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This article covers the life of the current Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero in the period 1960-2000, that is, from his birth to his appointment as Secretary General of the Spanish Socialist Party, when he became a known public figure in Spain.

Origins and youth

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero was born in Valladolid on August 4, 1960, to Juan Rodríguez García-Lozano, a prominent, successful lawyer, and Purificación Zapatero , but he grew up in León whence his family originated. He came from an affluent family with a long tradition of left-wing politics. He has an elder brother, Juan Rodríguez Zapatero .

His paternal grandfather, Juan Rodríguez Lozano, was a Freemason and a Republican captain executed by the Nationals during the Spanish Civil War, when his son (Zapatero's father) was eight years old .

His maternal grandfather, Faustino Zapatero, was a pediatrician and a liberal Spanish bourgeois who died in 1978. His maternal grandmother was conservative and right-wing . Zapatero born in Valladolid because his mother wanted to be accompanied by her family, who lived there, not only out of love but also because of the medical profession of her father.

Zapatero's family has influenced him intensely. When he was a youngster, he used to talk about politics and other issues with his father and brother until late. As he has declared, "since I can remember it, I used to participate in long night conversations with my father and brother about politics, law or literature" . He says that his family taught him to be "tolerant, thoughtful, prudent and austere" .

His grandfather's ideals and fate played an especially important role over his father, brother and himself and his political beliefs . As an example of this, his father's real second surname is García but he added Lozano to honor his late father Juan Rodríguez Lozano.

The memory of the Captain Lozano was also kept alive by the holograph will he wrote 24 hours before facing the fire squad, which can be considered a final declaration of principles. The will was composed of six parts. The first three bestowed his possessions to his heirs. In the fourth, he asked to have a civil burial and, in the fifth, he requested his family to forgive those who had executed him and proclaimed his belief in the Supreme Being. In the sixth, Zapatero's grandfather asked his family to clean his name in the future () as his creed only consisted in his love for peace, for good and in improving the living conditions of the lower classes. .

Zapatero started to study at the religious primary school "Discípulas de Jesús" in September, 1966. In September 1970, he entered the "Colegio Leonés", the only private lay school in León at the time.

When he was a child and late in his twenties, his friends used to refer to him with a nickname: Papes. It was inspired in the name of a shoes brand called Hush Puppies that used in its advertisements a puppy with swollen cheeks similar to those of Zapatero when he was a child. The pronunciation of Puppies is similar to that of Papes in Spanish.

At the time, he signed his school works with a strange mark: PC, probably inspired in the acronym of the Communist Party (Partido Comunista in Spanish).

He studied Law at the University of León, where he graduated in 1982. His performance as a student was above average before his pre-University year. Then it worsened, and his grades in that year and in the University were essentially mediocre. According to his brother Juan: "He did not use to study much but it made no difference, he went along successfully" .

He admired as a University student the agrarian reform by Mao Tse-tung and favored the Soviet Regime .

After graduating, Zapatero worked as a professor of constitutional law in the University of León until 1986 (he continued working some hours a week with no pay until 1991). He has declared that the only activity that attracts him besides politics is teaching or, at most, academic research.

In October 1991, his contract was canceled by the new rector of the University of León, Julio César Santoyo, after the legal counselors of the University considered Zapatero's jobs as a professor and an MP were incompatible (he had been elected in 1986). The legal counselors of the Spanish parliament had considered the contract valid, however.

Zapatero has never served in the army, although the military service was compulsory in Spain until recently. He received successive deferments because of his conditions as a university student, a professor and a MP, until he was finally exempted.

Zapatero enters politics

Zapatero attended his first political rally on Sunday August 15, 1976. It was a meeting organized by the Spanish Socialist Workers Party (PSOE) in Gijón. Political parties had been legal since July 21, 1976) but the Socialist Party was not legalized until February 1977. The speech of Felipe González, the PSOE leader and future Prime Minister of Spain, who took part in the rally, exerted an important influence on Zapatero. He said, among other things, that "the Socialists' goal was the seizure of power by the working class to transform the ownership of the means of production" and that "the PSOE was a revolutionary party but not revolutionarist or aventurist , as it defended the use of elections to come to power". .

Zapatero and his family had been traditionally attracted by the Communist Party as it was the only really organized before Francisco Franco's death in 1975. But, after the famous political rally in Gijón, they and, especially, Zapatero started to believe that the Socialist Party was the most probable future for the Spanish left. At that time the Socialist Party was rebuilding its infrastructure in the province of León after being almost banished after the Spanish Civil War .

