The announcement by the Spanish minister of health, Carolina Darias San Sebastián, on a television programme, that a fourth dose of Covid vaccine would be administered in autumn "for the whole population", and the retraction of the message shortly afterwards, by the ministry itself, saying that it would only apply to those over 80, shows the height of the incompetence among some political leaders. It is not that there was an error in a public communication from the minister, which would be serious enough, but about something as simple as whether or not the fourth dose of the vaccine would be given, the minister did not have the faintest idea or, giving the benefit of the doubt, had revealed a decision which, for whatever reason, cannot be announced yet. I have long argued that the Pedro Sánchez government, whose members have mostly been in their respective portfolios for about 18 months, is insolvent.
Just look, for example, at the foreign minister, José Manuel Albares, a complete unknown who has only come to light because of his manifest incompetence in managing the crisis in North Africa and the serious conflict with Algeria, which has called him an arsonist, a pseudo-minister, a grotesque flagbearer or an amateur minister. Another example would be the fourth ranked of the four deputy prime ministers, who is also minister for the ecological transition and demographic challenge, Teresa Ribera, who, after announcing to us with great fanfare 48 hours ago, the reduction in the price of electricity due to the so-called "Iberian exception", one of the most oversold successes of the Spanish government, the price has risen again for the second day in a row without the ministry being able to provide accurate information on the subject. We could talk about other similar cases, but it would be an absurd exercise in redundancy.
How can you first come out and announce a fourth vaccine dose for the whole population and then correct yourself, with the minister thus becoming the protagonist of the farce? "Nothing to worry about, let's just play it down and move on to the next thing". The Spanish Wikipedia entry for Darias states that she has a law degree from Tenerife's University of La Laguna and references two articles whose headlines are, today, at the very least, debatable. The first translates to "A very well prepared minister" and the other is very similar: "A senior official skilled in dialogue." About her previous stint in the ministry of territorial policy and public administration nothing significant to put on her CV has been extracted, other than that she took part in that meeting of the never-properly-born dialogue table between Catalonia and Spain when Quim Torra was the president of the Generalitat.
All the signs are that after the failure of the PSOE in the Andalusian elections this Sunday, Pedro Sánchez will carry out an in-depth reshuffle of his government before the summer holidays. The idea would be to inject a minimum of political energy into the executive and send some ministers off to the municipal and autonomous elections in May next year. Sánchez will not have it easy, because if there has ever been a cabinet full of mediocrities, it is this one. They've had no successes, they've moved without any clear direction and they've thrown the left in front of a bus, making it possible for there to be a PP-Vox government in Spain. The expected help from the European funds, the manna that had to save Spain, is, partly, still to be awarded, in a way, due to incompetence. And also the new economic crisis is already here and the high inflation and the rise in risk premiums have already alerted the European Central Bank, well-used to the behaviour of countries like Spain, which has not yet emerged from the last crisis and already has the new one knocking at its door.