the Organization, through advisor, campaign manager, parliamentary spokesperson, negotiator with the PP on countless issues and finally The chief of staff at the most difficult timeafter a debacle in the 2021 Madrid elections that put the entire party on alert and marked the disgrace of Iván Redondo. With López, Sánchez experienced the difficult nights of losing power in the regional and municipal elections but also the successes in the 2023 general elections, which allowed him to continue in La Moncloa, and in the Catalan elections this year, which ended with Salvador. Illa in the Generalitat. López was always there, in the shadows but leading the campaigns, the messages, the speeches and the strategies.
López is an important protagonist in the recent history of the PSOE, always in the shadow of a leader but with a lot of influence behind the scenes. He was first the right-hand man of Pepe Blanco, number two in the game with José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. In this small group of Blanco's faithful were Antonio Hernando, today López's right-hand man at La Moncloa, and Sánchez himself, who closed an inseparable quartet in which Blanco was in charge and López was number two.
López was always an obedient party cadre who went wherever he was told, including an adventure leading the opposition in Castilla y León, where he never managed to defeat the all-powerful local PP. Later, he was a key collaborator of Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba, who had López and Hernando as squires for any type of operation. And later, the three friends – Sánchez, López, Hernando – met again when the current president made a leap that seemed impossible at the time and won the primaries against Eduardo Madina and became secretary general. Hernando was spokesman in Congress and López in the Senate, but both were the two key figures in the leader's entourage.
However, the dramatic impeachment process of Sánchez, on October 1, 2016, before a federal commission where everything had taken place, ended up definitively separating the three friends. Hernando continued as parliamentary spokesman but now under the orders of the director led by those who had dismissed Sánchez, and there he defended the abstention before Rajoy's investiture that Sánchez has always rejected and that was the origin of the palace coup that ended his term. López had less importance at that time and was removed from his position as spokesman in the Senate, but when the 2017 primaries arrived, in which Sánchez decided to run without the support of the leadership, he favored the candidacy of Patxi López and did not support his friend Sánchez, He won and did not spare any of those who had opposed him.
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López then fell into disgrace, and Hernando even more so. When he came to government in 2018, Sánchez formed a hard core with those who had supported him in the primaries – José Luis Ábalos, Carmen Calvo, Adriana Lastra, Santos Cerdán, Félix Bolaños – and Iván Redondo, and López gave him the consolation prize of managing the Paradores, without political profile, without touching real power. But in 2021, when Sánchez was very worried after the Madrid debacle and decided to change almost the entire government to try to reorient the situation, he dismissed Redondo and put López in his place. There, the relationship between the old friends returned as if nothing had happened, and López entered the hard core of all important decisions.
Always discreet, he never complained when he fell from grace and never showed his chest when he returned to power: he neither gave interviews nor sought public visibility, because he believed that a chief of staff should be in the shadows, contrary to what Redondo had done, with great exposure.
Thus, López has, with a new ministry about which little is known, the prize for a political career dedicated to the PSOE with the different leaders since 2000, when Zapatero won the Federal Congress. Now it is time to show the political profile that he has always had and that could be useful to a government that always needs people capable of making headlines, responding to the opposition and also serving as a shield for the president. The veteran López, as much a Madrid native as Sánchez and of the same generation (he is 51 years old) after a life in the shadows, in the opposition or in the party, finally enters the Council of Ministers with the clear intention of being a very visible face of the Government.