María Teresa Fernández de la Vega

María Teresa Fernández de la Vega

María Teresa Fernández de la Vega Sanz (born June 15, 1949 in Valencia ) is a Spanish politician. She was close to the PSOE , but without ever joining the party. From 2004 to 2010 she was Deputy Prime Minister, Minister of the Presidency and Government Spokeswoman in the Zapatero I and Zapatero II cabinets .

Life

During her law studies in Madrid and Barcelona in the early 1970s, María Teresa Fernández de la Vega joined the Catalan communist party Partit Socialista Unificat de Catalunya (PSUC), which at the time was the strongest resistance against the Franco dictatorship in Catalonia. After the end of the dictatorship in 1975 and the first free elections, in which the communist parties fared significantly worse than the social democratic PSOE , Fernández de la Vega resigned from the PSUC in 1979. After the PSOE came into power under Felipe González in 1982, she held various positions in the Ministry of Justice, and in 1986 she became a member of the European Committee on Legal Cooperation of the Council of Europe . In 1990 she was elected a member of the Consejo General del Poder Judicial , the supreme body of the Spanish judiciary. Under Justice Minister Juan Alberto Belloch , she finally became State Secretary in the Justice Ministry in 1994, which she remained until the election victory of the conservative People's Party under José María Aznar in 1996.

In 1996 Fernández de la Vega became a member of the Spanish lower house ( Congreso de los Diputados ), from 2000 to 2004 she was Secretary General of the PSOE Group. After the election victory of the PSOE under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero on March 14, 2004, she was appointed First Vice President of the Government - the first woman in this office. In addition, she held the office of Minister of the Presidium (Cabinet Minister, corresponds to the German Chancellery Minister ) and acted as government spokeswoman.

As minister, Fernández de la Vega was responsible for many of the social reforms, particularly in family and gender equality policy, in the early years of the Zapatero government. These include the introduction of same-sex marriage , the reform of criminal law for gender-based violence, the introduction of a far-reaching gender quota in political institutions and comprehensive legislation on the care of disabled people. She was one of the best known and in surveys (2007) - next to Zapatero himself - the best rated members of the Spanish government.

Fernández de la Vega left the Spanish government in a major cabinet reshuffle in October 2010. Her successor as deputy head of government was Alfredo Pérez Rubalcaba , and Ramón Jáuregui was the new cabinet minister . Fernández de la Vega himself was proposed by Zapatero as a member of the Spanish Consejo de Estado , an advisory body.

Web links

• Spanish Ministry of Presidency homepage (in Spanish)