Diana Morant takes office as new Minister of Science

Diana Morant takes office as new Minister of Science
Crossbowmen

The new ministers have promised their positions before the king on Monday in an act in the Audience Hall of the Palacio de la Zarzuela and in the presence of the President of the Government, Pedro Sánchez.

An act held after the Official State Gazette has published the dismissal of the outgoing ministers, the appointment of their substitutes and the resulting structure of the new Executive after the changes decided by Sánchez last Saturday.

There have been twelve promises in total, those of the seven new ministers, those of the three vice-presidents when each one of them assumes a higher rank, that of Miquel Iceta when changing Territorial Policy for Culture and Sports, and that of María Jesús Montero to add Public Function to the Department of the Treasury.

The first to promise her position, after reading the corresponding decree of appointment, has been the new Minister of Justice, Pilar Llop, to, as required, attend the act as a notary public of the Kingdom from that moment.

Then the first vice president, Nadia Calviño; the second, Yolanda Díaz, and the third, Teresa Ribera, while the first of the new ministers was the head of Foreign Affairs, European Union and Cooperation, José Manuel Albares.

Albares have been followed, in this order, by Montero and the holders of Transport, Mobility and Urban Agenda, Raquel Sánchez; Education and Professional Training, Pilar Alegría; Presidency, Relations with the Courts and Democratic Memory, Félix Bolaños; Territorial Policy, Isabel Rodríguez, who will be the Government spokesperson; Iceta and Diana Morant, new Minister of Science and Innovation.

All of them, protected with masks, have read the usual formula of promise without introducing any change except in the mention of the Council of Ministers.

Yolanda Díaz has chosen to say “Council of Ministers”, Teresa Ribera for “Council of Ministers and Ministers” and Montero, Alegría and Morant have altered that order.

The first to introduce this variant of “Council of Ministers and Ministers” was the outgoing vice president Carmen Calvo, who used it when Sánchez’s first government was constituted in June 2018.

The promises of the ministers have been before a facsimile copy of the Constitution edited by the Cortes Generales in 1980 and opened by Title IV and Article 100, which determines that the ministers are appointed and removed by the king at the proposal of the Prime Minister.

Neither a Bible nor a crucifix has been placed next to the copy of the Constitution, an option that the Casa del Rey has offered since the reign of Felipe VI began.

Along with the king and Sánchez, the chief and the secretary general of the Casa del Rey, Jaime Alfonsín and Domingo Martínez Palomo, respectively, as well as the head of his Military Room, Emilio Juan Gracia, attended the event.

At the end of the promises, the king posed with the new ministers and Sánchez, and had an informal conversation with them.