José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero

José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, born in 1960, prime minister of Spain since 2004. Zapatero was born in the city of Valladolid, in northern Spain. His grandfather, an army officer, was killed by the Nationalist forces of General Francisco Franco at the beginning of the Spanish Civil War in 1936. Zapatero entered politics during Spain’s period of transition from dictatorship to democracy, joining the Spanish Socialist Workers’ Party (PSOE) in 1979.

Zapatero studied law at the University of León, where he began an academic career as a lecturer in constitutional law from 1982 to 1986. In 1986 he was elected to the Congress of Deputies, the lower house of the Spanish parliament, becoming the parliament’s youngest member. Two years later Zapatero was elected regional leader of the PSOE in León; he was appointed to the party’s governing committee in 1997.

The PSOE, which governed Spain from 1982 to 1996 under Felipe González Márquez, lost power amid corruption scandals and economic troubles. As the Popular Party of José María Aznar took office, the PSOE entered an extended period of turmoil as it attempted to reinvent itself. Zapatero supported the leadership of González’s chosen successor as the PSOE’s leader, Joaquín Almunia Amann.

After the PSOE’s second-consecutive election defeat, in March 2000, Almunia resigned, and Zapatero narrowly won the ensuing election as his replacement to lead the party. By this time, Zapatero had aligned himself with the PSOE’s reformist wing, defining his vision of a nueva vía (“new way”) that had elements in common with the centrist policies of the British Labour Party under Prime Minister Tony Blair and the Social Democratic Party (SPD) of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder in Germany.

Zapatero backed Aznar’s tough line against Basque terrorists, and he supported Aznar’s controversial decision to outlaw Batasuna, the political wing of the separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA; Basque for “Basque Homeland and Liberty”) in August 2002 (see Basque Country). Zapatero was also cautiously sympathetic to the arguments for more regional autonomy in Spain as presented by the leader of the PSOE’s Catalan branch, Pasqual Maragall i Mira.

Although the PSOE improved its performance in local elections in May 2003, the party failed to make a breakthrough, and the Popular Party seemed to be heading for a third term in office in the national elections of March 2004. However, Aznar’s mishandling of the aftermath of the March 11 train bombings by terrorists in Madrid, which included a misguided effort to blame the bombings on the ETA, contributed to his party’s defeat. Zapatero succeeded in forming a minority government the following month.

As he had pledged during the campaign, Zapatero withdrew Spanish forces from Iraq; the Popular Party under Aznar had supported the U.S.-led war against Iraq (see U.S.-Iraq War). Zapatero also set out a program of social reform, which included the liberalization of abortion laws and the reduction of religious education in schools.