One day, after having put his party on the offensive in health matters, launching the slogan that it is “a hoax” that the PP has privatized Andalusian healthcare and that, on the contrary, his government is the one that “has invested the most in public services”, the president of the Junta de Andalucía, Juan Manuel Moreno, appointed Nicolás Navarro Díaz, head of the Emergency Service and emergency doctor of the HLA University Hospital, as deputy minister of Health. Inmaculada de Granada, private medical center of the Asisa group. AS number two of the Ministry of Health will have the task of laying the foundations for the transformation of the Andalusian public health system, whose structure and organization are obsolete and require a new model, according to the conclusions reached by the popular baron after the screening crisis.
The fact that a doctor who works in a private hospital – a position that joins that of deputy mayor of Motril (59,867 inhabitants) and vice-president of the Provincial Council of Granada, according to his CV – is the one who will manage Andalusian public healthcare has aroused the suspicions of the unions and the opposition. “A true declaration of intent, after denying what is evident, the privatization of healthcare, Moreno Bonilla appoints someone who works in the private sector as deputy minister of Health,” said the first vice-president of the Government and candidate for the Council of the PSOE of Andalusia, María Jesús Montero in her X account.
The Andalusian government, however, ignores this circumstance. “He is an SAS doctor, on forced leave after taking on a public role, but with the aim of not losing his healthcare connection, he combined these tasks with private activity”, explained the spokesperson of the autonomous Executive, Carolina España, after the Government Council in which Navarro’s appointment was approved. “It’s about having the best in this team,” Spain underlined.
The new deputy minister of health will turn 46 next February and his motto on Instagram is: “Try it. With effort, you will achieve everything you set your sights on.” In addition to his motto, commitment is a requirement that he certainly applies to himself because, until Monday’s appointment, he combines three jobs that undoubtedly require a lot of commitment. In the field of local politics, until last Monday – when he resigned from his public roles – he was the first deputy mayor of the Motril municipal council, with responsibility for Economy and Finance, Coastal Development, Strategic Projects and New Technologies. This position means that, in the absence of the popular mayor, he assumes maximum responsibility. At the same time, in the Provincial Council of Granada, Navarro has until now held the role of first vice-president, spokesperson and deputy delegate of the Presidency and Strategic Projects. Finally, his official profile adds that he is “currently” Head of Emergencies and Emergency Doctor at the HLA Inmaculada University Hospital in Granada. Two political positions of great relevance and maximum trust number two and a professional position of great responsibility and, in principle, of intense dedication both in the role of doctor and person responsible for organizing the service. Before entering private medicine, Navarro worked as an emergency doctor at the Poniente University Hospital in El Ejido (Almería), a position from which, as the Council spokesperson pointed out, he is on leave.
The issue that raises the most doubts is, as María Ángeles Prieto, PSOE member of the Andalusian Parliament and spokesperson for Health, explains, that “the Ministry’s health decisions in the coming months will be taken by someone who will arrive as director of private healthcare”. For Prieto this means “the confirmation of Moreno Bonilla’s model, which will continue with the model of privatization of public healthcare. The day after Andalusians filled the streets demanding to strengthen public healthcare and stop privatization, the Andalusian president’s response was to put this man in charge of healthcare. Either they know nothing or this is absolute arrogance.”
It is not the first time that a private company and a public position appear mixed in the Ministry of Health of the Government of Andalusia. In April 2024, three months after resigning as deputy health minister, Miguel Ángel Guzmán was hired by the private insurer Asisa as medical director, although the Council ultimately determined that an incompatibility existed and that he could not take up his new role until after the summer. Guzmán joined the regional administration in 2019 as director of the SAS, after having been medical director of the Vithas Parque San Antonio Hospital in Málaga, and in 2022 he became deputy minister of Health, under Catalina García.
While carrying out both roles, the Ministry expanded the express contracting authorized during the pandemic almost a year after the rules that authorized it fell. Between 2020 and 2022, 21,668 emergency contracts worth 1.6 billion euros were signed. 43.67 million went to 11 centers owned by the HLA Group, in which Asisa decided in 2016 to group together the hospitals it managed, which bore the signature of Guzmán as director of SAS. During this period, impromptu renovation works of a concert with one of its clinics worth 5.2 million euros were also carried out.
“The system is not collapsing”
As deputy secretary of Health of the Granada PP, Navarro signed an opinion article in the newspaper a few weeks ago Ideal in which he recalled, following his party’s slogan of minimizing the extent of the screening crisis, that the problem only concerns “tests considered dubious and which require checks and/or complementary tests to complete the diagnosis. He then continued to support the solutions of the popular Andalusian president, who, according to him, after the screening crisis put the health system into operation “calling all those affected one by one, carrying out complementary tests seven days a week, tomorrow and after, 12 million euros more than the screening plan and a greater number of professionals… and put the regional administration at the service of those affected”. For Navarro, “neither the system has collapsed, nor is the public health system abandoned, nor will it be privatised”.
In another field other than health, exactly one year ago, Navarro Díaz published on his Facebook wall – now deleted – a comment in which he considered a broadcast of the Informa Semanal program, on TVE1, on La Desbandá, as an “advertorial” towards those who did not experience the war. Navarro explained that for “historical memory to be truly restorative,” the program had to broadcast another piece about who set fire to the Hill of the Virgin of the Cape of Motril or “who murdered the Augustinian and Capuchin martyrs.”
In Motril, the general secretary of the local PSOE and municipal spokesperson, Paco Sánchez Cantalejo, defines him as someone who “has always been a part-time politician. He has had and has great responsibilities in the Motril municipal council and in the deputation but has always been part-time in order to receive salaries from the private medicine he has practiced. He has never had the compatibility that should be required of the public employee. And it is this person who is put to defend public health, which combines his public activity with managerial positions in private healthcare”.
The unions have almost no reference to his activity as a doctor. “If there is or is the head of the emergency service in a private hospital it only means that he has experience as a service head, but not that he knows health management and administration”, explains Victorino Girela, head of the health area of Csif Andalucía. The union leader asks for news number two of Andalusian Healthcare “dialogue, active listening and decision-making capacity based on the political conviction of the value of strong and solvent public healthcare”. However, the dialogue with workers’ representatives does not seem to be its strong point, as underlined by CC OO sources, who state that the Motril municipal council “is one of the most anti-union”.
