Profiles
Manuel Chaves González: President of the Junta de Andalucía
By h.b. - Sep 20, 2007 - 6:07 PM
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The man who has been Socialist President of the Junta de Andalucía since 1990, and President of the PSOE Party since 2000, was born in Ceuta on 7th July 1945, but has spent a large part of his life in Seville and Cádiz. He is married with two children.
Manuel Chaves qualified in law at Seville University, and worked there as a temporary lecturer while completing his doctoral thesis, before permanent positions in universities in Bilbao and Córdoba.
He first met the man who would later become Socialist Prime Minister of Spain, Felipe González, during his time in Seville, and became a member of the PSOE party and the UGT union (Unión General de Trabajadores) in 1968. He was a member of UGT’s Comisión Ejecutiva Confederal – the union’s leadership – between 1976 and 1986, and of PSOE’s federal executive commission between 1981 and 1986, and again between 1990 and 1994. He was elected General Secretary of PSOE Andalucía in 1994, a position which he still holds today.
Manuel Chaves was elected to Congress as a member for Cádiz in 1977, in the first national election held since the end of the Franco regime, a seat which he successfully retained until he became President of the Junta de Andalucía in 1990.
He was appointed Minister for Employment and Social Security in 1986 in Felipe Gonzalez’s second government, and was still in the position when a general strike in December 1988 called by unions against government policies achieved massive support across the country.
Chaves remained as Employment Minister until 1990, when he stood as PSOE’s candidate for presidency of the Junta de Andalucía for the first time, and was elected with an absolute majority of 15 seats.
He failed to win an absolute majority in the next election in 1994, and was forced to govern in minority until he dissolved the regional parliament and called early elections in 1996. That short legislature became known as ‘la pinza’ (pincer) for an agreement between the right-wing Partido Popular and the left-wing coalition Izquierda Unida, which finally forced Chaves to dissolve parliament. The two parties had 61 seats between them against PSOE’s 45.
PSOE managed to increase their seats up to 52 in the 1996 election, but again failed to reach an absolute majority. They governed in coalition with the Partido Andalucista and the regionalist party’s four seats, and did so again after the 2000 election.
Seen as one of the barons of the Socialist Party, Manuel Chaves was appointed president of a ‘comisión política’ which was created to manage the party after a heavy defeat in the March 2000 general election, which saw the Socialist candidate, Joaquin Almunia resigning when the results were announced.
The committee remained in place until the party’s 35th Federal Congress chose a new party leadership, and elected the man who would become Prime Minister four years later, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, as its General Secretary and Manuel Chaves as the President of PSOE.
Chaves was re-elected as PSOE President in 2004, a year which brought him another electoral victory, as Socialist candidate for the fifth occasion in Andalucía, and a majority of 12 seats in the regional parliament.
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