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A look at the baubles of power
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Santano spent more than 20 years at the head of the Irun City Council until he made the jump to the Spanish government two years ago, to one of the ministries that is most in the crosshairs of the autonomies: that of Transport. And, from the first moment, he became the most responsible for the negotiation of the transfer of Rodalies to the Generalitat, in a decision agreed between ERC and the PSOE.
He is number two in the portfolio led by fellow socialist Óscar Puente, who had to reshape a ministry touched by the shadow of suspicion during the time of José Luis Ábalos. Santano is a lawyer by training and a politician by profession. In 1983, aged just 18, he entered politics through the Basque Socialist Party and became the youngest councilor in Spain. From then until he came to the ministry he had been in the council of Irun (he only worked outside, for a private consultancy, for two years). “I have come as mayor to this ministry and sometimes I have not been very happy,” he acknowledged during his appointment. “I already anticipate that some of those who will come [al ministeri] they probably won’t be very happy about it,” he admitted straight away. Now he is precisely at this moment with Catalonia.
Among the many open files that the Basque has to solve, the train is probably the one that gives him the most headaches. His department not only has to promote the use of this infrastructure – it has even made a commitment with Brussels in exchange for not applying tolls for the time being – but it also has ahead of it the eternal execution of the Mediterranean corridor, as well as the development of the Atlantic axis. The stone in the shoe, however, is to negotiate face to face with the Generalitat, and in recent weeks he has completed a master’s degree. The chaos in Rodalies, after the fatal accident in Gelida, has become his main concern, which he will now have to continue managing from Catalonia.
