Members of the new Spanish government took the oath of allegiance to the king and constitution on Monday.
The ceremony was held at the Royal Palace of Sarzuela in Madrid.
After reading the decrees appointing four vice-presidents and eighteen ministers signed by King Felipe VI and Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, participants in the ceremony took turns approaching the table on which the constitution was laid and pronouncing the text: “I promise to carry out my duties faithfully and honestly, faithfully to the King, to observe and enforce the Constitution as the fundamental law of the State, and to keep secret the deliberations of the Council of Ministers”. There was no Bible or crucifixion at the ceremony. The use of religious symbols was first abandoned by the previous socialist government during the oath of office in June 2018.
With the participation of the Spanish Socialist Workers Party and Unidas Podemos, the first coalition government since the country’s transition from dictatorship to democracy in the late 1970s, Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez announced to King Felipe VI on Sunday.
Later on Monday, there will be ceremonies to hand over portfolios to new ministers in the relevant agencies. On Tuesday, the first meeting of the new Council of Ministers will take place. One of the decisions will be the appointment of Dolores Delgado, the Attorney General, who held the post of Minister of Justice in the previous government.
Of the 22 members of the new Government (including Deputy Prime Ministers), eleven are men and eleven are women.
The left-wing Unidas Podemos Coalition received one of the four vice-premier positions (its leader, Pablo Iglesias, became Vice Prime Minister for Social Rights and Agenda 2030) as well as four ministerial portfolios (equality, labour, universities, consumption).
On January 7, the Congress of Deputies approved Sánchez as Prime Minister in the second round of voting with a minimum margin of votes. 167 deputies voted in favor, 165 against, 18 abstained. Sanchez was sworn in on January 8.
The approval of the government should put an end to a protracted political crisis in a country where, in the past year, two early elections have been held and the government has been acting since late April.