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José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero (August 4, 1960) is the 5th Prime Minister of the Spanish Government since the democratic restoration in 1978, following his party's victory in the March 14 Spanish general election. He was sworn in by King Juan Carlos on April 17, 2004. He has been General Secretary of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE) since 2000.

Rodríguez Zapatero was born in Valladolid but his family (with a long tradition of left-wing politics) was from León. His grandfather was a Republican captain who was executed by the Nationalists at the start of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. He attended his first political rally in Gijón in 1977, when Spain was about to hold its first democratic elections following the death of long-time dictator Francisco Franco. The speaker at the rally was the PSOE leader Felipe González (who became Prime Minister of Spain in 1982 and served until 1996), and Rodríguez Zapatero joined the PSOE soon after. The PSOE had not yet renounced to Marxism-Leninism as its ideological base (that happened in 1979). This could explain Zapatero's foreign policy in his first months as prime minister (abandoning Iraq as a challenge to the Bush's policy and approaching extreme-left leaders such as Fidel Castro or the President of Venezuela Hugo Chávez).

He studied law in the University of Leon. He was not considered a brilliant student. By 1982 Rodríguez Zapatero headed the socialist youth organisation in his home province of León. Zapatero has had no other job besides politics. In 1986, he became the youngest Member of Parliament in Spain when he won a seat representing the province. In 1988 he was elected to head the regional chapter of the socialist party in León, and in 1997 he was appointed to the Federal Executive Committee, the party's governing body.

In 2000, after the PSOE had lost its second successive election to José María Aznar's People's Party, Rodríguez Zapatero was elected party leader as the representative of a modernising faction of the party known as Nueva Vía ("New Way"), which drew its inspiration from Tony Blair's "Third Way" politics. (However the ideological differences between both leaders are clear especially, regarding the Iraq War; Zapatero, after winning the 2004 election, appointed as defence minister a regional socialist leader - José Bono - who had insulted Mr. Blair publicly.) The People's Party continued to lead the PSOE in opinion polls until the 11 March 2004 Madrid attacks.

Rodríguez Zapatero has been insistent that a PSOE government will not be "soft on terrorism" and will not allow regional nationalists to endanger Spanish unity. This issue became important in the elections, in the wake of the terrorist attacks in Madrid on March 11, which were initially widely thought to be the work of Basque terrorist organization ETA. However, he has drawn several agreements with the Republican Left of Catalonia, a nationalistic party whose leader (Carod-Rovira) met some ETA terrorists secretly (what forced his resignation as a member of the regional Catalan government, led by a prominent socialist politician). Although it is unknown what happened exactly in that meeting, according to some newspapers reports, Carod-Rovira promised to provide ETA with political support if the terrorist group did not act in Catalonia (some months after the meeting ETA announced a truce that affected only the Catalan territory).

Upon winning the election, Rodríguez Zapatero's first action was to order the Spanish troops home from Iraq. The scheduled return date coincided with the beginning of the European Election political campaign (what was not casual according to some Zapatero's policies critics). Some months later, Zapatero's government voted in the UN Security Council in favor of a resolution that asked all countries to send troops to Iraq in order to fight against terrorism and help reconstruct the country. Some experts pointed out this contradiction as a symbol of the increasing isolation and weakening of Spain in the international stage.

Zapatero also announced his intention to undertake limited reforms to the Spanish Constitution (without making clear what he wanted exactly to reform) and legalize same-sex marriage (including adoption rights). On the issue of Gibraltar, Zapatero has taken a strong line with the United Kingdom, complaining strongly at Gibraltar's celebrations of its tercentenary and rejecting the Gibraltarians' requests for Spain to recognise its right to self-determination. Zapatero’s government saw those celebrations as a provocation that showed Britain's wanted to make Zapatero "pay" for abandoning his former allies in Iraq. In this line, it can be mentioned the snub Zapatero suffered after Bush's victory in the 2004 American election. Mr. Bush decided not to return Zapatero's congratulations phone call. The episode was widely reported in the national and international press.

In October 2004 Zapatero's government undertook the task of morally and legally rehabilitating those who were repressed during and after the Spanish Civil War, by instituting a Memory Commission chaired by his Vice-president María Teresa Fernández de la Vega. However, it made no mention of the victims who were killed for political reasons before the outbreak of the conflict after the victory of the Popular Front in February 1936. Critics claimed the decision to be a biased attempt to rewrite history caused by the inability of the Socialist Party to overcome its past radicalism.

Married in 1990 with Sonsoles Espinosa and father of two girls, Laura (1993) and Alba (1995), Rodríguez Zapatero is a fan of the Barcelona football team, the first among Prime Ministers in Spain.

External links

• Spanish Socialist Workers' Party
• Right-wing website highly critical of Rodríguez Zapatero (in Spanish)
• Extended biography by CIDOB Foundation (in Spanish)
• News about Rodríguez Zapatero (in Spanish)

See also

• History of Spain
• Politics of Spain
• Prime Minister of Spain

• 1960 births
• Spanish politicians
• Spanish politics