Cabinet of Zapatero II

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The Zapatero II cabinet was the Spanish government from April 2008 to December 2011. It was formed by Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero after the ruling Socialists won the parliamentary elections on March 9, 2008 .

At the beginning of the legislative period almost all members of the cabinet belonged to the PSOE (Spanish Socialist Workers' Party) or, in the case of Carme Chacón and Celestino Corbacho, their Catalan sister party PSC (Party of Socialists of Catalonia). The two non-party members of the government, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega and Pedro Solbes , have been close to the socialists since the 1980s. With the government reshuffle in 2010, the non-party Rosa Aguilar was appointed minister, who was a member of the Izquierda Unida (IU; United Left) until 2008 .

The Zapatero II cabinet was largely in continuity with the previous Zapatero I cabinet . The layout of some departments has been changed: Among other things, the Ministry of the Environment was dissolved and integrated into the Ministry of Agriculture, while the social policy previously located in the Ministry of Labor was now assigned to the Ministry of Education and, from 2009, the Ministry of Health. In addition, the ministries for science and innovation (including higher education policy) and for gender equality have been created. The latter coordinated the government's non-discrimination policy and had competencies comparable to those of the German Ministry of Family Affairs ; however, family policy itself is part of the Ministry of Education. In October 2010 a cabinet reshuffle took place, during which the Ministry for Equality and the Ministry for Housing were dissolved and the relevant departments were integrated into the Ministries for Social Affairs and Transport. In doing so, the government complied with a request from parliament, which several months earlier had called for the dissolution of at least one ministry in order to save administrative costs.

Until the cabinet reshuffle at the end of 2010, the Zapatero II cabinet had more female ministers than male ministers for the first time in the history of Spain. With Carme Chacón, a woman was also appointed Minister of Defense for the first time. The Minister for Equality, Bibiana Aído , was the youngest minister in Spanish history when she was appointed at the age of 31.

During the Spanish EU Council Presidency in the first half of 2010, the members of the Zapatero II cabinet presided over the various formations of the Council of the European Union .

In April 2011, Zapatero announced that he would no longer be available as prime minister after the next election. Until July 29, 2011, he always publicly emphasized that he wanted to make full use of the current legislative period, which would not have meant elections until March 2012. On July 29, 2011, however, Prime Minister Zapatero announced early elections for November 20, 2011.

The Spanish parliamentary elections on November 20, 2011 were won by the conservative People's Party ( PP ). Its chairman Mariano Rajoy was elected the new Spanish Prime Minister and formed the Rajoy I cabinet .

minister

Office Surname
Prime Minister
First Vice President of the Government
Second Vice President of the Government
Third Vice President of the Government (2009-2011)
Government spokesman
Appearance and development cooperation
Judiciary
defense
Economy and finance
Interior
Industry, tourism and trade
Construction and transport (since 2010 also residential construction)
Education , social affairs and sport (from 2009: education and universities)
Work and immigration
Agriculture and the environment
Minister of the Presidium ( Cabinet Minister )
Public administration (from 2009: territorial policy [= state development])
Culture
Health (from 2009 health and social affairs , from 2010 also equality)
Science and innovation
Housing construction (dissolved in 2010)
Equality (dissolved in 2010)

Changes

Justice Minister Mariano Fernández Bermejo resigned on February 23, 2009 after a recent strike by Spanish judges in protest at the insufficient financial resources of the courts. At the same time, a scandal broke out over a joint hunting trip by Fernández Bermejos and the investigating magistrate Baltasar Garzón , just before Garzón had started investigations into corruption against high-ranking members of the opposition party Partido Popular . Fernández Bermejo's successor was Francisco Caamaño, who had been State Secretary for relations between the government and parliament.

On April 7, 2009, there was another, extensive cabinet reshuffle, which was understood in the Spanish press in particular as a reaction to the allegations of insufficient responses to the international economic crisis . Economics and finance minister and second deputy head of government Pedro Solbes were replaced by Elena Salgado, who was previously responsible for public administration. Her successor in this department, which has now been renamed Territorial Cooperation in order to underline the important role of the autonomous regions , was Manuel Chaves, previously President of the Region of Andalusia , who also took over the newly created office of Third Deputy Prime Minister. In the Ministry of Transport Magdalena Álvarez was replaced by José Blanco. With Chaves and Blanco, two important PSOE party officials joined the cabinet: While Chaves holds the representative office of party president, Blanco is vice general secretary (and thus after Zapatero the "number 2" of the PSOE). Furthermore, Trinidad Jiménez, until then State Secretary for Ibero America in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, was appointed Minister for Health and Social Affairs; Ángel Gabilondo, previously Rector of the Autonomous University of Madrid , became Minister of Education; Ángeles González Sinde, previously President of the Spanish Film Art Academy, took over the Ministry of Culture. Associated with this was a redesign of the departments: the social area was transferred from the Ministry of Education to the Ministry of Health, and responsibility for the universities returned from the Ministry of Science to the Ministry of Education. The sports department, previously in the Ministry of Education, has now been relocated directly to the office of the head of government.

On October 20, 2010, Zapatero announced a major new cabinet reshuffle:

  • The previous Vice-President María Teresa Fernández de la Vega left the government.
  • Interior Minister Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba was Zapatero's new deputy;
  • Former MEP Ramón Jáuregui succeeded De la Vegas as presidential minister.
  • Miguel Ángel Moratinos was replaced as Foreign Minister by the previous Minister of Social Affairs, Trinidad Jiménez, who in turn
  • Leire Pajín succeeded, who until then had been PSOE party coordinator (roughly equivalent to the German general secretary of a party).
  • Celestino Corbacho, the previous Minister of Labor, left the government to run for the Catalan regional elections in November 2010 ; his successor was Valeriano Gómez, a prominent member of the UGT union .
  • Elena Espinosa was replaced in the Ministry of the Environment by Rosa Aguilar , who had been mayor of Córdoba until 2008 as a member of the post-communist IU party and then joined the PSOE government of Andalusia as an independent .
  • The ministries for housing and equality, which until then had been headed by Beatriz Corredor and Bibiana Aído, were dissolved.

In July 2011, Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba (Minister of the Interior, First Vice President and Government Spokesman) resigned from all government offices after being named the PSOE's top candidate for the November 2011 parliamentary elections. The previous Secretary of State Antonio Camacho Vizcaíno took over the office of Minister of the Interior, while that of the Government Spokesman was taken over by the Minister of Building, José Blanco. The previous second Vice-President Elena Salgado was promoted to the position of first Vice-President. The previous third Vice President Manuel Chaves became the new second Vice President. The office of the third vice-president was dissolved.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Zapatero will not run for re-election in 2012. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. April 2, 2011, accessed August 3, 2011 .
  2. ↑ New elections in Spain - government surrenders to debt crisis. Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 29, 2011, accessed on August 3, 2011 .