If the Spanish Socialist government and its prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, are losing the battle of public opinion in the fight against the coronavirus, the minister of health, Salvador Illa, is clearly the target of all criticism: that of the opposition and also of his fellow government and party members, who continuously leak unflattering comments about the only member of the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) in the Spanish cabinet.
After the first phase, which he was able to overcome merely with declarations, his almost two weeks of management are receiving important reprimands. The most serious for failing to understand that the decentralisation of the health ministry, which is among the ones that gave the most powers to the autonomous regions, made the centralisation imposed on the purchase of health material completely unfeasible and has led to many hospitals struggling to maintain minimum security measures. It caused an emphatic reprimand from the healthcare sector, joined by the position of many scientists who are calling for a total lockdown of Spain.
Prominent international media outlets, from the French Le Figaro, to the UK's Financial Times, The Guardian or The Telegraph, the German audio-visual media or the main Swiss newspaper, Neuer Zürcher, have been critical of the Spanish government management, and a survey on the European edition of Spanish newspaper Politico contrasts the assessment of Giuseppe Conte or Emmanuel Macron in Italy and France with that of Sánchez in Spain, whose management is only approved by 40%, far from the 76% of the Italian prime minister.
As if anything was needed to further highlight the shortcomings of the Illa ministry's management, to cap it all rapid tests for the detection of the pandemic were purchased from a Chinese company, and proved to be defective. It was first revealed that they were 9,000 tests, then that they had been bought from a company that was not EC-approved and therefore not valid. While that was happening, it leaked that it was not 9,000 but 50,000 tests that were purchased by the Spanish ministry under the same conditions. When they tried to blame the complexity of the Chinese market, the embassy revealed that they had contacted a company that was not on the list provided by the Chinese authorities. This Friday afternoon, the number of defective tests was already up to 650,000. It is not expected to rise in the next few hours as it has in the last 24, but the scandal is already unstoppable politically speaking.
To a large extent, it all stems from a bad initial decision: to concentrate all power and leave the purchases of material in the hands of the ministry, when the autonomous regions are the most capable administration to do so, as has been the case for many years. When politics is managed by strictly technical decisions, we all pay the price.