José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero President of the Government of Spain
Tenure	From April 17, 2004
Preceded by	José María Aznar
Succeeded by	Incumbent
Date of birth	August 4, 1960
Place of birth	Valladolid
Wife	Sonsoles Espinosa
Party	Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE)

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (August 4, 1960) is the 5th Prime Minister of the Spanish government since the restoration of democraty in 1978, following his party's victory in the March 14 Spanish general election. He was sworn in as president by King Juan Carlos on April 17, 2004. He has been General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since 2000.

His supporters define him as a capacious, good-natured, humble leader open to dialogue. His opponents, on the other hand, accuse him of being an unprepared, radical politician and of not having a serious program.

Rodríguez Zapatero was born in Valladolid but his family (with a long tradition of left-wing politics and affluence) was from León. His father was a prominent, successful lawyer and his grandfather was a Freemason and a Republican captain who was executed by Franco's side at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He grew up in Leon..

He attended his first political rally in Gijón in 1977, when Spain was about to hold its first democratic elections following the death of long-time dictator Francisco Franco. The speaker at the rally was the PSOE leader Felipe González, who became Prime Minister of Spain in 1982 and served until 1996 when he lost the election because of the generalized corruption, the terrible economical situation and the high unemployment rate (more than 20%). Rodríguez Zapatero joined the PSOE soon after that rally, when he was still under the legal age to do so. In 1977, the PSOE had not yet renounced Marxism as its ideological base (which happened in 1979). That could explain Zapatero's current foreign policy as President, abandoning Iraq and thus challenging George W. Bush's policy, and approaching extreme left-wing leaders such as Fidel Castro or the President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez).

Zapatero studied law in the University of Leon. He was not considered a brilliant student. By 1982 he headed the socialist youth organisation in his home province of León. Zapatero has had no other job besides being a politician. Although it has been said that he was a Law professor in León University, it takes several years to obtain the diplomas needed to be appointed professor in Spain. Any teaching activity (if any has ever existed) should be linked to an extra curricular activity addressed to students and without a professional component. In 1986, he became the youngest Member of Parliament in Spain when he won a seat representing the province of León. In 1988 he was elected to head the regional chapter of the socialist party in León, and in 1997 he was appointed to the Federal Executive Committee, the party's governing body.

In 2000, after the PSOE had lost its second successive election to José María Aznar's People's Party, Rodríguez Zapatero was elected party leader as the representative of a modernising faction of the party known as "Nueva Vía" or "New Way", which drew its inspiration from Tony Blair's "Third Way" politics. (The ideological differences between both leaders are clear especially regarding the Iraq War. Zapatero, after winning the 2004 election, appointed as defence minister a regional socialist leader - José Bono - who had insulted Mr. Blair publicly.) He won by a very small margin (fewer than 20 votes). He was the only MP among the candidates. All the Spanish opposition leaders have been MPs before winning the elections. That is very important in Spanish politics where electoral campaigns last for only 15 days and it is essential to be widely known long before they begin.

Zapatero's almost four years as an opposition leader were characterized by a clear radicalization of the Spanish political life. The acts of violence against the Popular Party increased greatly, especially in the months before and during the Iraq war (some of these incidents were carried out directly by Socialist politicians, such as elected mayors). Zapatero himself took part several times in public demonstrations where acts of vandalism were committed in a limited fashion by small groups.

Zapatero's major criticisms of the former Popular Party government before winning the 2004 elections included:

- The price of fuel. In 2000, there was a considerable increase in the cost of fossil fuels. He claimed that if he were the Prime Minister he would have lowered the taxes on fuel.

- The Mad Cow disease. In 2000, when he had just been elected leader of the Socialist Party he repeatedly criticized the Government's management of the crisis. That disease has caused dozens of deaths all over Europe though none in Spain (Dec. 2004).

- The PP Government's management of the crisis that started after the oil tanker 'Prestige' suffered an accident in international waters near Galicia (a region in the Northwestern tip of Spain). A Socialist politician declared soon after the catastrophe: "We have more than enough votes, if not, we will sink another boat". Yet the results of the Popular Party in the affected areas in the 2003 local elections (the first after the disaster) equaled or improved those obtained four years earlier in the previous elections.

- The reform of the education system promoted by the government affecting Universities and High Schools. Zapatero opposed any reform of the laws passed by the previous Socialist government. An important number of independent surveys have repeatedly shown a continuous degradation of the Spanish education system. Prestigious international magazines (such as Newsweek or The Economist) coincide in pointing out that the education system as one of the most important problems in Spain.