In 1977, the year of the first democratic elections after Franco, Zapatero supported both the Communist and Socialist Parties. He posted posters of both.

He enrolled in the PSOE on February 23, 1979. The impression Felipe González caused upon him in 1976 played a fundamental role in his decision of joining the party. In 1979, the PSOE had not yet renounced Marxism as its ideological base (that happened later in 1979). He told nothing at home, because he was afraid his parents could discourage him for considering him too young.

In 1982, Zapatero became head of the socialist youth organization in the province of León. That year, in July 1982, Zapatero met Felipe González at the summer school "Jaime Vera" and requested him to make a "left turn" in the Socialist political program for the general election of October 1982 . González answered advising him to abandon his conservative viewpoint.

In 1986, he was elected to represent the province of León in the Cortes (Parliament), becoming its youngest Member after the election held on June 20. He was the number two in the Socialist list of the Province of León. In the next elections (those 1989, 1993, 1996 and 2000) he was the number one. In the elections of 2004 he ran for Madrid as the number one.

In 1987, he instigated, as one of the main leaders within the Socialist Party of León, a pact to obtain the mayoralty of León after the elections held that year. The previous mayor, Juan Morano, had occupied the post since the first local democratic elections in 1979 as his independent party had always been the most voted, even in the 1987 elections, when it obtained 12 seats. The Socialist Party (9 seats) drew the deal with Alianza Popular (antecessor of the current People's Party), which had four seats, and an extinct center party called Centro Democrático Social (2 seats). The finally elected mayor belonged to Alianza Popular. Zapatero and his allies justified the civic pact, as it was called by its supporters (or the cynic or hatred pact, as was denominated by its opponents) by stating that it was necessary to change the "negative dynamics" of the city, to "normalize" its democratic life, to end its "bad relations" with other institutions (like the Regional Government of Castilla y León), to lessen the social tensions "promoted" by the independents, to eliminate the supposed system of patronage, etc. Months later the pact was broken by pressures from the Regional Leadership of Alianza Popular and Juan Moran became mayor again .

Zapatero defined himself as a '"left-wing conservative"' at the time. He explained that he meant that, for sentimental reasons linked to his family, he came from that Left that lost the Spanish Civil War and that what had happened between 1936-1939 (the time span of the war) and 1939-1975 (Franco's dictatorship) had a very important significance for him. He further explained that the Spanish Left needed to modernize and that "we are finding it difficult to accept the need for the Socialist Party to change many of its ideological parameter and overcoming our own conservatism".

In 1988 he became Secretary General in León after a hard, complex internal fight for power that ended a long period of divisions and internal confrontation. In fact, before the provincial conference held that year, Ramón Rubial, then national president of the PSOE, asked the party in León to foster unity. Zapatero was elected as Secretary General in that conference, what meant a new time of stability .

In the 80's and 90's, the Socialist Party consisted of two sectors: the guerristas (supporters of Alfonso Guerra, former vice-president with Felipe González) and the renovators (led by Felipe González). The first group had a stronger left-wing ideology whereas the second was more pragmatic. The division became wider after the General Election of 1993, the last election won by the Socialist Party before José María Aznar's victory in 1996, when the bad results increased the internal enmities. Zapatero never formally joined any of the two groups.

In 1993, the Socialist Federation of León (its acronym is FSL after the Spanish Federación Socialista de León) suffered an important scandal. In some towns in a very short time, the number of members of the Socialist Party increased inexplicably from, sometimes, fewer than ten to more than one hundred. When some of the supposed new members were interrogated by the press, they affirmed to have no idea of anything and that they did not live in the places where they were being registered by the party. It seems that some opponents of Zapatero in León, perhaps with the support of powerful guerristas at the top of the Spanish Socialist Party wanted to increase their influence within it by increasing the number of members in the towns of León favorable to them. Their main aim would have been to take control of the Regional Socialist Section of Castilla y León in the conference to be held in 1994. Zapatero's support for the then Regional Secretary General, Jesús Quijano transformed him into the enemy of the guerristas in the region as the FSL is the most important Provincial Section.

