José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

Zapatero is a redirect to this article. Further meanings are listed under Zapatero (disambiguation) .

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (2011)

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero [ xo'se 'lwis roðɾiɣeθ θapateɾo ] listen ^{? / i} (born August 4, 1960 in Valladolid , Spain ) is a Spanish politician ( PSOE ). He was Prime Minister of Spain from April 17, 2004 to December 20, 2011, and Chairman of the PSOE from July 2000 to February 2012.

Life

origin

Rodríguez Zapatero comes from a family with very different political orientations. While his paternal grandfather, the army captain Juan Rodríguez Lozano, was arrested early in the Spanish Civil War in 1936 and then executed for sympathizing with the socialists, his maternal grandfather, the doctor Faustino Zapatero Ballesteros, came to terms with the Franco regime , in which he had a successful academic career.

Zapatero studied law at the University of León and graduated in 1982. Subsequently, he worked as an assistant for constitutional law at the 'Universidad de León' until 1986.

Political commitment

Zapatero (fourth from left) at the Congreso de los Diputados in May 1988

Zapatero first took part in a political election campaign in Gijón in 1977, when Spain was preparing for the first democratic elections since the death of dictator Francisco Franco ( transition in Spain ). The speaker at this campaign event was PSOE chairman Felipe González . Later, from 1982 to 1996, he was Prime Minister of Spain. Zapatero joined the PSOE a short time later, according to his own admission, because he was very impressed by González's appearance in the election.

From 1982 Zapatero headed the youth organization of the PSOE in his home province of León . In the election on June 22, 1986, he became the youngest member of the Spanish Chamber of Deputies . In 1988 he became PSOE chairman in the province of León. In 1997 he was promoted to the board of the Spanish Socialists and was finally elected party chairman of the PSOE in a struggle vote in July 2000. He had this office until XXXVIII. PSOE party conference (3-5 February 2012); he was succeeded by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba .

Government presidency

In the Spanish parliamentary elections on March 14, 2004, which took place shortly after the train attacks in Madrid on March 11, 2004 , the PSOE, which he cited as the top candidate, surprisingly emerged victorious. With 164 out of a total of 350 seats, the PSOE just missed an absolute majority. In its constituent session on April 16, 2004, the Spanish Chamber of Deputies elected Zapatero as the new Prime Minister with 183 out of 350 votes. He received the votes of his party, the Izquierda Unida and some nationalist regional parties .

In the parliamentary elections on March 10, 2008 , the PSOE received 169 of the 350 seats in the Chamber of Deputies. This again just missed the absolute majority. On April 11, 2008, he was re-elected Prime Minister with only the votes of his party in the second ballot. In the first ballot two days earlier, which would have required an absolute majority of MPs, he was not elected because the small parties that had lost heavily in the general election abstained from voting or (in the case of the ERC ) against him agreed.

Politics as head of government

Zapatero with his wife Sonsoles Espinosa and the Brazilian presidential couple (2007 in Toledo)

Zapatero with the Argentine President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner at the Ibero America Summit 2008 in Santiago

In the run-up to the 2004 election, Zapatero was politically on the side of the opponents of the Iraq war . Immediately after the parliamentary elections in 2004, he linked the Spanish troops remaining in Iraq with the assumption of an important role by the UN . However, he rated the likelihood of this as low. Immediately after the election as prime minister on April 16, 2004, one of his first official acts was to announce the imminent withdrawal of troops from Iraq . Due to the attitude towards the Iraq war, relations with the USA cooled noticeably and only improved again after the election of Barack Obama as US President at the end of 2008.

In terms of European policy, Zapatero, in contrast to his predecessor Aznar, advocated a much more integration-friendly stance and, among other things, gave up Spanish resistance to the EU constitutional treaty in 2004 . With the Spanish EU Council Presidency in 2010 , Zapatero also took on an important role in the European Council . He was the first head of government to no longer hold the Council presidency due to the new rules introduced by the Lisbon Treaty . Instead, it was taken over by the first permanent President of the European Council , Herman Van Rompuy . Zapatero and Van Rompuy announced close cooperation and coordination, with the Spanish government promising restraint in order not to damage the newly created office.

