Profiles
Miguel Ángel Revilla, President of Cantabria
By m.p. - Apr 5, 2008 - 11:11 AM
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Miguel Ángel Revilla Roiz, President of Cantabria since 2003, was born in Polaciones on 23rd January 1943, a small village in the southwest of the region which lies in Cantabria’s highest valley, in the upper reaches of the River Nansa. He is married with three children.
Revilla graduated in Economic and Business Sciences from the País Vasco University, where he also took further studies in Banking and the Stock Market. He was Director of the Banco Atlántico branch in Torrelavega, Cantabria’s second largest city, between 1974 and 1982, during which time he published his book, ‘The Economy of Cantabria,’ in 1978.
Revilla taught Economic Structure at the Santander Business and Management School in the Cantabrian capital during the latter years of his time at the bank (1979 to 1982), and then moved on to Cantabria University, where he taught Economic Policy and
Public Finance until 1995.
Cantabria had been established as a Duchy during the time of the Visigoths, and later became the province of Cantabria under the reign of Carlos III in 1779. It became the province of Santander as part of the region of Castilla la Vieja when a new territorial division in the 1830s divided Spain into 49 provinces. With the death of Franco at the end of 1975, and the beginnings of the process towards a new political geography of regional autonomy in Spain, Revilla was one of the main movers behind a new association created in 1976, ADIC, which was set up as an association to protect and promote the interests, and the culture and history of Cantabria.
One of its main objectives was the creation of Cantabria as a one-province region under Spain’s emerging political map.
ADIC went on to set up the Partido Regionalista de Cantabria in November 1978 to work towards that objective, and to present candidates for the municipal elections due to take place in 1979. Miguel Ángel Revilla was one of PRC’s founding members.
Santander province became the Autonomous Community of Cantabria when the region’s first Statute of Autonomy was sanctioned by the King on 30th December 1981.
The first regional election to the Cantabria parliament was held in 1983, and Revilla was elected a member of parliament of PRC, a seat which he still holds today. He became his party’s General Secretary in 1988, and has been re-elected as such at successive party congresses which have been held since that time.
He was Vice-President of the Cantabria government, as well as regional councillor for public works, housing and town planning in two successive legislatures - between 1995 and 1999, and 1999 and 2003 - and was chosen as PRC’s candidate for Presidency of the Region for the 2003 election, when his party came in third place behind the Partido Popular and PSOE.
The PP, however, had insufficient seats to form a majority government, and a coalition pact between PRC and PSOE put Miguel Ángel Revilla at the head of the regional government for the first time.
He is now in his second mandate, after PRC moved up to second place in the 2007 election and blocked the Partido Popular from power once again by renewing their coalition agreement with PSOE.
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