Fernando Iglesias (Argentine politician)

Fernando Adolfo Iglesias
Born	(1957-05-14) May 14, 1957 Buenos Aires
Nationality	Argentine
Education	National University of Lomas de Zamora
Occupation	Politician
Years active	2007-present
Known for	National Deputy for Civic Coalition and Cambiamos

Fernando Adolfo Iglesias (born May 14, 1957 in Buenos Aires) is an Argentine journalist, writer, politician, and volleyball player. Currently he is a National Deputy in the Argentine Congress representing the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires. He is a member of the center-right Cambiemos coalition.

Personal life

In 1970, Fernando Iglesias joined the Trotskyist Socialist Party of the Workers (Spanish: Partido Socialista de los Trabajadores, abbrev. PST) [es], where he saw Juan Carlos Coral [es] and Nora Ciapponi run for president in the 1973 elections. He would later leave the PST and join the Front of Workers for Human Rights (Spanish: Frente de Trabajadores por los Derechos Humanos) to devote himself to human rights advocacy.

He attended the School of Competitive Sports (Spanish: Licenciado en Alto Rendimiento Deportivo) at the National University of Lomas de Zamora, where he trained to become a volleyball player. He moved to Italy post-graduation to play volleyball and resided there for several years. Iglesias returned to Argentina in the mid-1990s and started to work as a truck driver and teach languages and tango. In the meantime, he studied Journalism at the Taller Escuela Agencia [es], where he became interested in globalization. He had written as a columnist for various Argentine newspapers including La Nación, Clarín, and the magazine Noticias. He had also served as a freelance Buenos Aires correspondent for several European media outlets.

He later became a professor at the University of Business and Social Sciences [es], where he taught the Theory of Globalization and Trade Blocs (Spanish: Teoría de la Globalización y Bloques Regionales). He also taught at the Chair of International Governance (Spanish: la cátedra de Gobernabilidad Internacional del Doctorado de Sociología) at the University of Belgrano.

Political career

From October 2007 to December 2011, Iglesias served as a National Deputy for the center-right Civic Coalition party. A critic of Argentina’s media laws, Iglesias joined the Freedom of Expression Committee. He argued that previous reforms made to the media laws were far from sufficient and that the parliamentary debate was excessively short. In 2011, he pushed for a bill that would lead to the nationwide implementation of single ballot voting, which is meant to prevent ballot theft. He sponsored several bills that would see the creation a national registry of missing individuals, a plan to democratize the trade unions, a plan to oversee social work, and modifications to the civil code on issues like gender-motivated violence and religious liberty.

In 2017, a lawyer close to then-president Mauricio Macri invited Iglesias to join Macri’s Cambiamos (Change) front. Macri highly appreciated Iglesias’ passionate speeches in television debates and encouraged to run for the Chamber of Deputies, the lower house of the Argentine Congress. In the same year, Iglesias ended up running for National Deputy for Cambiamos and won with over 50% of the votes. He then joined the Commission of Social Security and Forecasting (Spanish: Comisión de Previsión y Seguridad Social).

Political positions

Iglesias is a firm critic of former Argentine presidents Néstor Kirchner and his wife Cristina Fernández de Kirchner. He opposed the South American Union's decision to appoint Néstor as the general secretary and accused Cristina of ruling a country of "mafiasos and hooligans" (Spanish: mafias y patotas).