SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE, 2 Jul. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The former Health Minister of the Canary Islands Government during the ‘Flower Pact’, Teresa Cruz Oval, expressed on Tuesday that she was made to feel “intimidated” by Román Rodríguez, who was the Vice President of the Executive at that time and is now the president of NC-BC.
“It felt as if I was an intruder in the Canary Islands Government. This feeling gradually evolved into intimidation and sabotage over eight months. If we had been colleagues, I would have undoubtedly filed a complaint against him as it was a continuous behaviour,” she stated in an interview with ‘Radio Club Tenerife’ as reported by Europa Press.
She emphasized that Rodríguez engaged in “intimidation and sabotage” to such an extent that sharing a position in the Government with him was “absolutely torturous”. “The unwarranted criticisms he directed towards me were completely excessive,” she highlighted.
She mentioned that from the very “beginning” of the term, it became his “obsession”, to the extent that he never gave her any rest and was dissatisfied with the improvement in “any” health indicators.
She even recounted that when the decision was made to quarantine a hotel in the south of Tenerife due to a case of Covid-19, the Vice President at that time exclaimed in a “loud” voice that the Health Minister had “ruined the economy of the Canary Islands.”
“A few weeks later, the entire world was under lockdown. And when you make a political error, it is fine to apologise. I was mistaken, but I found it challenging to admit my mistake. Instead, I persisted in my decisions that seemed somewhat irrational,” she remarked.
The former minister did not directly call Rodríguez a chauvinist but she did allude to sensing “machismo” in his conduct.
“I perceived him as a chauvinistic person. It felt as though I was just a decorative object,” she underlined, while condemning the “persistent fixation” on her performance.
“I never witnessed him targeting others in the same manner, and yet he persistently undermined the work of the minister in this field,” she expressed.