Zapatero also rebuilt a better relationship with neighboring Morocco . In addition, together with the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan , he initiated the UN initiative of the Alliance of Civilizations , for which he received the “International Ataturk Peace Prize” (Turkish: “Ataturk Uluslararası Barış Ödülü”) in 2010. In 2008, Zapatero managed to establish Spain as a permanent guest at the G-20 summit.

Domestically, Zapatero stood for a social reform policy. He campaigned for equality and a moderate loosening of the Spanish central state. In terms of economic policy, he initially continued the regulatory course of the previous government in principle, but set social accents. The innovations also included the introduction of paternity leave .

His first term of office was marked by a strong polarization of Spanish domestic politics through disputes with the largest opposition party PP and some social groups, especially the Catholic Church . Among the most controversial measures were the later failed peace negotiations with the Basque terrorist organization ETA , the introduction of same-sex marriage , multiple legalizations of the residence status of large numbers of illegal immigrants and the strengthening of the autonomous communities . However, his minority government always received the support of several smaller parties and thus a majority in parliament for these projects.

The second term of office from 2008 was mainly marked by the bursting of the Spanish real estate bubble, which coincided with the global financial and economic crisis . This collapse hit Spain particularly hard due to its heavy reliance on the construction sector, which accounted for up to 11% of Spain's GDP. Zapatero initially declared that he wanted to overcome the crisis without cuts in the welfare state, and in return accepted high budget deficits. However, after Spain came under heavy pressure during the euro crisis , Zapatero surprisingly announced in May 2010 the biggest cut in social benefits since the beginning of Spanish democracy.

At a party conference in Madrid at the beginning of April 2011, he announced that he would not run again as the top candidate of the PSOE in the parliamentary elections, which were scheduled for March 2012. On July 29, 2011, Zapatero announced early parliamentary elections for November 20, 2011. In doing so, he reacted to the economic situation in his country. On December 20, 2011, Mariano Rajoy was elected by the conservative PP to succeed him as head of government . In February 2012, Zapatero also resigned from the post of General Secretary of the PSOE. He was succeeded by Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba , who had also been the PSOE's top candidate in the 2011 election.

Others

He is married to Sonsoles Espinosa and has two daughters.

See also

• Cabinet of Zapatero I.
• Cabinet of Zapatero II

Web links

Commons : José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Since his first surname Rodríguez is one of the most common in Spain, he is best known by his comparatively rare second surname Zapatero.
2. ↑ Der Spiegel 29/2000: Socialists are looking for fresh momentum
3. ↑ EurActiv , December 19, 2009: Spain announces role in the background for EU presidency .
4. ↑ Türkçe olimpiyatları devletle halkı Başkent'te buluşturdu. In: ZamanOnline. June 6, 2010 (Turkish). 
5. ↑ Javier Cáceres: The “Reserve of the Occident” is preparing to attack ; in: Süddeutsche Zeitung , March 4, 2008.
6. ↑ spiegel.de 25/2010: The end of the miracle
7. ^ Die Zeit online, June 1, 2010: Spain's model socialist student has run out of business .
8. ↑ cf. Spain's head of government resigns in 2012: "Two terms are enough" ( Memento from April 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) on tagesschau.de, April 2, 2011 (accessed on April 2, 2011).
9. ^ Rolf Breuch / Martin Schrader: New elections in times of crisis , dw-world.de, July 29, 2011
10. ↑ spiegel.de: Portrait (November 2011)
11. ^ Las dos hijas artistas de Zapatero. Noticias de Noticias . In: El Confidencial . ( elconfidencial.com [accessed August 22, 2018]).

predecessor	Office	successor
José María Aznar	Prime Minister of Spain 2004–2011	Mariano Rajoy

Note: This is a Spanish name . Rodríguez Zapatero is thus the family name. José Luis Zapatero is a common abbreviated form .