Héctor Palencia, the early riser deputy: former president of basketball and squire of Mañueco

“Am I the first?” Héctor Palencia Rubio asked the workers of the Congress of Deputies, who this Monday effectively became the first deputy to come to collect his credentials. The PP parliamentarian for Ávila, who even made the wrong room as a rookie in the Lower House that he is, ironically assumed that arriving before anyone else has a simple explanation: “It is what living in Ávila has.”

And the truth is that if this man from Avila, a technical public works engineer born in 1977, is proud of having lived all his life in the Castilian-Leonese city, in whose City Council he took his first steps as a politician. It has already been said by someone who has had him as his right hand in the last year, Alfonso Fernández Mañueco. De Palencia stressed that his “passion for Ávila” supports him.

The president of Castilla y León exalted his chief of staff in the Board since May 2022 to number one in Congress for Ávila. The bet turned out well, because the popular ones of Ávila won the victory in this 23-J in 215 of the 248 municipalities of the province, including the capital.

With a discreet profile and a great worker in the shadows, Palencia likes to put into practice one of the advice that his political mentor gave him in his day: Teresian patience.. As Saint Teresa de Jesús -or de Ávila- would write, “patience achieves everything”. In the case of Héctor Palencia, the ticket to Congress has arrived more than a decade after his first foray into the world of politics.

Deputy Secretary of Organization of the PP of Castilla y León, Héctor Palencia made his debut in the Government of his community in 2019 as director of Local Administration, to become the president's chief of staff three years later. Until then, his political experience was directly linked to management in the Ávila City Council, where he made his debut as a councilor in 2011.. He was also deputy mayor for City Services, Tourism and Historical Heritage and coordinating councilor for Tourism and Commerce.

It was precisely his political activity as a councilor that forced him to put one of his great passions aside: basketball.. After more than 11 years as president of the Óbila Club de Basket, Palencia said goodbye in 2012 to the team he helped found and led to the third professional category (LEB Silver).. “If someone tells us then, at the age of 23, that we were players and some youngsters, that 11 years later we were going to be in professional basketball, we would not believe it,” Palencia said in his farewell to the club. Nor would he imagine at that time that another 11 years later he would make his debut as a deputy in Congress.

In his curriculum today, his award for the best sports leader from Avila stands out, along with the Police Merit Cross with a white badge. But, in addition, Héctor Palencia was manager of a shopping center in his city and carried out security coordination tasks in works of the Ministry of Public Works in the province of Ávila. Avila by flag.