Mariano Rajoy: Difference between revisions

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The Most Excellent Mariano Rajoy
Prime Minister of Spain
Incumbent
Assumed office 21 December 2011
Monarch	Juan Carlos I
Deputy	Soraya Sáenz de Santamaría
Preceded by	José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
Leader of the Opposition
In office 17 April 2004 – 21 December 2011
Prime Minister	José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
Preceded by	José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
Succeeded by	Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba
Minister of the Presidency
In office 9 July 2002 – 3 September 2003
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Juan José Lucas
Succeeded by	Javier Arenas
In office 27 April 2000 – 27 February 2001
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Francisco Álvarez Cascos
Succeeded by	Juan José Lucas
Minister of the Interior
In office 27 February 2001 – 9 July 2002
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Jaime Mayor Oreja
Succeeded by	Ángel Acebes
First Deputy Prime Minister of Spain
In office 27 April 2000 – 3 September 2003
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Francisco Álvarez Cascos
Succeeded by	Rodrigo Rato
Minister of Education and Culture
In office 20 January 1999 – 27 April 2000
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Esperanza Aguirre
Succeeded by	Pilar del Castillo (Education, Culture and Sport)
Minister of Public Administrations
In office 4 May 1996 – 20 January 1999
Prime Minister	José María Aznar
Preceded by	Joan Lerma
Succeeded by	Ángel Acebes
Member of the Congress of Deputies
Incumbent
Assumed office 14 March 2004
Constituency	Madrid
In office 22 June 1986 – 14 March 2004
Constituency	Pontevedra
Personal details
Born	Mariano Rajoy Brey (1955-03-27) 27 March 1955 (age 69) Santiago de Compostela, Spain
Political party	People's Party (1989–present)
Other political affiliations	People's Alliance (Before 1989)
Spouse	Elvira Fernández Balboa (1996–present)
Children	Mariano Juan
Residence	Palace of Moncloa
Alma mater	University of Santiago de Compostela
Signature
Website	Party website

Mariano Rajoy Brey (Spanish pronunciation: [maˈɾjano raˈxoi]; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish People's Party politician and the current Prime Minister of Spain, having served since 21 December 2011.

Under Prime Minister José María Aznar, Rajoy was Minister of Public Administration from 1996 to 1999 and Minister of Education from 1999 to 2000; he then served as Deputy Prime Minister from 2000 to 2003. Rajoy led the People's Party into the March 2004 general election, but that election was won by the opposition Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) in the aftermath of the 2004 Madrid train bombings. Subsequently Rajoy was Leader of the Opposition from 2004 to 2011.

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Born in Santiago de Compostela, Galicia, Rajoy graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela. At the age of 24, he passed the competitive examination required in Spain to enter into the civil service, becoming the youngest ever property registrar. Rajoy is the grandson of Enrique Rajoy Leloup, one of the drafters of the Statute of Autonomy of Galicia in 1932 that was removed from university teaching by the dictatorship to the early 50's and is the son of Mariano Rajoy Sobredo jurist, president of the Provincial Court Pontevedra, a city where he grew up. His mother was Olga Brey López, who died in 1993.

Law degree from the University of Santiago de Compostela, began preparing objections to the registrar of property in the final year and approved the following year. At 24 became the youngest registrar Spain. He was assigned to Padrón (La Coruña), in Villafranca del Bierzo (León) and Santa Pola (Alicante) which still holds. With the same age, Rajoy was wounded in the face following a traffic accident. Since then, always wears a beard to hide the scars of these injuries.

However, being a registrar of property not delivered to the young Rajoy to the late conscription, which was primarily concerned with cleaning up the stairs of the Captaincy General of Valencia, graduating at the end of 1980.

This section of a biography of a living person does not include any references or sources. Please help by adding reliable sources. Contentious material about living people that is unsourced or poorly sourced must be removed immediately. Find sources: "Mariano Rajoy" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (December 2011) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Rajoy started his political career in 1981, as a member of the right-wing party People's Alliance (AP), becoming a deputy in the inaugural legislature of the Galician Parliament. In 1982, he was appointed by Galician regional President, Antonio Rosón Pérez, as Minister of Institutional Relations of the Xunta de Galicia. On 11 June 1986, Rajoy was elected President of the Provincial Council of Pontevedra, a position he held until July 1991.

In the General Elections of 22 June 1986, he obtained a seat in the Congress of Deputies as the head of the AP's list for Pontevedra, although he resigned in November to take up the post of vice-president of the Xunta of Galicia following the resignation of Xosé Luis Barreiro and the rest of the ministers. He occupied this latter position until the end of September 1987.

When in 1989 the AP merged with other parties to form the People's Party (PP), with Manuel Fraga as its president, Rajoy was named a member of its National Executive Committee and delegate for Pontevedra. He was reelected to parliament in 1993. Before the PP's triumph in the 1996 elections, he was a PP-designated member of the "Commission of Parliamentary Control of the RTVE".

A long-time associate of José María Aznar, Rajoy made the move into national politics when Aznar became Prime Minister in 1996 with the support of Basque Nationalist Party (PNV), Convergence and Union (CiU) and the Canarian Coalition, serving as Minister of Public administration and Minister of Education and Culture in the first Aznar administration.

In 1996 he married a fellow Galician, Elvira Fernandez Balboa.

He managed the successful People's Party campaign in the 2000 elections. A grateful Aznar appointed him Deputy Prime Minister of the Spanish Government. In February 2001 he was named Minister of the Interior, after Jaime Mayor Oreja decided to run as head of the People's Party list in the 2001 Basque Elections.

On 30 August 2003 Aznar announced that he would retire from politics in the 2004 elections and proposed Rajoy as his successor. After the 14th Congress of the People's Party in October 2004 he became the new Chairman of the party, by then in the opposition, having lost the elections to the PSOE.

Three days before the 2004 general elections terrorist attacks occurred in Madrid on 11 March, which were initially blamed on ETA and later on Al-Qaeda. Aznar's government and Party leaders insisted on accusing the armed Basque separatist organisation ETA of the attacks, and on 13 March, Rajoy claimed to believe this because he was convinced of their will and capability for committing such crimes,.^[1] The government was accused of attempting to blame ETA for the attacks in order to stay on track to win the elections (as they were heavily favored to do), but then news broke that it was Al-Qaida, rather than ETA.

On 14 March 2004 the PSOE, under the leadership of José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, won the elections with a majority of 1,300,000 votes over the PP, and obtained 164 deputies, while the PP obtained 9,763,144 votes but 148 deputies, 35 less than they obtained in 2000.^[2] Rajoy was elected for the province of Madrid.

On 1 December 2005, Rajoy survived a helicopter accident, along with Madrid Regional Government President Esperanza Aguirre; he broke a finger in the accident.^[3]

Rajoy faced a serious situation within his party after receiving public pressure from the electorally successful Alberto Ruiz Gallardón (Madrid's Mayor) to be included in the PP lists for the March 2008 general election. Gallardón represents a more centrist sector within the party, whereas Rajoy, Angel Acebes and Eduardo Zaplana are widely accepted^[vague] as representing a more conservative wing of the party, closer to Aznar^{[citation needed]}. Rajoy's final decision was to leave Gallardón out of the list for those elections, an action which provoked concern about the alienation of potential PP voters. Some experts and newspapers even argued that it could cost Rajoy the elections^{[citation needed]}. In any case, the power struggle for succession created a tense situation for him and for the party.^[4]

On 30 January 2008, Rajoy received the support of Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy for the March 2008 general election.^[5][6] The PP was defeated in the general election, however, and Rajoy continued to lead his party in opposition.

His criticisms of the Zapatero administration were focused on what he perceived as:

• The derogation of ambitious plans of the previous executive
  • The Plan Hidrológico Nacional National Hydrological Plan
  • The LOCE Organic Law on the Quality of Education
• The alleged "unnecessary" statutory reforms, such as submitted in the Catalan, and Andalusian referendums with very high levels of abstention. According to Rajoy, some of those reforms constitute concealed changes of the autonomous communities towards a confederation, endangering the integrity of the State. He has said that if Zapatero wants to apply his view of Spain, it would be better if he proposed a reform of the Spanish Constitution, a reform that would need approval in a national referendum.
• The alleged weakness facing the peace process opened as a result of the permanent ceasefire declared by the organisation ETA in 2006, broken by the Barajas bombing and the arms robbery.^[specify]
• The introduction of a citizenship subject in the last years of secondary education (Educación para la Ciudadanía) of polemic content (whose opponents, counting the Catholic Church, and affiliated organisations, say is non-neutral and gives some left-wing political indoctrination). Rajoy announced its cancellation.
• The legalization of abortion until 14 weeks of pregnancy, a law that Mariano Rajoy sees as "criminal" and against the will of large sectors of the Spanish society.
• In Foreign policy
  • The alleged cold relations with United States and Poland.
  • The alliances with Venezuela and Hugo Chávez, Cuba and Castro and Bolivia and Evo Morales.
  • Immigration policy.

Following the general election held in 2011, Rajoy was elected Prime Minister by the Congress of Deputies on 21 December 2011.

Order of Charles III (Sep 12, 2003)

Honorary Doctorate by the Sergio Arboleda University in Bogota Colombia (Apr. 21, 2012).

• Personal page
• Extensive biography by CIDOB (in Spanish)

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