Profiles
José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero - Prime Minister of Spain
By m.p.
Apr 22, 2007 - 3:28 PM

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero – Prime Minister of Spain

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, the current Prime Minister of Spain (Presidente del gobierno) was born on 4th August 1960 in Valladolid (Castilla y León). He is married to Sónsoles Espinosa, with whom he has two children.
He studied at the University of León, graduating with a Law degree in 1982, and returning to the University to teach Constitutional Law until 1986.

Zapatero was born into a family which had long been associated with left-wing politics. His paternal grandfather, Juan Rodríguez Lozano, a captain with the Republican Army, was executed by Nationalist forces in 1936, during the Spanish Civil War: his grandfather’s fate was to play a great role in Zapatero’s chosen path in politics.

Zapatero joined PSOE in 1979, and was chosen as PSOE’s local secretary for León city just three years later. He first became a member of parliament seven years later, as number two on the party’s list for León province in the 1986 general election which returned the previous Socialist Prime Minister, Felipe González, to his second mandate at the head of the Spanish government. Zapatero was the youngest member in the Spanish parliament at the time, and served as PSOE spokesman on the Ombudsman and Constitutional parliamentary commissions.

He headed PSOE’s list for León in the 1989 election, when he was returned to his seat in Congress, holding onto it later in the 1993, 1996 and 2000 elections. He served again as party spokesman on the Constitutional and Ombudsman parliamentary commission, as well as on the Justice and Interior Commission.

Zapatero’s party colleagues elected him as their Provincial Secretary for León in 1988, returning him to the position with 98% support three years later. He first became a member of PSOE’s Federal Committee in 1990.

The party named him as their delegate to the Permanent Commission of Congress in 1993, and in 1996 as representative on the PSOE-Izquierda Unida parliamentary committee set up to study the funding of the autonomous communities.

Zapatero was the Socialist speaker in Congress on the bill for a new Contraband Law in 1995, with a number of amendments he presented to the bill being accepted by PSOE’s Federal Committee.

Journalists assigned to Congress described him as the most active Socialist member in 1998.

Zapatero continued to head the León Federal Executive in later party elections, and in June 2000, at PSOE’s Federal Congress, presented himself as a candidate to lead the Socialist Party to a new alternative for a process of internal change. He was still relatively unknown to the public at that time.
A month later, he was elected General Secretary of the PSOE Party, and led the party in opposition to the governing Partido Popular.

In October 2002, he was officially elected as the party’s candidate for Presidency of the Spanish Government in the 2004 general election. The PSOE Party won the March 2004 election with 42.64% of the vote.

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero is currently a member of parliament for Madrid and the Prime Minister of Spain.