José Blanco López

José Blanco López

José Blanco López , known by the nickname Pepe Blanco (born February 6, 1962 in Palas de Rey , Lugo province ), is a Spanish politician ( PSOE ). From April 2009 to December 2011 he was Minister for Infrastructure Promotion ( Fomento , roughly equivalent to the German Ministry of Transport) in the Zapatero cabinet .

After graduating from high school in Lugo , Blanco joined the Partido Socialista Popular in 1978 , a small socialist party led by the left-wing intellectual Enrique Tierno Galván . After the union of this party with the PSOE in the same year, Blanco took over various offices in this party, initially at the regional level in Galicia . In the Spanish parliamentary elections in 1989 he was elected to the Spanish Senate , of which he was a member until 1996. In the 1996 elections he was given a mandate for the Congress of Deputies (the lower house of the Spanish Parliament), of which he has been a member since then.

After the PSOE's electoral defeat in 2000 and the resignation of its general secretary and top candidate Joaquín Almunia , Blanco, along with Jesús Caldera , Trinidad Jiménez and Juan Fernando López Aguilar , was one of the representatives of the so-called New Path who supported the surprise candidacy of José Luis Rodríguez Zapateros as General Secretary of the party supported (an office roughly equivalent to that of a German party leader ). Blanco took on important tasks in coordinating the group and gathering supporters at the 35th PSOE congress. After Zapatero's narrow electoral success, Blanco was proposed by him as secretary for the party organization. He held this office (which roughly corresponds to that of general secretary of a German party) from 2000 to 2008. As of 2008, Blanco was PSOE Vice Secretary-General, an office that had previously remained vacant since 1996. He was thus the undisputed "number 2" in the PSOE.

On April 7, 2009, Zapatero, who was elected head of government in 2004, announced that Blancos would be appointed Minister of Infrastructure as the successor to Magdalena Álvarez as part of a comprehensive cabinet reshuffle . For the first time, Blanco took on a post in the Spanish government in addition to his party positions, which he held until 2011.

In the 2014 European elections , Blanco was elected to the European Parliament .

José Blanco is married and has two children.

Web links

• José Blanco's curriculum vitae on the homepage of the Spanish Congress of Representatives (in Spanish)
• José Blanco's Personal Blog (in Spanish)
• Entry for José Blanco López in the European Parliament 's database of deputies