The Government has approved a Royal Decree that changes the parliamentary majorities necessary to elect the members of the RTVE board of directors in the face of the corporation’s blockade. If the composition of the governing body is not approved by two-thirds of the Cortes, it could be approved by an absolute majority. The composition of the current board of directors of RTVE, whose mandate has expired since April and maintains a vacancy that corresponded to the PSOE since the resignation as president of José Manuel Pérez Tornero in September 2022, is the result of the agreement reached The PSOE, the PP, Unidas Podemos and the PNV arrived the previous year.
During the presentation of the Royal Decree at the press conference after the Council of Ministers, the Minister for Digital Transformation, Óscar López, assured that the consequence of the approval of this decree will be that “the next board of directors of RTVE will be the most plural in history.” López added that the mandate of the new councilors, who will be 15 instead of the 10 currently provided for by law, will have a mandate for six years without partial renewal, and may be elected only once. A regime of incompatibilities will also be established for the members of the corporation’s governing body.
The last episode of the institutional blockade in which RTVE is mired took place on September 24, when its interim president, Concepción Cascajosa, adjourned the plenary session of the board of directors that was going to decide her continuity at the head of the corporation. Cascajosa then argued that the absence of Elena Sánchez, his predecessor in office, prevented a secret vote on the extension of his “initial six-month term,” as several councilors had requested. And the session was suspended to request reports on said vote without a new meeting having been called again. The board of directors must meet by law every month and no call has been made to hold this ordinary plenary session.
Cascajosa became interim president of the Spanish public media corporation, which has more than 6,500 workers and an annual budget of 1.2 billion, after stormy plenary sessions of the governing body on March 26 and 27. Those meetings took place during the controversial negotiations for the signing of comedian David Broncano, which led to the dismissal of Elena Sánchez, Cascajosa’s predecessor in the interim presidency; from the general content director, José Pablo López; and the general secretary of the board of directors, Alfonso Morales. These last two positions have not been filled since then, with the absence of editorial direction resulting from the lack of a person in charge of general content management. And there are more vacant senior management positions given the situation of blockade to which the governing body of the corporation has been forced.
The formidable crisis due to the recent cancellation of the exams after a leak of the exam has been the latest episode in a succession of scandals that have shaken the corporation in recent times. Its governance has been affected since the resignation of José Manuel Pérez Tornero in September 2022, after which there have been two interim presidencies and a period of instability among the staff, many of whose members agree in expressing the lack of definition towards specific objectives and Above all, an idea of how and what a Spanish public media corporation should be in such an uncertain and changing time.
