This is the message, they say from the Government: sport matters so much to us, and we want to give it such a push, that we have placed a former Minister of Culture (José Manuel Rodríguez Uribes) at the head of the Secretary of State and directing anti-doping, an office fundamental in an Olympic year to ensure the international credibility of the country and its athletes, to a woman, Silvia Calzón (Seville, 1975), doctor and doctor in Economics, who, when Secretary of State for Health in the ministry of Salvador Illa, It was key in the organization of the 2020 confinement and in the implementation of the vaccination plan against covid.
Thus, to the sounds of a triumphant march, the crisis of CELAD, the anti-doping agency opened with the revelation of alleged irregularities in the management of its director, José Luis Terreros, detailed by an official in a complaint to the Ministry of Education. These irregularities in the processing of controls and in the management of results resulted in several unpunished positive cases and in various court rulings annulling sanctions. The complete story, and its media dissemination, alarmed the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) so much that its critical claim was key in the reaction of the Spanish Government. The text of the complaint is the basis of a report sent by the CSD to the Attorney General’s Office, which must decide whether it sees signs of a criminal offense or administrative infraction.
Meeting on Friday, the Governing Council of CELAD – 10 people under the presidency of Rodríguez Uribes, at the same time president of CELAD – approved (nine votes in favor, one abstention, that of the representative of the autonomous communities, Aragonese and Terreros) both the dismissal of its director since 2017 and the appointment of the new director.
Silvia Calzón is the sixth person to head the Spanish anti-doping agency, created in 2008 after the entry into force of the law that criminalizes doping. It is also the sixth different profile in a position that has seen pure politicians (the socialist Javier Martín del Burgo), a law professor (Ana Muñoz), a student of his at the University (Manuel Quintanar), a civil guard (Enrique Bastida) and a doctor (Terreros). Grassroots politician (she was a councilor for the PSOE in Utrera and remains a member of the socialist group of the Sevillian town), a doctor specializing in prevention and public health, an epidemiologist in the Andalusian Health Service and a doctor in economics with a master’s degree in health management and research on the relationship between social inequalities and health, Silvia Calzón coincided on the Illa Health team with the previous Secretary of State for Sports, Víctor Francos. Her great achievement, still applauded by those who know her management, was to get the 17 autonomous communities to agree on the vaccination plan against covid.