Mariano Rajoy

Mariano Rajoy Brey (, ; born 27 March 1955) is a Spanish politician who served as Prime Minister of Spain from 2011 to 2018, when a vote of no confidence ousted his government.

Born 27 March 1955 in Santiago de Compostela, A Coruña, Galicia, Rajoy is the grandson of Enrique Rajoy Leloup, one of the architects of the Galician Statute of Autonomy (1936) (Estatuto de autonomía de Galicia), who was removed from university teaching by the Franco dictatorship in the early 1950s.

He is the son of Olga Brey López and Mariano Rajoy Sobredo, a jurist, and president of the Provincial Court of Pontevedra, the city where he grew up.

Later on, his father was transferred to León and the whole family moved there.

He was duly enrolled, together with his brothers Luis and Enrique, and spent ten years there before moving to the Jesuit school in Vigo.

After finishing secondary school he started university, enrolling in the Law Faculty in Santiago de Compostela.

Rajoy graduated from the University of Santiago de Compostela and passed the competitive examination required in Spain to enter into the civil service, becoming the youngest-ever property registrar.

He was assigned to Padrón (A Coruña), Villafranca del Bierzo (León) and Santa Pola (Alicante), a position he still holds.

In that year, Rajoy sustained facial injuries in a traffic accident.

Since then, he has always worn a beard to cover the scars from these injuries.

Earlier member of the Spanish National Union (UNE), Rajoy joined the right-wing party People's Alliance (AP), becoming a deputy in the inaugural legislature of the Galician Parliament in 1981.

In 1982, he was appointed by Galician regional President, Xerardo Fernández Albor, as Minister of Institutional Relations of the Xunta de Galicia.

On 11 June 1983, Rajoy was elected President of the Provincial Deputation of Pontevedra, a position he held until 10 December 1986.

In the General Elections of 22 June 1986, he won a seat in the Congress of Deputies as the head of the AP's list for Pontevedra, although he resigned in November to take up the post of vice-president of the Xunta of Galicia following the resignation of Xosé Luis Barreiro and the rest of the ministers.

He occupied this latter position until the end of September 1987.

In May 1988 he was elected General Secretary of the PA in Galicia during an extraordinary congress of the regional party.

When in 1989 the AP merged with other parties to form the People's Party (PP), with Manuel Fraga as its president, Rajoy was named a member of its National Executive Committee and delegate for Pontevedra.

In April, the former president of Castile and León and presidential candidate of the government general elections in 1989, José María Aznar, was elected president of the PP. Confirmed in the National Executive, Mariano Rajoy was appointed deputy secretary general of the party.

He was reelected to parliament in 1993.

He was re-elected in Pontevedra in the election on 6 June 1993.

Rajoy was a Minister under the José María Aznar administration, occupying different leading roles in different Ministries between 1996 and 2003, and he also was the Deputy Prime Minister between 2000 and 2003.

At 14 years and 146 days, Rajoy was the longest-serving Spanish politician in the Government of Spain since the Spanish transition to democracy, having held ministerial offices continuously from 1996 to 2004 and from 2011 to 2018.

Rajoy married Elvira "Viri" Fernández Balboa on 28 December 1996, in La Toja island (Pontevedra).

The couple have two children.

Before the PP's triumph in the 1996 elections, he was a PP-designated member of the Commission of Parliamentary Control of the RTVE.

On 3 March 1996, the PP won the early parliamentary elections and formed a government with the support of the Basque Nationalist Party (EAJ-PNV), Convergence and Union (CiU) and the Canarian Coalition (CC).

Rajoy, a long-time associate of newly elected Prime Minister José María Aznar, made the move into national politics in Aznar's first government when he was appointed Minister of Public Administration on 6 May.

He became Leader of the People's Party in 2004 and Prime Minister in 2011 following the People's Party landslide victory in that year's general election becoming the sixth President of the Spanish Government.

He was the Leader of the Opposition between 2004 and 2011 under José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero's government.

Rajoy's first term was heavily marked by the Spanish financial crisis and oversaw a major restructuring of the Spanish financial system as well as a major labour reform.

While on the campaign trail in 2011, Rajoy published his autobiography, En Confianza (In Confidence).

The financial crisis peaked with a bailout of the Spanish banking system in June 2012.

Unemployment in Spain peaked at 27% in 2012, which led to an initial drop of the People's Party in the polls, which was aggravated by the revelations of a series of corruption cases that seriously damaged the party's reputation.

This, among other factors, led to a profound shift in the Spanish party system, with the rise of new political parties from the left and the right: Podemos and Citizens.

The party lost its majority in the 2015 general election, but after that election ended in deadlock, a second election in 2016 enabled Rajoy to be reelected Prime Minister as head of a minority government.

The 2015 general election led to a parliamentary configuration that made the formation of a government very difficult; as a result, Spain was without a government for over six months and new elections were held in June 2016.

Rajoy was finally appointed Prime Minister with the support of the Citizens party and the abstention of the Spanish Socialist Workers' Party.

Rajoy's second term was marked by economic recovery and a drop in unemployment and the challenge of stagnating salaries.

Rajoy also oversaw the 2017–18 Spanish constitutional crisis marked by the Catalan independence referendum of 2017 and the Catalan unilateral declaration of independence on 27 October 2017 that led to the imposition of direct rule in Catalonia.

On 5 June 2018, he announced his resignation as People's Party leader.