Profiles
Pedro Sanz Alonso - President of La Rioja
By h.b.
Apr 11, 2008 - 8:55 AM

Pedro Sanz Alonso, who has been Partido Popular President of La Rioja since 1995, is from Igea, a village in the southeast of La Rioja which has seen its population drop from the 1,594 inhabitants when he was born there in the 1950s (27th December 1953), to the 689 of today.
Married with one daughter, he trained as a primary school teacher specialising in therapeutic teaching, and had his first teaching job in the Basque Country before moving back home to La Rioja, in Nájera, for the 1978 school year, where he remained until 1981, when he was appointed director of the Marqués de Vallejo Centre for Special Education in Logroño.

He was director of the centre until 1989, and during that time became one of the founding members of Asprodema-Rioja, an association which works to improve the lives of the mentally disabled and those of their families.

Sanz joined the Partido Popular in 1989, a year which also saw his appointment as General Director for Social Welfare in the regional government. He moved up within the party to become General Secretary for the PP in La Rioja in 1990, which was to take him through until 1993. He had gained his first seat in the regional parliament by this time.
Sanz was first chosen as Regional President of the Partido Popular in 1993, and has remained in the position since then.

The Partido Popular had lost to PSOE in 1991, the third election to have taken place in this newly-created region which came into being as the uni-provincial autonomous community of La Rioja in 1982. It was formerly Logroño province as a part of Castilla y León.
The party chose Pedro Sanz as their candidate for presidency in the 1995 regional election, and he achieved an absolute majority of one seat over the three other parties which gained representation in the regional parliament: PSOE with 12 seats, and the Partido Riojano and Izquierda each with 2.
Sanz repeated the success in the 1999 election, increasing the Partido Popular’s absolute majority up to three seats. They remained in power in the next successive elections, but dropped their majority down to one seat on both occasions.

During his time as President of La Rioja, Pedro Sanz Alonso has held vice-presidency of the European Union’s Committee of the Regions, an advisory body which represents local and regional government. He was also head of the Spanish delegation to the CoR from 2004-2006, and stands on two CoR commissions today.
His awards include an Honorary Professorship from the Buenos Aires University of Social Sciences and Business in 1998, Medal of Honour from the Spanish Cancer Association in 2001, and the Republic of Austria Order of Merit in 2002, for his work in defending the environment.