- The scheme to transfer water from the River Ebro to the irrigated areas in the South East of Spain. That scheme received support from, among others, the 80% of the affected farmers and the Socialist regional governments of regions such as Extremadura, Andalusia or Castilla-La Mancha which were the target of the scheme. It was also supported by some Socialist politicians when they were members of the former Socialist government back in the 90s (e.g. José Borrell, the current leader of the European Spanish Socialist Group and president of the European Parliament). The scheme was mainly contested by Zapatero, environmentalist groups, the Socialist regional government of Aragon and a part of the citizens of the areas from which water was to be transferred.

- The management of the crisis caused by the crash in Turkey of a plane carrying Spanish soldiers who were coming home from Afghanistan. The plane had been hired by an agency of the NATO and it could have been used by any other country. After the March elections it was proven that there had been serious irregularities when recognizing the bodies as there was an important number of mistakes in the identifications.

- In Iraq Zapatero decidedly opposed any action against the former Saddam Hussein's regime as he considered the invasio to be an illegal act. Opinion polls have shown that a clear majority of Spanish voters opposed the American led attack against Saddam's regime.

- Concerning the European Constitution, Zapatero criticized the Popular Party Government decision of trying to preserve the distribution of power agreed by the Nice treaty (December 2000) in the new European Constitution. Zapatero thought that Spain should accept a lesser share of power.

Zapatero's Socialist Party won the election on March 14 2004 after the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11. They were initially claimed by the government to be the work of Basque terrorist organization ETA. Later, evidence appeared that pointed out to Arab terrorists, confirming the suspicions of many Spaniards that the bombing occurred because of the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq.

It is a matter of continuous controversy if the attacks on March 11 did or did not change the electoral results. However, there exists some significant data. For example, the mail vote (mostly cast before the attack) followed a distribution far more similar to what was expected by opinion polls (that is, the Popular Party would have been the winner although it would have lost votes compared to the results in 2000). Also, if the results obtained on March 14 would have been the same than those of the European election three months later (when the Socialist Party had been governing for less than two months) the Socialist Party had also won with 162 seats but the Popular Party would have obtained 161 seats; a closer result than the real one where the Socialist Party won with 168 seats and the Popular Party obtained 148 seats.

Nowadays, it is generally accepted that a major factor in influencing the election result was the perception by many voters that the Popular Party government, by repeatedly saying that ETA was the main line in the investigation although not the only one, was really trying to hide from the Spanish people the people who were the real authors of the attack because they feared an electoral reaction against their foreign policy. So, any difference in the final result would have been caused by anger at government deception.

Zapatero himself has accused the Popular Party again and again of lying about who were those responsible for the attacks. On the other hand, Zapatero has been accused of telling the Spanish media that suicidal bombers had been found among the victims (although all the specialists that examined the bodies said they found no evidence pointing to that). When he was asked in December 2004 about the issue by the Parliamentary Investigative Committee created to find the truth about the attacks he declared that he did not "remember" what he had said .

The electoral result were defined by some Zapatero's opponents as showing weakness in the face of aggression and encouraging further attacks. That criticism has been especially strong in some foreign media, particularly in the USA and particularly from right-wing media sources. They have accused the Spanish people of supporting terrorism by voting for Zapatero's withdrawal of Iraqi troops who are supposedly fighting terrorism in Iraq. This argument is dismissed as absurd by most Spanish, as the Spanish people, over the last years, and in defiance of ETA, have been the most overtly anti-terrorist nation in Western Europe. Zapatero himself has consistently and firmly opposed and condemned terrorism, and especially against that committed by ETA.

Upon winning the election, one of Rodríguez Zapatero's first actions was to order the 1300 Spanish troops in Iraq back home. The scheduled return date coincided with the beginning of the European Election political campaign (what was not casual according to some critics, as the opposition to Aznar's Iraq policy had been high among Spaniards). The announcement of the withdrawal in Iraq coincided with a serious growth in the amount of terrorist abductions in Iraq intended to blackmail against the government of the victims' countries. Some months after making that decision, the Socialist Government agreed to increase the number of Spanish soldiers in Afghanistan and send troops to Haiti. It seems that one of the aims of these actions was the wish of the Spanish Government to show its willingness to spend resources on international missions it approved of. Opponents considered it an attempt to stop the international criticism the Socialist Government was receiving about its supposed appeasement of terrorists.

