Profiles
Maria Teresa Fernández de la Vega - Deputy Prime Minister
By m.p. - Apr 22, 2007 - 3:45 PM
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María Teresa Fernández de la Vega Sanz – First Vice-President of the Government (Deputy Prime Minister)
María Teresa Fernández de la Vega serves as both Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for the Presidency in the current Socialist government in Spain. As such, her function by law is to preside over the General Commission of Secretaries and Sub-Secretaries of State, which is responsible for preparing the government Cabinet meetings, and organising and presenting the subjects for debate.
She also has the role of spokesperson for the government, with one of her responsibilities being the weekly press conferences on the agreements reached at the Friday Cabinet meetings.
She is the liaison between the executive and Parliament, with all communications between the two going through her department.
Her main task is to promote and coordinate government political action. She is the first woman to serve as a Deputy Prime Minister in Spain.
María Teresa Fernández de la Vega was born 15th June 1949 in Valencia. She is single and has no children.
She studied law at the Complutense University in Madrid, going on to achieve her Doctorate at Barcelona University, where she became a member of the Socialist Party. She later specialised in European Community Law in further studies at Strasbourg University.
She began her professional career as a legal secretary in 1974, later becoming one of the first women to join Justicia Democrática – Democratic Justice (known today as Jueces para la Democracia – Judges for Democracy), a movement whose work played an influential role in the transition to democracy.
María Teresa Fernández de la Vega’s political career began when the first Socialist government was voted into power in 1982 and the Justice Minister, Fernando Ledesma, appointed her as head of his ministerial cabinet. Three years later, she became general director of the Justice Ministry’s services department.
She began her judicial career in 1990, having obtained the highest qualification amongst the successful candidates as magistrate. That year, a vote in the Senate appointed de la Vega as spokesperson for the General Council of Judicial Power. She worked there with the later Justice Minister, Juan Antonio Belloch, who named her as Secretary of State for Justice in 1994, where she remained until PSOE lost to the Partido Popular in the 1996 general election. That election saw Fernández de la Vega appointed to Congress as a member for Jaén.
She was returned to parliament as the Socialist member for Segovia in the 2000 election and, during that legislation, became General Secretary of the Socialist Parliamentary Group. She served as the Socialist spokesperson on the Justice and Interior Commission during PSOE’s time in opposition.
María Teresa Fernández de la Vega returned to Congress as a member for Madrid in 2004, when the current Prime Minister, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, named her as First Vice-President and Minister for the Presidency under the new Socialist government.
She has become well-known for her hard work and dedication to human rights and women’s rights in particular, taking an active part in the reform of the Penal Code, drawing up and approval of the existing Abortion Law, and legislation on equal opportunities for women.
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