Ángel Gabilondo - Minister for Education
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By m.p. - Apr 13, 2009 - 12:50 PM
Ángel Gabilondo is one of the new Ministers appointed in April 2009 by José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

The major Cabinet reshuffle announced by the Prime Minister in April 2009 gave Spain a new, slimmed-down Education Ministry, transferring responsibility for Social Policy to Health, with Sport now coming under the control of the Prime Minister himself.

The Spanish Prime Minister appointed as the head of his streamlined Education Ministry Ángel Gabilondo Pujol, the Rector of the Autonomous University of Madrid, and also President of CRUE, the Conference of Spanish Rectors. José Luis Rodriguez Zapatero also gave his new Minister responsibility for the Spanish universities which, for the past year, had been under the control of the then newly-created Science and Innovation Ministry, headed by Cristina Garmendia.

Born in San Sebastián in 1949, Ángel Gabilondo had been Rector of the UAM Autonomous University of Madrid since 2002. He is also a Professor of Metaphysics and lectured in the University’s Faculty of Philosophy and Letters, the department where he himself studied for his Bachelor’s and Doctorate Degrees, and later became Vice-Dean for Teaching Staff. He was Dean of the Faculty from 1989 to 1992.

He is brother to the well-known journalist, Iñaki Gabilondo, and is himself a respected author with six publications to his name, and has also contributed to around another one hundred books.
Ángel Gabilondo Pujol’s is a man who is greatly respected within the Spanish universities, where he also has a great deal of influence. He promised, just shortly after taking on his new duties, ‘firmness and dialogue’ with students in what is known as the Bologna Process, the creation of a European Higher Education Area by 2010 by establishing a common structure of higher education systems across Europe.

The new Minister said one of his main goals in the job is to reduce failure at school and to increase coordination within Spain’s educational system through an educational pact between all levels of education, the autonomous communities and Spanish society. His aim, he said, is to achieve an ‘integrated and global view of education’.

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