The economist who had proposed the Popular Party to the Government as the new director of the Bank of Spain has resigned six hours after his appointment became official. This is Antonio Cabrales appointed this Tuesday as a new advisor to the supervisory body by the Council of Ministers within an agreement with the PP.
However, Cabrales has reversed due to vertigo to a situation that he had not calibrated, according to what they assure EL MUNDO in his environment, and it is the media exposure and a political polarization that baffles him. The professor at the Carlos III University has not given importance to episodes from his past that bothered the PP and that he did not reveal during the selection process. This Madrid economist once signed manifestos in support of Clara Ponsatí, a fugitive from Justice after the illegal referendum on 1-O. And also another in solidarity with Andreu Mas-Colell, former Minister of Economy prosecuted by the Court of Auditors for alleged embezzlement of public money to promote the process abroad.
Cabrales is not a pro-independence party, but he did want to support both whom he met during his time as a professor at Pompeu Fabra University. One of his supporters has already been remembered by The Objective and Cabrales feared a serial in the media that he did not want to support.
This lightning resignation thus tarnishes one of the few agreements reached by the PP and the Government for the renewal of a State body and in which the main opposition party wanted to set an example with an irreproachable candidate.
The first vice president, Nadia Calviño, reconsidered at the beginning of the month her initial position, reluctant to leave any of the six positions on the council to the PP, despite the traditional distribution of seats between the government and the opposition, but ended up giving up one.
Thus began the search for a candidate on Génova street and it coincided with the launch of the PP of its so-called regeneration agenda, for which reason Alberto Núñez Feijóo wanted to exclude significant persons from the party from the appointment.
So much so that, according to sources familiar with the negotiation between the Ministry of Economy and the opposition, from Genoa they asked Cabrales emphatically if he had ever been a member of the PP or even if he had been a candidate, even if it was in some municipal election with the acronym . "Surely you are not one of us, right?" They came to ask him when he had reviewed his career without any political militancy, according to these sources.
In the PP they insist to this newspaper that the appointment was a sample of what Feijóo's appointments will be if he comes to power and it is to seek qualified and non-partisan profiles for institutions that must be independent such as the Bank of Spain.
Cabrales (Madrid, 1964) is a respected PhD in Economics from the University of California after graduating from the Complutense. He was awarded the Jaume I Economics Prize in 2021 and is currently a professor at the Carlos III University.
The big surprise in the ranks of the PP is that Cabrales signed the aforementioned manifestos of support for Clara Ponsatí, a fugitive from Justice, and Andreu Mas-Colell. On the other hand, in his official twitter account he does not frequent political comments, although he does make some ironic comments about Mariano Rajoy in 2016 for seeing him focused more on football than on the economy. Also another tweet in which he congratulates himself on having a book on the history of the UGT and the figure of Nicolás Redondo, but he has never been a member of that union nor does he deal with it at the University.
He is appreciated in the research service of the Bank of Spain and his appointment has had the full blessing of the Governor, Pablo Hernández de Cos. According to what they say in the PP, De Cos promised to take Cabrales to the executive commission of the Bank of Spain - the most important body of the leadership - within the balance pact of the party's general secretary, Cuca Gamarra, with Calviño. Thus, the other new counselor, who is Judith Arnal, until a month and a half ago, chief of staff of the First Vice President of the Government, Judith Arnal, was left out of the executive. In the PP they underline the difference between their choice of someone outside the party like Cabrales and that of Calviño: "He without complexes incorporates a subordinate he trusts." Arnal is a commercial technician for the State and she is not known to be militant either.
Cabrales had already made it clear to the PP on the morning of this Tuesday, before the appointment, that he was not attached to his new position and that he would offer his resignation if his appointment aroused controversy, because his main professional ambition is to contribute to the improvement of education in Spain. For now, the lesson of the unusual episode is the difficulty of selection in current Spanish politics.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
