The president of ATA and vice president of CEOE, Lorenzo Amor, admitted this Thursday that confidence in being able to find former minister and current president of the CEOE Foundation, Fátima Báñez, alive "is fading away". The former Employment minister was traveling aboard the Iryo train that yesterday was struck by a Renfe AVE in the province of Toledo.
"The hours go by and hope, although it is still there, is fading away," Amor noted, who stressed that, first thing in the morning, the business organization continues "without news" about the whereabouts of Fátima Báñez.
In a message circulated on its social media, the employers' association stated: "We continue without news of Fátima Báñez, president of the CEOE Foundation, who was traveling yesterday on one of the accident trains. We share the anguish of the families who are living through this terrible uncertainty and we send them all our encouragement and support".
The former minister occupied one of the seats on the Iryo that was hit yesterday by a Renfe AVE train between Los Yébenes and Urda (Toledo). Both trains had departed from Madrid bound for Seville, the city to which Báñez was heading to take part in a business event of the Andalusian employers' association.
Fátima Báñez has presided over the CEOE Foundation since July 2020, a responsibility she took on almost two years after leaving the Ministry of Employment.
Born in Huelva in 1967, she was Minister of Employment and Social Security from December 2011 until June 2018, during the Government of Mariano Rajoy.
She was at the head of the labor reform approved by the PP in 2012, a law heavily questioned by the unions and which led to the calling of a general strike to demand its repeal.
The former minister left politics in March 2019 to make the leap to the private sector. She is currently an independent director at Rovi and an outside director of Iberdrola Energía Internacional.