Zapatero was accused himself of irregularities. For example, his enemies, those who were falsifying new memberships, stated that he kept dead people as real members in the sections of the party supporting him. Not only that, in May 1994 a scandal started when two papers, El País and Diario de León, published several articles that suggested the existence of irregularities in his hiring as professor by the University of León and in his keeping the job until 1991. The suspicions of political favoritism were favored by his having been directly appointed without a previous selection process open to other candidates. On May 20, he held a press conference where he rejected every accusation. Zapatero attributed to "ignorance" or "bad faith" the content of the articles and linked them to the internal fight for the job of Secretary General of the Regional Chapter.

In 1994, three regional conferences were going to be held: two to elect the representatives of the party in León for the Regional and National Conference to take place that year, and the 7th Provincial -conference where the Secretary General was going to be elected.

Before they started, an agreement between the involved parties was drawn. The new members who did not confirm they had joined the party voluntarily and who did not live in the areas where they were registered would be expelled from the party. Initially 775 and finally 577 new memberships were canceled out of 1160 suspicious.

When the three conferences were celebrated, the tension in them was very high and, sometimes, it was necessary to call the police . All of them were finally won by Zapatero or his supporters.

The National Conference (held after most of the representatives elected in the first León Conference were Zapatero's supporters) was won by the renovators, at that time very opposed to the guerristas. That was positive for Zapatero as the list of false memberships was revised again. Its number grew from 577 to almost nine hundred.

Zapatero was finally reelected secretary general with 68% of the ballots in the 7th Regional Conference held in (July 1994), after the removal of the false memberships.

In 1995 new regional and local elections were held. Its results were bad for the Socialist Party in León as they lost four seats in the mayoralty of León and two seats in the regional parliament of Catilla-León. The results were influenced by the bad economic situation and the cases of corruption assailing the party. Zapatero had personally directed the electoral campaign.

In 1996, after the General Election, Zapatero kept his seat at the Congress of Deputies. Next year, in 1997 Zapatero was elected again Secretary General of León and after the national conference held by the party that year he entered the National Executive (the party governing body).

In 1998, the first and only primaries celebrated within the PSOE took place. There were two candidates: Joaquín Almunia and José Borrell. The Regional Chapter of León declared to be neutral. It seems that, unofficially, its leaders including Zapatero, worked harder in favor of Almunia, who was the representative of the renovators and, because of it, opposed the guerristas. Zapatero himself phoned personally (as other leaders did) as many party members as possible to request their votes for him.

On April 24, 1998 Borrell won with 9.6% more votes than Almunia in Spain and 4.6% more in León. It seems that Borrell's image of renovation played an important role in his victory. Borrell's attitude towards Zapatero seems to have been a little colder after Zapatero's support for his rival.

The existence of two leaders Joaquín Almunia, Secretary General, and José Borrell, official candidate, caused problems within the Socialist party, used to being directed only by the Secretary General. Finally, two former collaborators of Borrell were accused of having been corrupt when they worked for him in the Spanish Government, and he resigned, alleging that he did not want to damage his party with the scandal. Almunia replaced him and ran for the Spanish premiership in the elections held in 2000.

The Association of Parliamentary Journalists awarded to Zapatero the "Diputado Revelación" prize (something like MP surprise of the year) in December 1999 for his activities as member of the Congress of Deputies. Since 1996 until 2000, his most conspicuous contributions as an MP were his vigorous opposition to the electrical protocol proposed by the government (initially negative for the important coal sector of León), his being the Socialist Spokesman in the Commission of Public Administration and his probably most important success as an MP: the passing of an amendment to the national budget of 2000 in November 1999 that increased the pensions of the non-professional soldiers who fought for the Republic during the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939. They were made equal to the professional military's. The initiative was defended by him in the name of the Parliamentary Socialist Group, proponent of the amendment. .

Appointment as Secretary General of the Socialist Party

On March 12, 2000, the PSOE had lost its second successive election to José María Aznar's People's Party. Zapatero preserved his seat, but the Socialist Party obtained only 125, 16 fewer than in 1996. The defeat was specially bitter as the People's Party unexpectedly obtained an absolute majority for the first time and the socialist result was worse than in the previous election. Joaquín Almunia, announced his resignation on the very day the General Election took place.

Zapatero decided to run for the leadership of the Socialist Party in its 35th Conference to be celebrated in June that year. He founded together with other socialist members a new faction within the party called Nueva Vía (New Way) in April 2000, to serve him as a platform to become Secretary General. The name of Nueva Vía is a mix of Tony Blair's Third Way (tercera vía in Spanish) and the Gerhard Schröder's Neue Mitte (new center or nuevo centro in Spanish). ]

A document of New Way proclaimed the group objectives: "New Way' wants to generate a project of political and social change for and from democratic socialism, a Socialist project to allow the PSOE to recover its credibility and the citizens' trust."

