Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (2010)

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (born July 28, 1951 in Solares , Cantabria ; † May 10, 2019 in Majadahonda near Madrid ) was a Spanish politician and from February 4, 2012 to July 26, 2014 Secretary General of the socialist PSOE . From April 2006 to July 2011 he was Minister of the Interior in the Zapatero cabinet . In the 1990s he was under Felipe González Education and Science Minister (1992–1993) and Presidential Minister (1993–1996, corresponds to the German Chancellery Minister).

Pérez Rubalcaba was the top candidate for the Social Democrats in the Spanish parliamentary elections on November 30, 2011 , in which his party won just 110 out of 350 seats, the worst result in its history.

Life

Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba joined the PSOE in 1974, which was still banned at the time, a year before the death of the dictator Francisco Franco , and was initially involved in education and research policy. In 1988 he was appointed State Secretary for Education under the first PSOE Prime Minister Felipe González , and in 1992 Minister for Education and Science.

After the Spanish elections of 1993, in which he was elected to the Spanish parliament for the first time , Rubalcaba was given the newly created portfolio of “Minister for the Presidency and Relations with Parliament”, which roughly corresponds to the German head of the Federal Chancellery.

After the PSOE's election defeat against the conservative PP in 1996, Rubalcaba was elected his party's communications officer in 1997. In the negotiations that followed a ceasefire announcement by the Basque terrorist organization ETA in 1999 , he became the main contact in the PSOE for the José María Aznar government . At the party congress in 2000, at which José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was elected as the new general secretary of the PSOE, Rubalcaba became a member of the party executive committee. After ETA broke the armistice, in December 2000 he negotiated the “Pact for Freedoms and Against Terrorism” (so-called “Anti-Terror Pact”) between the PSOE and PP for his party.

Before the parliamentary elections on March 14, 2004, Rubalcaba was responsible for the PSOE's campaign strategy. When, after the Madrid train attacks of March 11, 2004, a crowd gathered in front of the party headquarters of the PP on the day before the elections and demanded that Aznar be voted out, the PP accused him of having organized this unauthorized demonstration; the accusation could not be proven. After the PSOE's election victory on March 14, Rubalcaba became chairman of the PSOE parliamentary group.

After ETA announced a ceasefire on March 26, 2006, Pérez Rubalcaba, experienced in anti-terrorism, was appointed Minister of the Interior on April 11, 2006. In this position he replaced José Antonio Alonso Suárez , who took over the defense department.

Rubalcaba was responsible for the attempt by the Spanish government to achieve an end to terrorism through a dialogue with ETA. These attempts were supported by most of the Spanish parties, but met with strong opposition from the PP, whose MPs repeatedly criticized him. After ETA broke the ceasefire in December 2006, the government ended the dialogue and intensified police actions against the terrorist organization, which led to several successful arrests within a short period of time.

Although Rubalcaba had initially planned to retire from active politics for family reasons after the Spanish parliamentary elections in 2008 , he finally took over the Ministry of the Interior again - mainly at the insistence of the Basque Socialists. In October 2010, he also became the first deputy head of government in a cabinet reshuffle, succeeding María Teresa Fernández de la Vega .

After Zapatero announced in April 2011 that he would not be available again for the office of prime minister in the next elections, which would have been due to a regular end of the legislative period in March 2012, the PSOE named Pérez Rubalcaba as its top candidate for the parliamentary elections in 2012 In July 2011 he resigned from all government offices in order to devote himself to this task. On July 29, 2011, Prime Minister Zapatero announced early new elections , which took place on November 20, 2011 and were lost for the PSOE.

After the elections, Pérez Rubalcaba took over the chairmanship of the parliamentary group and was elected on February 4, 2012 at the 38th party congress of the PSOE as the successor to Zapatero in the office of general secretary of the party, whereby he prevailed only with a narrow majority against his competitor Carme Chacón . In mid-2014 he announced his withdrawal from politics, his successor as PSOE General Secretary was Pedro Sánchez .

Pérez Rubalcaba died in May 2019 in a hospital in Majadahonda after suffering a stroke two days earlier .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Decepción y tristeza en el PSOE ante el peor resultado de su historia. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved November 21, 2011 (Spanish).  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
2. ↑ Los socialistas vascos presionan a Rubalcaba para que siga en Interior ( El País , March 27, 2008).

Web links

Commons : Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikiquote: Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba  - Quotes (Spanish)

• Curriculum vitae on the website of the Spanish Ministry of the Interior ( Memento of October 7, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) (in Spanish)
• Juan José Millás: "Rubalcaba privado" , interview in El País , June 27, 2010 (Spanish)
• Der Spiegel : Portrait (November 2011)

Note: This is a Spanish name . Pérez Rubalcaba is thus the family name. Alfredo Rubalcaba is a common abbreviated form .