The magistrate of the Constitutional Court Luis Ortega stated that the institutional position occupied by chiefs of staff, "in a certain way privileged," contrasted "with the scarce opportunities for their work to be publicly recognized." A set of characteristics that, in his opinion, made "the cabinet an organ that simultaneously arouses curiosity and suspicion." Ortega made this reflection in 1991.
For decades, the men who whispered in the ears of the Prime Ministers remained anonymous. They made politics, set and dictated political information, but their names did not appear in the chronicles. The arrival of Pedro Sánchez at Moncloa and the election of Iván Redondo as his main guru changed this dynamic: Redondo was even nicknamed "the 23rd minister."
Never before had a chief of staff attracted so many headlines, but there was a chief of staff who, fifty years ago, managed to capture the media's attention: Carmen Díez de Rivera (1942-1999). Her status as a woman, the only one to date to have held the position, was the trigger for her media projection, but not the only characteristic that made her so attractive to the press of the Transition.
Five decades have passed since Adolfo Suárez appointed Díez de Rivera his right-hand woman in the Presidency. An aristocrat by birth marked by personal tragedy, but with firm progressive convictions, she remained in office for nine months. Neither politics, nor administration, nor the media are what they were then. On the occasion of the commemoration of her arrival at the post, DEMÓCRATA reconstructs her time at the head of Suárez's cabinet.
"Disorder in Moncloa"
Díez de Rivera occupied this privileged position between July 1976 and May 1977. She was on the front lines during the Law for Political Reform, the Atocha bombings, the legalization of parties, and the call for the first democratic elections after the dictatorship. Also during the move from Castellana 3, where the Presidency's headquarters were located, to the Moncloa complex.
She lived those months intensely, but also "suffered" them, as she reflected in her diaries, which after her death were published by her biographer Ana Romero in *Historia de Carmen* (2002). "Press chief, spokesperson, disorder in Moncloa. This is how I've been for eight months," Díez de Rivera wrote in March 1977.
“In Moncloa we still had no spokesperson, as in Castellana. I answered all the calls. After all, spokespersons are there to never say anything, right? Besides, the word had gotten out and everyone was calling me (…) if they asked me to take care of a prisoner, I took care of it,” she confessed to Romero in 1999, months before she died.
At that time, the structure of the cabinet and the Government in general was much more fragile. Of course, Díez de Rivera did not have the current resources, although she also did not perform all the functions that a chief of staff has today in the usual way.
Natalia Escalada worked with Suárez and with Leopoldo Calvo-Sotelo. At that time, Escalada was only separated by a glass door from the Chief of Staff's office. As she could observe, Díez de Riverta essentially had three tasks: maintaining contact with national politicians, foreign leaders, and the press. “She received many people, because she wanted to open the president to people with different ideas,” recalls Suárez's former personal assistant.
Regarding the relationship she forged with the press, Escalada recalls in conversation with DEMÓCRATA: “She was intelligent, she gave information to whomever she wanted about things that could be of interest, but she also knew how to measure not saying what she shouldn't."
Gossip and rumors
Díez de Rivera became a regular presence in the press of the Transition. She moved from the political chronicle pages to society pages and ended up being a recognizable figure for a large part of the Spanish population. To the point that, in many reports, they no longer even needed to mention that she was the head of the cabinet of the Presidency of the Government when they spoke of her. «Carmen and Dolores», titled ABC the chronicle about the return of La Pasionaria to Spain and the departure of Díez de Rivera from Moncloa.
Her profile had all the ingredients to be "attractive" to the media: young, beautiful, progressive woman, with high institutional responsibility and a private life of great interest. But paradoxically, only El Alcázar, a far-right newspaper very critical of the process towards democracy, publicly recognized her role during those months.
After her dismissal and with the will to criticize the Government for the presence of “a communist in Moncloa,” she attributed to Díez de Rivera her contribution to the legalization of the PCE: “Always behind the scenes, with a record as discreet as it was effective, Díez de Rivera has been a decisive contact for the recognition of the PCE.” As well as her intervention in the meeting between the King and Tierno Galván which, however, when it occurred, was attributed to a management by Suárez: “Carmen Díez de Rivera could have directly or indirectly motivated Tierno’s long interview with the King.”
The two sides of the coin
Although on numerous occasions she expressed her discomfort with media attention and the criticism she received, Díez de Rivera soon understood the power of the press and knew how to use it to her advantage. Some of her statements went beyond the official discourse of the Government and reflected a more accelerated vision of the Transition than that of Suárez himself.
But far from being interpreted as a challenge to the Presidency, those words were read as a declaration of intentions about the direction the reform process should take, which at the same time aroused much criticism of the Government and the president from the most conservative sectors.
The press, focused on reproducing both her statements and the reactions they provoked, barely noticed in its chronicles that this dynamic was deteriorating the relationship between Suárez and what had been his closest collaborator since the times when he was in charge of RTVE.
Wave of vindication
After her departure from the Presidency as a result of discrepancies with Suárez, Díez de Rivera made many political missteps, but already in a discreet second row. Her presence in the media was notably reduced and, as far as her social projection was concerned, her time in the Government gave way to the personal scandal that marked her life: discovering at 17 that her boyfriend was her brother and that she was the illegitimate daughter of Serrano Suñer, who was Franco's "cuñadísimo" (brother-in-law).
The reissue of the memoirs written by Ana Romero under the title The Triangle of the Transition: Carmen, Suárez and the King (2013), the production of the documentary I Want to Be Free (2014), by RTVE, and the play Carmen, Nothing of Anyone (2024) have fueled a current that, in recent years, has vindicated her figure. In this context, the posthumous award of the Encomienda de la Orden de Carlos III by the Sánchez Executive is also framed.