José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is a Spanish politician and member of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party. He was the Prime Minister of Spain being elected for two terms, in the 2004 and 2008 general elections. On 2 April 2011 he announced he would not stand for re-election in the 2011 general election and left office on 21 December 2011.
Among the main actions taken by the Zapatero administration were the withdrawal of Spanish troops from the Iraq war, the increase of Spanish troops in Afghanistan; the idea of an Alliance of Civilizations; the legalisation of same-sex marriage in Spain; reform of abortion law; a peace negotiation attempt with ETA; the end of ETA terrorism; increase of tobacco restrictions; and the reform of various autonomous statutes, particularly the Statute of Catalonia.
Biography
Family background and early life
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was born in Valladolid, Castile and León, to Juan Rodríguez y García-Lozano, a lawyer, and María de la Purificación Zapatero Valero. He grew up in León, where his family originated.His paternal grandfather, Juan Rodríguez y Lozano, was a captain in the Spanish Republican Army; he was executed by Francisco Franco's Nationalist forces a month into the Spanish Civil War, for refusing to fight with them. His whereabouts were revealed by fascists in Valladolid.
His maternal grandfather, Faustino Valentín Zapatero Ballesteros, was a paediatrician and middle class liberal. His maternal grandmother María de la Natividad Valero y Asensio was a conservative and died at age 103. Zapatero was born in Valladolid not only because of his mother's attachment to her family, who lived there, but also because of the medical profession of her father.
Zapatero has said that, as a youngster, "as I remember it, I used to participate in late night conversations with my father and brother about politics, law or literature". However, he did not get along very well with his father at times. Sources say that his father refused to let him work or take any part in his law firm, and this scarred him for life. He says that his family taught him to be tolerant, thoughtful, prudent and austere.
The memory of Zapatero's grandfather was also kept alive by a last will, handwritten 24 hours before facing the firing squad, and which can be considered a final declaration of principles. The will comprised six parts, the first three bestowing his possessions on his heirs; the fourth, in which he asked for a civil burial and, the fifth, in which he requested his family to forgive those who had tried and executed him and proclaiming his belief in the Supreme Being. In the sixth, Zapatero's grandfather asked his family to clear his name in the future as his creed consisted only in his "love for peace, for good and for improving the living conditions of the lower classes".
According to an Israeli newspaper, Maariv, by Zapatero's own statement: "My family, named Zapatero, is of Jewish descent", probably from a family of Marranos. He is an agnostic.
He studied law at the University of León, graduating in 1982. His performance as a student was above average before his pre-University year. According to his brother Juan: "He didn't study much but it made no difference, he continued successfully".
After graduating, Zapatero worked as a teaching assistant in constitutional law at the University of León until 1986. It was subsequently found that he had been appointed by his department without the usual selection process involving interviews and competitive examinations, which if true, constitutes a case of political favouritism. He has declared that the only activity that attracts him besides politics is teaching or, at most, academic research.
Rodríguez Zapatero met Sonsoles Espinosa in León in 1981. They married on 27 January 1990 and have two daughters named Laura and Alba.
Having received successive deferments because of his conditions as a university student and a teaching assistant, Zapatero did not fulfill the compulsory military service. As an MP he was finally exempted.
Entering politics
Zapatero attended his first political rally, organized by the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party in Gijón in 1976. Some political parties had been legal since 21 July 1976, but the PSOE was not legalized until February 1977. The speech of Felipe González, the PSOE leader and future Prime Minister of Spain, who took part in the rally, exerted an important influence on Zapatero. He said, among other things, that "the Socialists' goal was the seizure of power by the working class to transform the ownership of the means of production" and that "the PSOE was a revolutionary party but not revolutionarist or aventurist , as it defended the use of elections to come to power".Zapatero and his family had been traditionally attracted to the Communist Party as it was the only party really organized before Francisco Franco's death in 1975. But, after the famous political rally in Gijón, they, and especially Zapatero, started to believe that the Socialist Party was the most probable future for the Spanish left. At that time the Socialist Party was rebuilding its infrastructure in the province of León after having been outlawed following the Spanish Civil War.
In 1977, the year of the first democratic elections after Franco's death, Zapatero supported both the Communist and Socialist parties. He pasted posters of both parties.
