José María Aznar López (; born 25 February 1953) is a Spanish politician who was the prime minister of Spain from 1996 to 2004. He led the People's Party (PP), the dominant centre-right political party in Spain.
In his teens, he joined the Frente de Estudiantes Sindicalistas, a dissident Falangist student organisation. He studied law at the Complutense University of Madrid and first worked in the public sector as an Inspector of the Finances of the State (). He joined the People's Alliance, which was re-founded as the People's Party in 1989. He led the Junta of Castile and León from 1987 to 1989 and was Leader of the Opposition at the national level from 1989 to 1996. In 1995, he survived an assassination attempt from the Basque separatist group ETA.
The People's Party, led by Aznar, won the most parliamentary seats at the 1996 general election, but he failed to obtain a majority in the Congress of Deputies, which forced the PP to seek the support of Basque (EAJ-PNV), Catalan (CiU) and Canarian (CC) regionalists. He was finally sworn in as prime minister on 4 May 1996, and his first term was marked by market liberalization, deregulation of the economy, cutting of state expenses and privatization of several state-owned companies. During his first term, the economy grew and Spain met the criteria to participate in the creation of the eurozone, but unemployment remained moderately high. Some relevant events in Aznar's first term were the assassination of PP politician Miguel Ángel Blanco by ETA. Aznar attempted to negotiate with ETA between 1998 and 1999, but the parties did not reach an agreement and violence continued.
Aznar also got the most votes in the 2000 general election this time obtaining an absolute majority of 183 deputies (out of 350) in the Congress. The economy kept growing and unemployment finally began to fall during his second term. In foreign policy, Spain adopted a neoconservative approach and grew closer ties with the United States and the Bush administration, in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. Aznar supported the American-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2002, he faced harsh criticisms for the government's response to the Prestige oil spill in Galicia. Support of the PP further declined after the invasion of Iraq, which was not supported by the majority of the Spanish population, but was nevertheless carried out with Spanish support for the U.S. and the UK. A 2003 poll conducted by the public research institute CIS found that 91% of Spaniards were against the invasion of Iraq.
In 2004, a general election in Spain was scheduled for 14 March, which was not contested by Aznar, but by his successor as lead of the PP, Mariano Rajoy. On 11 March, the 2004 Madrid train bombings occurred, which killed 192 people. The government claimed the bombings were perpetrated by ETA. In the few days between the bombings and the election, the PP defended this position: however, a major sector of the population rejected the hypothesis that the attacks were perpetrated by ETA and believed the government was lying because of the bombings' possible connection to Spanish support for the invasion of Iraq. This led to a massive drop in support for the PP in the days before the election, and the opposing PSOE's José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero won the election.
Aznar remains active in the private sector, and he sometimes gives his views on current issues. He was a member of the Council of State from 2005 to 2006. He is the president of Spanish think tank FAES and is a director of News Corp. He held the honorary (symbolic) presidency of the PP until 2016, when he renounced the title. On February 14, 2024, Aznar resigned from his position as a lobbyist for Philip Morris.
Early life Aznar was born in Madrid in 1953, the son of Manuel Aznar Acedo, an army official, journalist and radio broadcaster, and the grandson of Manuel Aznar Zubigaray, a former Basque nationalist broadcaster who later became a Falangist propagandist and a prominent journalist during the Franco era. Both his father and grandfather held governmental positions during the dictatorship.
He was educated at the Colegio del Pilar in Madrid. As a sixteen-year-old, Aznar espoused an independent brand of Falangism as a member of the Frente de Estudiantes Sindicalistas (FES), a Falangist dissident student organization opposed to the Francoist regime. Primordially a university organization, a teenage Aznar became responsible for the high-school branch set up in the late 1960s, and was tasked with promoting Falangism amongst Spain’s school-going youth along the organisation’s lines.
Aznar graduated in law at the Complutense University of Madrid in 1975 and became a Tax Authority inspector in 1976.
Politician in People's Alliance After the death of Francisco Franco and the restoration of democracy, Aznar joined the Alianza Popular (AP) in January 1979, a few months after his wife. In March he became the Secretary General of the party in La Rioja, occupying the post until 1980. In February 1981 he joined the AP's National executive committee. He became Assistant Secretary General in February 1982.
On 26 October 1982 he was elected to parliament, representing Ávila. On 22 June 1985 he was appointed to the presidency of the AP in Castile and León. On 2 December 1986 AP leader Manuel Fraga resigned following fierce internal party fighting in the aftermath of another failure to dislodge the ruling Spanish Socialist Workers' Party (PSOE). Aznar was not considered senior enough to be a possible successor, and gave his support to Miguel Herrero de Miñón, who lost the leadership bid to Fraga's choice, Antonio Hernández Mancha. As a result, Aznar lost his post as Assistant Secretary General.
