For me today is a good day for Spanish Sport. The Secretary of State for Sport, Cardinal, you have resigned before it was stopped. He was lucky, because in a country where politicians did not cover each other, he would have already been stopped and asked for responsibility for his incompetence and cover-up of the Spanish Federations that have given so much and continue to give up.

It is not a question of making wood from the fallen tree, for my animadversion is known to this character that we welcomed with hope, but who soon proved to be a person unable to perform the office, greater than his predecessor, Mr. Lissavesky, that is to say.

It was quite at the end of his term of office that Mr. Cardinal was concerned about the two Spanish Federations with more dissemination, leaving aside others with no minors and serious financial irregularities in proportion to their economic possibilities, aware of what was going on as is the case of the Spanish Federation of Vela, by making him aware of all the irregularities and plundering that were being committed within him and always looked the other way without even investigating.

The ultimate responsibility for what happened in these Spanish Federations and in particular in the one of Vela is of the CSD and therefore of the Secretary of State who is now responsible for the looting committed by Pombo and Rodríguez that has led this Federation to a situation of technical bankruptcy? What a complacent audit, for calling them "audits"! Always at the discretion of the payer, the CSD.

Let us hope that this time Mr. Minister of the industry is right in the appointment. We need the new EDS to be a capable and flexible person and, while not abrogating the entire and current sports legislation, at least modify it to allow each Spanish Federation to establish in its Statutes what is most appropriate to its Sports Discipline. That much care be taken of the destination of the subsidies to the Spanish Federations, but with much less interventionism in their activity.

Mr Minister, that it is not all Football or Basketball in this country, do not force us to submit to the regulations that they believe necessary for the regulation of these major disciplines, however much they are the most widely disseminated in Spain.

As I have already stated on some occasion, after the late Javier Gómez Navarro, and something his successor, Rafael Cortés Elvira, the Secretaries of State in general have been a disaster, whether from the PP or the PSOE, most of them with great ignorance of what is the Federated Sport. Let us not go that way, take advantage of the entry into the period that it claims to be "dialogue."

Arturo Delgado de Almeida
Former President of the RFEV, EUROSAF and former Vice President IYRU