By David Barwick – FRANKFURT (Econostream) – Less than a month after we pointed out that European Central Bank Vice President Luis de Guindos’ praise for ex-Banco de España Governor Pablo Hernández de Cos kept getting fainter, the next step has arrived: the former no longer mentions the latter at all.

Asked by Spanish daily Expansión in an interview published Sunday about Spain’s prospects at the ECB after his departure from the Executive Board, de Guindos neither named de Cos nor promoted any particular Spanish presidential candidacy.

Instead, he focused on the broader point he has been moving toward for months: Spain should have a seat on the Executive Board, whether or not that seat is the presidency and whoever the candidate ultimately is.

The Spanish debate has often focused on de Cos, who remains a highly plausible contender to succeed ECB President Christine Lagarde. But de Guindos’ latest intervention reinforces the view that Spanish aspirations are larger than de Cos’ career.

“The important thing is to be represented on the Executive Board,” de Guindos said when asked whether Spain should aim for the ECB presidency.

That effectively relegates the presidency to a nice-to-have. Spain’s absence from the six-member Executive Board after de Guindos’ departure is the problem; de Cos is – implicitly – only one possible solution.

The omission of his name is unlikely to be accidental. In an interview with the departing Spanish vice president of the ECB about Spain’s future place at the institution, it would be odd for Expansión not to have raised the best-known Spanish name linked to the presidency, especially when the domestic debate is heating up, as we noted previously.

The subject may have been discouraged in advance, or a more specific exchange about de Cos may not have been approved for publication. If de Cos’ name was raised, de Guindos’ answer may nevertheless have ignored him. In each case, the takeaway from the public version of the interview is the same: Spain’s claim, not de Cos, is the issue.

As Expansión explicitly suggested, the weakness of Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez’s government or the corruption cases swirling around Sánchez could affect Spain’s effort to keep a place at the ECB. De Guindos responded that Spain is the Eurozone’s fourth-largest economy and that its presence on the Board is “both essential and fully justified.”

Of course, he could hardly have argued that Sánchez, politically discredited by the scandals surrounding his wife, brother, party apparatus and wider Socialist circle, and by Spain’s refusal to carry its weight on defense at a moment of acute European security pressure, was in a strong position to promote a Spanish national for a key European post.

Against that weak backdrop, the more prudent approach – and the one taken by de Guindos – is naturally to emphasize the national claim, preserve optionality and avoid making the entire effort dependent on one candidate and one office.

By no means are we writing de Cos off, but clearly the Spanish case continues to become less about him and more about Spain.

That makes Nadia Calviño particularly relevant. The European Investment Bank president is the other Spanish name regularly associated with future ECB Board vacancies, including the presidency. From Madrid’s point of view, the temptation is obvious: Calviño has European standing, is politically closer to Sánchez than de Cos, and would give Spain a female candidate at a time when the gender balance of the ECB’s top leadership will be hard to ignore.

De Guindos’ silence on de Cos may therefore simply be disciplined rather than outright hostile. A departing Spanish vice president has little reason to lock his country into one name, particularly when the presidency will be decided politically and other Executive Board openings may offer more realistic routes back into the institution.

We recall that in December, de Guindos praised de Cos warmly. In March, he praised him a bit less warmly while emphasizing the need for the Spanish government to play its hand well. In early May, the praise became clearly cooler and the Executive Board objective more explicit. Now, de Cos has disappeared, and the Board claim stands alone.

We don’t think this progression is coincidental. Spain may still want the presidency, and de Cos may still be part of the conversation. But the emerging Spanish priority is less about securing a particular professional outcome for de Cos than about ensuring that, after de Guindos, Spain does not remain outside the ECB’s Executive Board.