Pablo Casado remodels his hard core. The leader of the PP has made changes in his direct team with the replacement of his hitherto chief of staff, Pablo Hispán, who is relegated to the party's international area; by Diego Sanjuanbenito, his friend from the New Generations of the PP in Madrid. Casado incorporates three people in total to his cabinet: in addition to Sanjuanbenito, José María Rotellar, as head of economic advice, and Miguel Ángel Quintanilla, as head of the constitutional area. He is Casado's third chief of staff since he became president of the party in 2018. The PP explains the remodeling in which reinforcement is sought in the face of the new stage of the party leading the polls, although according to PP sources Hispán had had friction with the general secretary of the PP, Teodoro García Egea.
Married relegates Hispán, but he has sought a new occupation for him without making him leave his closest team: he will be in charge of the international area, which will supervise the European reconstruction funds, and will also occupy the deputy foreign spokesperson in the popular parliamentary group, where he is already a deputy for Granada.
The position of chief of staff, the leader's trusted person, will now be held by Sanjuanbenito.
Autonomous deputy in Madrid, he started in politics in the Casado team in new generations of the PP and since then he has been a councilor, deputy mayor, delegate for the Environment and Mobility of the Madrid City Council and deputy minister of Health of the Community of Madrid.
Casado's new economic advisor, José María Rotellar, was Deputy Minister of Economy of the Community of Madrid, is a university professor and collaborator in various economic media. And Quintanilla, an expert on constitutional issues, has been an advisor to former presidents José María Aznar and Mariano Rajoy, of the Government of Aragon and also director of the Atlantic Institute of Government. Now he wrote most of Casado's speeches.
The PP explains that the changes have to do with the fact that the party is in the midst of organizing the national convention, "which will mean the reinforcement of its alternative project to the Government of Pedro Sánchez" at a time when a score of published polls they have placed him above the PSOE in voting intention. However, some sources also point to Hispán's recent disagreements with Casado's right-hand man, García Egea, and that is why for several weeks the PP leader has been looking for a way out for his chief of staff. Sanjuanbenito is Casado's third chief of staff in just three years: the first, as soon as he became president of the party, was Javier Fernández-Lasquetty, now a counselor to the Government of Isabel Díaz Ayuso, who was replaced in 2019 by Pablo Hispán.