He eventually joined the PSOE on 23 February 1979. The impression Felipe González had caused on him in 1976 played a fundamental role in his decision to join the party. In 1979, during the Congreso Extraordinario del PSOE, the PSOE had renounced Marxism as its ideological base. He said nothing about joining the party at home, because he was afraid his parents would discourage him, considering him too young to join a political party.
In 1982, Zapatero became head of the socialist youth organization in the province of León. In July 1982, he met Felipe González at the summer school "Jaime Vera" and suggested that he make a "left turn" in the PSOE political program for the General Election of October 1982. González answered advising him to abandon his conservative viewpoint.
Member of the Congress of Deputies
In 1986, he was elected to represent the province of León in the Cortes, becoming its youngest member after the election held on 20 June. He was number two on the PSOE list for León. In the following elections he was number one on the list. In the elections of 2004 he ran for Madrid as number one.Zapatero defined himself as a "left-wing conservative" at the time. He explained that he meant that, for sentimental reasons linked to his family, he came from the left that lost the Spanish Civil War and that what had happened between 1936 and 1939 and 1939–1975 had a very important significance for him. He further explained that the Spanish left needed to modernize and that "we are finding it difficult to accept the need for the Socialist Party to change many of its ideological parameters and overcome our own conservatism".
In 1988 he became Secretary General in León after a complex internal fight for power that ended a long period of division. In fact, before the provincial conference held that year, Ramón Rubial, then national president of the PSOE, had asked the party in León to foster unity. Zapatero was elected as Secretary General at that conference, leading to a period of stability.
In the 1980s and 1990s, the PSOE consisted of two factions: the Guerristas and the reformers. The first group had a stronger left-wing ideology whereas the second was more pragmatic. The division became wider after the General Election of 1993, the last election won by the PSOE before José María Aznar's victory in 1996, when the bad results exacerbated the internal conflicts. Zapatero never formally joined either of those two groups.
In 1993, the Socialist Federation of León suffered an important scandal. Some towns experienced unusually sharp increases in PSOE membership in a very short period of time. When some of the supposed new members were questioned by the press, they stated that they were unaware of their membership and that they did not live in the places where they were being registered by the party. It seems that some opponents of Zapatero in León, perhaps with the support of powerful Guerristas at the top of the Spanish Socialist Party wanted to increase their influence within it by increasing the number of members in the towns of León favorable to them. Their main aim would have been to take control of the Regional Socialist Section of Castilla y León in the conference to be held in 1994. Zapatero's support for the then Regional Secretary General, Jesús Quijano transformed him into the enemy of the Guerristas in the region as the FSL is the most important Provincial Section.
In May 1994 two papers, El País and Diario de León, published several articles that suggested irregularities in his appointment as a teaching assistant by the University of León and in his keeping the job until 1991. The suspicions of political favoritism were due to his having been directly appointed without a prior selection process open to other candidates. On 20 May 1994, he held a press conference where he rejected these accusations. Zapatero attributed to "ignorance" or "bad faith" the content of the articles and linked them to the internal fight for the job of Secretary General of the Regional Chapter.
In 1994, three regional conferences were held: All of them were finally won by Zapatero or his supporters.
The National Conference was won by the reformers, at that time strongly opposed to the Guerristas. That was positive for Zapatero as the list of bogus party members was revised again. Their number grew from 577 to almost 900.
Zapatero was finally reelected secretary general with 68% of the ballots in the 7th Regional Conference held in July 1994, following the removal of the false memberships.
In 1995, new regional and local elections were held. The results were bad for the PSOE in León as they lost four seats in the mayoralty of León and two seats in the regional parliament of Castilla-León. The results were influenced by the bad economic situation and the cases of corruption assailing the party. Zapatero had personally directed the electoral campaign.
In 1996, after the General Election, Zapatero kept his seat at the Congress of Deputies. The following year, Zapatero was again elected Secretary General of León and after the national conference held by the party that year he entered the National Executive.
The Association of Parliamentary Journalists awarded to Zapatero the "Diputado Revelación" prize in December 1999 for his activities as a member of the Congress of Deputies. From 1996 until 2000, his most conspicuous contributions as an MP were his vigorous opposition to the electrical protocol proposed by the government, being the PSOE spokesman in the Commission of Public Administration and probably his most important success as an MP: the passing of an amendment to the national budget of 2000 in November 1999 that increased the pensions of the non-professional soldiers who fought for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War of 1936–1939. They were made equal to those of the professional military. The initiative was defended by him in the name of the Parliamentary Socialist Group, proponent of the amendment.