On 10 June 1987, after having resigned to his seat in the Congress of Deputies, he was elected member of the Cortes of Castile and León in the 1987 Castilian-Leonese regional election, representing Ávila. Soon after, he was invested as president of the region, forming an uneasy coalition government with the Democratic and Social Centre (CDS).
Leader of the Opposition
In 1989 Aznar was voted by the National Executive Committee of AP to be the new leader of the party, re-founded as the Partido Popular (People's Party, or PP). With Fraga focused on the presidency of Galicia, Aznar was confirmed as leader of the PP at their 10th National Congress at the end of March 1990. In November the PP moved from the Conservative group in the European Parliament to the more centrist Christian Democratic European People's Party.
On 6 June 1993 the PP again lost the general election, but improved on their previous performance by obtaining 34.8% of the vote. The PSOE lost its absolute majority and needed to form a coalition government with other parties in order to continue governing. The result was a disappointment for the PP as the opinion polls had predicted a victory for them. They did well in the 1994 European and 1995 local elections.
On 19 April 1995, Aznar's armored car prevented him from being assassinated by an ETA bomb.Azner, Jose; Fact Monster.
The PP won the 3 March 1996 general election with 37.6% of the vote, thus ending 13 years of PSOE rule. With 156 of the 350 seats (the PSOE won 141) Aznar had to reach agreements with two regional nationalist parties, Convergence and Unity (Catalan) and the Canary Islands Coalition, in order to govern with additional support from the Basque Nationalist Party. He was voted in as prime minister with 181 votes in the Cortes Generales on 4 May and sworn in the next day by King Juan Carlos I.
Premiership
First term (1996–2000)
Aznar's government has been described as the first conservative government since 1983, or since the death of Francisco Franco.
The Aznar Government maintained the commitment of the previous government to join the European Union's single currency and showed itself willing to take political risks in order to meet the requirements for membership. Aznar also announced the sale early in 1997 of the nation's remaining minority stake (golden shares) in the Telefónica telecommunications company and the petroleum group Repsol. This marked the beginning of a period of privatizations after the previous PSOE government had nationalized parts of the economy.
During the Premiership of José María Aznar, Spain gave residency to more than 500,000 undocumented migrants in different amnesties in 1996, 2000 and 2001.
Second term (2000–2004) Spanish voters reelected Aznar in the 2000 general election with an outright majority. The PP obtained 44.5% of the vote and 183 seats. The Spanish electorate's participation was the lowest for a general election in Spain in the post-Franco era.
After six years of relative political calm, when political debate was dominated by a consensus within the ruling party on economics, regional nationalism, and terrorism, several issues arose which polarized Spanish public opinion. Like UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, Aznar actively supported the United States' war on terrorism, despite public opposition. Aznar met with Bush in a private meeting before the 2003 invasion of Iraq to discuss the situation in the UN Security Council. El País leaked a partial transcript of the meeting. The government's handling of the wreckage of the Greek Prestige tanker near the Spanish coast, which resulted in a major ecological disaster, also became a divisive issue.
He actively encouraged and supported the Bush administration's foreign policy and the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.David Pujante and Esperanza Morales-López, "A political action against popular opinion: Aznar's final speech before the Spanish Parliament justifying the war in Iraq (December 2003)." Journal of Language and Politics 7.1 (2008): 71-98 online. He defended it on the basis of secret intelligence allegedly containing evidence of the Iraqi government's nuclear proliferation. On 30 January 2003, Aznar signed The letter of the eight supporting US. policy on Iraq. The majority of the Spanish population, including some PP members, were against the war. Spain's major cities were the scene of the largest street demonstrations ever seen in the country as a result of the government's participation in the invasion. Aznar lost some support from those who had voted for the PP in 2000. On a live TV interview aired on the public station while demonstrations were taking place in the streets, he asked the Spanish people to take his word assuring there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, of which he had evidence. This is now regarded as incorrect.During a conference in Pozuelo de Alarcon, Madrid, on 8 February 2007 Aznar said there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq prior to the Iraq War, but that when he believed there were WMDs and no one could disprove their existence.
On the economic front, the government pursued the privatization of public enterprises and focused its attention on debt reduction. Investment in research was drastically reduced, and large cuts were also made in social spending. Social housing construction fell by over 30%, and households went into debt in response to the sharp rise in the price of building land.Crecimiento económico, regresión social, crispación política, José Vidal-Beneyto, april 2004
In January 2004 Aznar called a general election and designated his successor as candidate, Mariano Rajoy, sticking to a pledge of not seeking office for a third term. Despite political tensions, polls suggested that the People's Party was set to win a third consecutive election on the strength of the economy.