Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca

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Alejo Vidal-Quadras (2007)

Alejo Vidal-Quadras Roca (born May 20, 1945 in Barcelona , also known under the Catalan name form Aleix Vidal-Quadras ) is a Spanish politician of the conservative PP party and a member of the European Parliament .

Life

Vidal-Quadras studied atomic physics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona , where he received his doctorate with honors in 1975. He was then professor of atomic physics at the same university and visiting professor at the Center de Recherches Nucléaires in Strasbourg and at University College Dublin . In 1983 he was awarded the Spanish Nuclear Energy Agency Prize.

In the Catalan regional elections in 1980 he stood for the small party Solidaritat Catalana , but was not elected. In the regional elections in 1988, he moved for the conservative Partido Popular in the Catalan regional parliament. From 1990 to 1996 he was parliamentary group leader and president of the regional association of his party. He was also a member of the Barcelona City Council from 1991 to 1995. In the regional elections in 1992 and 1995, he ran as the top candidate of the PP, which is traditionally only weakly represented in Catalonia . Although he was able to improve their election results significantly and achieved the best result of the PP in Catalonia with 17 MPs in 1995, he still remained far behind the ruling party Convergència i Unió (CiU) under Jordi Pujol .

Vidal-Quadras has been a member of the Spain-wide PP party executive committee since 1993. From 1995 to 1999 he was a member of the Spanish Senate .

After the Spanish change of government in 1996 , when José María Aznar (PP) became Spanish Prime Minister with the help of the votes of CiU, Vidal-Quadras - who had strongly criticized Jordi Pujol and the CiU during his work in the Catalan parliament - withdrew from regional policy.

Instead won Vidal-Quadras in the 2009 European elections for the PP a seat in the European Parliament , where he is the fraction EPP-ED joined and Vice-President of Parliament was elected. He is also a member of the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy . In the 2009 European elections in Spain , he came fourth on his party's list and was re-elected.

In addition to his publications as a scholar, Vidal-Quadras wrote numerous articles for the right-wing conservative daily La Razón as well as several books on political topics. In April 2008 he was awarded the French Legion of Honor for his work in the European Parliament.

Vidal-Quadras is a second marriage and has three children.

Political positions

Alejo Vidal-Quadras is considered a member of the conservative wing of the PP, especially with regard to his rejection of regional nationalisms such as those found in Spain in Catalonia , the Basque Country and Galicia . In 1996 he criticized the cooperation between the PP government under José María Aznar and the Catalan nationalist party CiU . In 2008, at a party congress of the PP, he implemented a political strategy according to which the party should seek coalitions with the socialist party PSOE , which is also pan-Spanish , in order to avoid nationalist parties from participating in government. This had an impact after the Basque regional elections in 2009, after which the PP supported a minority government of the PSOE, which replaced the previous Basque nationalist PNV government.

Vidal-Quadras also rejects the language policy in Catalonia, which aims to equate the Catalan language with the Spanish language and in so doing uses some means of positive discrimination . In particular, he opposed compulsory schooling in Catalan and repeatedly spoke out in favor of parents' right to choose the language in which their child should be taught. To this end, Vidal-Quadras founded the Convivencia Cívica Catalana Association , which campaigns for a change in the Catalan language law.

In the 2009 European election campaign, Vidal-Quadras was at the center of controversy when the Catalan socialist party PSC published an election poster consisting only of the Internet address of the Spanish Wikipedia article on Vidal-Quadras. According to the PSC, the election poster should refer to Vidal-Quadras' political positions. In the article, Vidal-Quadras was referred to as “known for his hostility to all forms of Catalanism” at the time.

Vidal-Quadras campaigns intensively for the controversial People's Mojahedin Organization (MEK), an exile Iranian resistance group.

He is the first chairman of the European Committee "In the search of Justice (ISJ-ECDP)" which consists of various members of the European Parliament, as well as parliamentarians from France, Great Britain and Italy and some European lawyers and which is in favor of removing the MEK from the Has started the EU terror list and is currently calling for the MEK to be removed from the US terror list. As honorary president of the inter-parliamentary group “Friends of a Free Iran (FoFi)” of the European Parliament, he also supports the MEK's demand against the dissolution of the MEK base “ Camp Ashraf ” in Iraq.

EU parliamentarians

Vidal-Quadras is one of the Vice-Presidents of the European Parliament. He is a member of the Bureau of the European Parliament , the Committee on Industry, Research and Energy and the Delegation for relations with Iraq . He is a deputy in the Committee on Foreign Affairs and in the delegation in the parliamentary cooperation committees EU-Kazakhstan, EU-Kyrgyzstan and EU-Uzbekistan as well as for relations with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Mongolia.

Political publications

  • Cuestión de fondo (Editorial Montesinos, 1993).
  • ¿Qué es la derecha? (Editorial Destino, 1997).
  • En el fragor del bien y del mal (Espasa Calpe, 1997).
  • Amarás a tu tribu (Editorial Planeta, 1998).
  • La Constitución traicionada (Editorial Libros Libres, 2006).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ El País , May 22, 2009: PP: Alejo Vidal-Quadras ; El Periódico , June 25, 2008: Aquella cena Aznar-Pujol en el Majestic .
  2. ↑ El Imparcial , June 4, 2008: Alejo Vidal-Quadras recibe la más alta condecoración de Francia
  3. ↑ Libertad digital , June 17, 2008: El PP incorpora la enmienda Vidal Quadras que critica el nuevo rumbo del partido .
  4. ^ Illustration of the poster on the PSC homepage ( Memento from May 30, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved February 16, 2015.
  5. ↑ ncr-iran.org: Ashraf Camp and Attitudes towards Iran , accessed February 27, 2011
  6. ↑ scribd.com: In Search of Justice (ISJ): Formation of a European Community for de-listing the PMOI , accessed on February 27, 2011
  7. ↑ ncr-iran.org: emergency meeting of the "Friends of a Free Iran" with respect to Ashraf , access February 27, 2011
  8. ^ Website of the European Parliament
personal data
SURNAME Vidal-Quadras Roca, Alejo
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Vidal-Quadras Roca, Aleix (Catalan)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Spanish politician (PP), MEP
DATE OF BIRTH May 20, 1945
PLACE OF BIRTH Barcelona