The members of Nueva Vía had, on average, 40 years. Among the most prominent of them were Zapatero, Trinidad Jiménez, Jesús Caldera, Jordi Sevilla, José Blanco, Antonio Cuevas, Enrique Martínez, etc. .

Enrique Martínez played an important role in the promotion of Zapatero. He was the director of the "Escuela Jaime Vera" a school belonging to the party that prepare Socialist Leaders. His network of contacts became essential.

He and Jesús Caldera knew José Luis Balbás, prominent member of the Socialist Federation of Madrid (FSM is its acronym in Spanish). He had belonged to the Unión de Centro Democrático", the center party that won the first two democratic elections and joined the PSOE in 1981. He is an entrepreneur, an auditor and a consultant. He belonged to a sector within the FSM called "Renovadores de la Base", that amounted to a third of the FSM. (There were other two sections: the so-called leguinistas - followers of a former president of the regional government of Madrid called Joaquín Leguina and the guerristas.)

In April 2000, Zapatero, Caldera and José Blanco had lunch with Eduardo Tamayo in a restaurant in Madrid, a friend of José Luis Balbás in the party. (Tamayo would become later a representative of Zapatero in the 35th party national conference and a major character in the so-called crisis of the Assembly of Madrid, described later) At the end of the month the "Renovadores de la Base" decided to support Zapatero. José Luis Balbás agreed to be part of the team of New Way after being invited by José Blanco and Enrique Martínez . He played an important role during the campaign and the 35th conference. For example, Balbás together with José Blanco controlled the list of delegates with all the data about them. It was a fundamental job, as the different tasks of promotion needed that list, at least, to contact the delegates for the conference.

On June 25, 2000 Zapatero announced officially his intention to run for the federal Secretaryship General in an Extraordinary Conference of the Socialist Party of León . In his speech, he stated what can be considered his declaration of principles :

1. To build a society that would accept all foreigners notwithstanding their color or cultural level.
2. To give priority to education and to create good jobs for youngsters.
3. To provide parents with more time to spend with their children and in taking care of their elders.
4. To promote culture and its creators, making it possible for them to grab the spotlight from those aimed only at economic interests.
5. To convert Spain into a country admired for helping those with more needs.
6. To force the government to help those with initiative and enterprising qualities.
7. To foster democracy, to lend distinction to politics and to promote values over temporary interests.

Pasqual Maragall was the only regional leader of the Socialist Party who officially supported him before the Conference was celebrated. Borrell also decided to support him.

Zapatero ran against three other opponents (José Bono, Rosa Díez and Matilde Fernández). Matilde Fernández was the candidate of the guerristas while José Bono was the candidate of the reformers. Rosa Díez is a Basque politician who was a kind of intermediate option.

Zapatero was a dark horse who had against him his inexperience and in favor his image of renovation and being the only among the candidates. (All the Spanish opposition leaders have been MPs before winning the elections. That is very important in Spanish politics where electoral campaigns last for only 15 days and to be widely known long before they begin is essential.) Bono was deeply disliked by the guerristas, what also favored Zapatero significantly.

He finally won by a relatively small margin (he obtained 414 votes out of 995 and José Bono obtained 405) on July 22, 2000 ). The margin was relatively small because Bono had no opportunity of winning, as the supporters of the other two candidates preferred Zapatero to him. Zapatero even accepted to renounced to hold a run-off between the two most voted candidates as he was sure of his victory after only a ballot and he did not want to humiliate his adversary.

After being elected secretary general, he was congratulated by Lionel Jospin (then the French Prime Minister), Gerhard Schröder (chancellor of Germany) and José María Aznar .

He moved to Madrid with his family that year. As a congressman he had lived from Monday to Thursday in Madrid and the rest of days in León.

Notes

1. His mother died of cancer on October 30, 2000, after his appointment as leader of his party. He was very affected by the event.

References

• Óscar Campillo Madrigal. Zapatero. Presidente a la Primera. 1st ed. updated. (La Esfera de los Libros, Spain, April 2004). ISBN 84-9734-193-7.

See also

• History of Spain
• Politics of Spain
• José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero
• Zapatero's years as an opposition leader
• Zapatero and the Local and Regional Elections of 2003
• Zapatero and the 2004 General Election
• Zapatero's foreign policy
• Zapatero's domestic policy

• José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero