Mariano Rajoy
Prime Minister of Spain
Mariano Rajoy Brey ( born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish People's Party politician and is the Prime Minister of Spain as of 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.
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 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 June 11, 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,. 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. 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.
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 as representing a more conservative wing of the party, closer to Aznar. 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. In any case, the power struggle for succession created a tense situation for him and for the party.
On 30 January 2008, Rajoy received the support of Germany's Angela Merkel and France's Nicolas Sarkozy for the March 2008 general election.The PP was defeated in the general election, however, and Rajoy continued to lead his party in opposition.