QUICK FACTS
NAME
Mariano Rajoy
OCCUPATIO
Prime minister (Spain)
DATE OF BIRTH
March 27, 1955
EDUCATION
University of Santiago de Compostela,
PLACE OF BIRTH
Santiago de Compostela, Spain
FULL NAME
Mariano Rajoy Brey
Synopsis
Rajoy was raised in the Galicia region of northern Spain. He studied law at the University of Santiago de Compostela, receiving a degree in 1978. After briefly working as a land registrar, he embarked on a career in politics, being elected when 26 years old as a regional deputy for what would become the Popular Party (Partido Popular; PP). He served in local and regional government through most of the 1980s.
From 1996 Rajoy served in the PP government of Prime Minister José María Aznar, holding, successively, the posts of minister of public administration, minister of education and culture, and minister of the interior, and in 2003 Aznar handpicked Rajoy as the party’s new leader. The following year the conservative PP was expected to claim another victory in the general elections, but what was widely perceived as the government’s inadequate response to the Madrid train bombings, which occurred just days before the election, put a dent in the party’s support. Rajoy again failed to lead the PP to victory in 2008. But as the European sovereign debt crisis continued to escalate, the Popular Party ousted the reigning Socialists with a landslide victory in the 2011 election, winning the biggest parliamentary majority in nearly three decades.
A social conservative raised as a Roman Catholic, Rajoy was especially outspoken about curbing abortion rights and in his opposition to same-sex marriages. Nevertheless, during his tenure in the PP, he helped lead the party from the hard right to centre-right. Many hoped that Rajoy and the PP, which had, from the late 1990s, overseen the fiscal preparations necessary for Spain to adopt the euro, would help steer the country out of spiraling recession. He was sworn in as prime minister on December 21, 2011, and he pledged to implement a series of austerity measures that would reduce Spain’s deficit.
