Lilith Verstrynge, new Secretary of State to replace Enrique Santiago

The Secretary of Organization of Podemos, Lilith Verstrynge, will be the new Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda, according to La Información and confirmed by elDiario.es. She will replace the leader of the PCE, Enrique Santiago, who took office in the spring of 2021. The replacement, which reinforces the presence of Podemos in the Government, will take effect at the Council of Ministers next Tuesday.

PROFILE: Lilith Verstrynge, the third point of the trident of women that Podemos will lead together with Belarra and Montero

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Santiago has recently been re-elected Secretary General of the PCE and is one of the people closest to the Second Vice President and Minister of Labor, Yolanda Díaz, who assumed the leadership of United We Can after the departure of Pablo Iglesias in March 2021. Until then, the communist leader had developed in Congress a deaf work of underground negotiation with the parliamentary groups that support the coalition government.

The resignation of Iglesias led to changes in the Ministry of Social Rights. Ione Belarra, who was the Secretary of State for the 2030 Agenda of the then Vice President, assumed the role at the head of the department, in addition to the General Secretariat of Podemos. Enrique Santiago took over the vacancy.

After the fiasco of the Madrid elections in May of that year, Iglesias abandoned politics definitively. The bases of Podemos supported the General Secretariat with Belarra, who placed Lilith Verstrynge as Organization Secretary of the match.

Now, Santiago will recover his parliamentary job and Verstrynge will assume the Secretary of State with the aim of "feminizing" the department and giving it international projection, according to La Información. Verstrynge studied in France, where she in addition to a degree in International Relations from the Sorbonne Nouvelle University, where she also graduated in European Studies and International Relations. In addition, she has a master's degree in International Relations from the same university, based in Paris.

It was in the French capital where the birth of Podemos took him in 2014. There he joined the movement and, before coming to Spain, he worked for the parliamentary group in Brussels.