In the beginning of June, Zapatero's government voted in the UN Security Council in favor of a resolution that asked all countries to send troops to Iraq in order to fight against terrorism and help reconstruct the country.

Rodríguez Zapatero has been insistent that a PSOE government will not be "soft on terrorism" and will not allow regional nationalists to endanger Spanish unity. This issue became even more important in the elections, in the wake of the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks. The most important cause of his comment seems to have been his party deals in the Spanish National Parlament and the Catalan Regional Parlament with the Republican Left of Catalonia, a pro-indepedence Catalan party whose leader (Carod-Rovira) met some ETA terrorists secretly (what forced his resignation as a member of the regional Catalan government, led by a prominent Socialist politician). Although it is unknown what happened exactly in that meeting, according to some newspapers reports, Carod-Rovira promised to provide ETA with political support if the terrorist group did not act in Catalonia (some months after the meeting ETA announced a truce that affected only the Catalan territory). There has been a serious increase in the number of terrorist attacks since the Socialist victory (although without any victim until now, December 2004).

Zapatero has announced his intention to undertake limited reforms to the Spanish Constitution (but he has not made clear what he wants exactly to reform) and legalize same-sex marriage (including giving them adoption rights). That decision and the project of legalizing euthanasia (later withdrawn) together with the changes in the teaching of religion in school and the projects of modifying the financing scheme of the Catholic Church are the main factors in the growing tension between the Socialist government and the Roman Catholic Church.

In October 2004 Zapatero's government undertook the task of morally and legally rehabilitating those who were supressed during and after the Spanish Civil War, by instituting a Memory Commission chaired by Vice-president María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. Some accused him of deliberately limiting the commission's mandate to focussing on left-wing victims of right-wing oppression by excluding the incidents in Republican territory.

On the issue of Gibraltar, Zapatero initially took a strong line with the United Kingdom, complaining at Gibraltar's celebrations of three hundred years of independence from Spain and rejecting the Gibraltarians' requests for Spain to recognise its right to self-determination. Zapatero's government considered those celebrations a provocation that showed Britain's wish to make Zapatero "pay" for abandoning Spain's former allies in Iraq. (In this line, it can be mentioned the snub Zapatero suffered after Bush's victory in the 2004 American election. George W. Bush decided not to return Zapatero's congratulation phone call. The episode was widely reported in the national and international press. The White House denied firmly the intention of snubbing the Spanish prime minister.)

At the end of 2004, Zapatero decided to change his policy and to become the first Spanish prime minister to accept the participation of Gibraltar as a partner in the same level than Spain and the United Kingdom in the discussions both countries hold regularly about the colony. The decision has been criticized as a surrender of the Spanish rights to sovereignty over the British colony. Zapatero has justified it as a new way to solve the 300 hundred old problem.

Zapatero accepted the distribution of power proposed by countries such as Germany and France regarding the European Constitution, abandoning Poland, that had defended until then the same stance that the Popular Party government. After signing up the treaty in Rome together with other leaders, he decided to call for a referendum on it. It will be held in February 2005 and will be the first in Europe.

In December 2004, Zapatero, after attending the Parliamentary Investigative Committee about the March 11 terrorist attacks for 15 hours, decided to suspend his meeting with the Polish government, scheduled for the next day in Poland. He argued, literally, that he felt a little tired. Some days later Zapatero was scheduled to meet the Polish Prime Minister in an European summit to be held in Brussels. The airplane of the Polish leader suffered a curious delay and this meeting did not take place either.

Zapatero designed the first Spanish government ever to have the same number of male and female ministers. He has defined himself as a Feminist.

Married in 1990 with the daughter of a former Franco military officer Sonsoles Espinosa (a lawyer and opera singer) he is father of two girls, Laura (1993) and Alba (1995). He has been the first Spanish prime minister who has not shown his family to the public media. He is only fluent in Spanish and has some rough basic knowledge of English. Rodríguez Zapatero is a fan of the Barcelona football team..

External links

• Spanish Socialist Workers' Party

• Extended biography by CIDOB Foundation (in Spanish)

• Right-wing website highly critical of Rodríguez Zapatero

• Copy of the editorial of the Wall Street Journal "The Accidental Prime Minister"

See also

• History of Spain
• Politics of Spain
• Prime Minister of Spain

Preceded by: José María Aznar

Prime Minister of Spain 2004-present

Followed by: Present Incumbent